{"id":83122,"date":"2013-04-18T13:00:18","date_gmt":"2013-04-18T17:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/?p=83122"},"modified":"2013-04-18T11:39:11","modified_gmt":"2013-04-18T15:39:11","slug":"vacations-for-kids-mothers-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/vacations-for-kids-mothers-day\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m Taking My Kid Out Of School For 5 Days To Celebrate Mother’s Day Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"motherdaughtertrip\"

I need to write another one, because, yes, I\u2019m being proactive this year, when it comes to Mother\u2019s Day. I\u2019ve planned a mother-daughter ONLY trip for five days. My daughter will be missing four days of school, since I want to spend a week with her. It\u2019s MOTHER week in my household!<\/p>\n

She can\u2019t wait to go to Bahamas and be alone with me. It\u2019s going to be a fucking great Mother\u2019s Day Week. For both me and my daughter.<\/p>\n

Ever since she started school, I have not let loving life get in the way of her studies. When she was in preschool up until Grade Three, the school she was at didn\u2019t seem to care at all that my daughter would miss days of school either to go on a trip with me or visit with her father in Arizona or Aspen (both of which are far from home, so she needed to take the days off). At her old school, people would take their kids out sometimes for a month to go to Miami in the winter. One friend took her children to Italy for FOUR MONTHS.<\/p>\n

I usually just feel in my gut that it\u2019s time for some mother-daughter bonding and I\u2019ll book us a trip in a land far away so it can really be just my daughter and me (and sun, sand and beach). I\u2019ve always been a firm believer that school is important, but so are other life experiences. Of course, it\u2019s hard to argue that heading to The Cove at Atlantis in the Bahamas is a life experience, unless, one day, water slides are going to be in the Olympics.<\/p>\n

Still, I\u2019m taking my daughter out of Grade Four to come with me.<\/p>\n

Yes, it is Mother\u2019s Day, but I picked a place my daughter would enjoy more than me. She loves it there. Does anything say more \u201dmother\u201d than that?<\/p>\n

I will ask the teacher for homework she will be missing and I will force (actually, I don\u2019t have to force her) my daughter to do all the homework on the plane ride down, so when we arrive we can just\u201d\u00a6be.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve watched my daughter, turning 10 in October, grow leaps and bounds this year. Ever since I had her, I\u2019ve heard the warnings from parents like, \u201dchildren are just for rent,\u201d meaning that they will only want you around so much as they get older. I\u2019ve watched my daughter become super independent this year, and I can feel it. The \u201dit\u201d being that she is definitely growing up and time is just ticking away too quickly before she gets her license and will soon (hopefully) go to college.<\/p>\n

So, yes, I selfishly want to be with her as much as I can. The school has my daughter seven and-a-half hours a day, five days a week. Then she has her extra-curricular activities and sleepovers. I like thinking that quality time over quantity of time matters and it does (for all of you who feel guilty about working.)<\/p>\n

However, my \u201dquality\u201d time with my daughter for the last few months has just been at night, when she\u2019s exhausted. And now with a second child, it\u2019s been hard for me to juggle spending as much time with her as I used to.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s definitely TIME for Mommy-Daughter Time.<\/p>\n

I know, already, that if she misses a day of school, and they have math on that day, she will fall behind. I\u2019ve already told her, \u201dYou miss one thing in math and you\u2019re screwed for the rest of your life!\u201d<\/p>\n

It is sort of true, or at least that\u2019s what happened to me.<\/p>\n

I was sick for a week in junior high school and I could never catch up with math. Still, I have no problem taking her out of school for \u201dMommy and Me\u201d time. Sometimes, I\u2019ll just drop by her school and say it\u2019s \u201dDitch Day\u201d and we\u2019ll go out for a late lunch and movie.<\/p>\n

Is this selfish of me? I think so, in a way.<\/p>\n

But then I see my daughter\u2019s delighted face when I pick her up or tell her that we\u2019re going on a Mother-Daughter ONLY trip, and whatever concerns I had about taking her out of school disappear. (Wait\u201d\u00a6what were my concerns?)<\/p>\n

I think family is super important and that while she\u2019s interested in travelling with me, she\u2019ll also get to see a side of mom that she doesn\u2019t often see (me going down water slides with her! Wheee!). I\u2019ll get to see a side of her that isn\u2019t just her face running in and out of school and activities.<\/p>\n

I keep wondering, though, at what age does this have to stop? Does it ever? I think not.<\/p>\n

I have been honest with the headmistress about other times my daughter has missed days of school (I have to share her vacation time with her father, so we always add on a few extra days). So I can\u2019t wait to write, \u201dI really believe that my daughter, and I, are due for some mother-daughter bonding time.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the truth. And so that\u2019s what I\u2019ll write. And if she needs a math tutor when she gets back to help her catch up, so be it. But I feel no guilt about her missing school.<\/p>\n

I ask my daughter what she does every day at school and all I hear about are tales of recess social problems<\/a>. So, really, does it matter if I take her out of Grade Four for a week just to chillax? Or Grade Five or Six? Because I keep on planning to, until the day comes, which it will, when she says, \u201dI’d rather stay with my friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

(photo:\u00a0Natchapon L.<\/a>\u00a0\/ Shutterstock<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the fourth time this school year I\u2019ve had to write to the headmistress at my daughter\u2019s school….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20806,"featured_media":83125,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[29,137,2107,7353,16],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":3,"label":"Childrearing"}],"post_tag":[{"value":29,"label":"childrearing"},{"value":137,"label":"children's education"},{"value":2107,"label":"family vacation"},{"value":7353,"label":"gallery"},{"value":16,"label":"parenting"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/motherdaughtertrip.jpg",400,266,false],"author_info":{"display_name":"Rebecca Eckler","author_link":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/author\/4dc311198cf6d\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":3,"name":"Childrearing","slug":"childrearing","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":3,"taxonomy":"category","description":"Get childrearing advice and read blog articles about how to raise your kids. Get advice for moms on how to be a good parent.\r\n","parent":0,"count":5343,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":3,"category_count":5343,"category_description":"Get childrearing advice and read blog articles about how to raise your kids. Get advice for moms on how to be a good parent.\r\n","cat_name":"Childrearing","category_nicename":"childrearing","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":29,"name":"childrearing","slug":"childrearing-2","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":29,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":845,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":137,"name":"children's education","slug":"childrens-education","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":137,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":196,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":2107,"name":"family vacation","slug":"family-vacation","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":2169,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":33,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":7353,"name":"gallery","slug":"gallery-2","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":7444,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":2500,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":16,"name":"parenting","slug":"parenting","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":16,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":1332,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83122"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20806"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mommyish.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}