What's your Threshold for Taking Kids out of School

Frozen2014

DIS Veteran
Joined
Jan 12, 2014
We went to Disney World last October and had an amazing time. We will be returning (either to Disney World or Disneyland) in a few years. We have a big trip planned for April 2016 (a cruise which in the end will cost similar to Disney trip) so our next Disney trip will be say between 2017 and 2019. This means that our older one will be somewhere between Grade 6 and 8 (and between 11 and 14 years). I'm ok taking them out as family time is precious, but DH feels that he's getting too old...and i respect that. Only thing is it means our next trip will be either March Break, summer or Christmas. yikes...not the best time to come in terms of crowds or weather.

So how about other families? At what point whill you stop taking your kids out of school? Or is there no time and you're ok with it?
 
We feel that family time is important, too, but you don't need to go on vacation to spend time together. Some of the best memories we have were made right in our living room. We have always stressed the importance of education and feel it would set a bad example to take her out of school for the sake of convenience, so we take our vacations when school's out or we don't go.
 
This is our last year doing it for such a lengthy period (5days), we will try going over the holidays next year. My oldest DD has to much of a work load now, can't imagine it in years to come.
Yippee, I have to deal with crowds next year.
 
We have taken our boys out of school. In fact we just returned from a week. With that being said our oldest is 10 and in the 4th grade. I think this will be the last year i feel comfortable pulling them out of school. I don't feel that they fell behind or that we weren't able to maintain the work. But every year the work gets harder and we expect different things from and for our family! We have found cruising to be the best fit for our family. It is affordable, the head count is limited, and we love cruising!
 
We took our kids out of school every year through the 6th grade. Once our oldest was in Jr. High, the workload was bigger and DD didn't want to miss school and come back to tons of make up work.
 
My DD took our DGD out of school when she was in elementary school. She was able to keep up and the teacher was supportive. Once she hit middle school my DD took her out once, that was in 6th Grade. Never again. She struggled to catch up and was kind of stressed by it. As a student my DGD even if her Mom had asked her if she wanted the vacation, she would have said no, and now she is in HS> Not a chance. Way too much for her to miss.

I know that some kids can catch up in middle and high school, but Kady can not. It is during a vacation or not at all for us now. I am so glad we took those trips when she was younger because as a family, we all cannot go together any more.
 


We've taken our kids out a couple times previously and it worked fine. Now my oldest is in 6th grade (junior high in our district) and I no longer feel it's worth it to take them out. There is too much concern with the amount of homework from multiple teachers and just missing out on too much, including sports committments. From now on we will either go over holidays or during summer break.
 
We are lucky I guess our school lets us take all the work with us instead of making it up but it's always a bummer when Mom needs to announce at WDW that it is 'homework' time.
 
I am taking my first grader out of school for 3 days for our trip (2 days of our week is their fall break). I'd say we will probably not do it past 5th or 6th grade, but that also depends on how our kids show us they handle school when it gets harder. Regardless of age, I wouldn't hesitate to pull them the last week of school in May, nothing happens that week and all tests/grades are decided by then.
 
We went to Disney World last October and had an amazing time. We will be returning (either to Disney World or Disneyland) in a few years. We have a big trip planned for April 2016 (a cruise which in the end will cost similar to Disney trip) so our next Disney trip will be say between 2017 and 2019. This means that our older one will be somewhere between Grade 6 and 8 (and between 11 and 14 years). I'm ok taking them out as family time is precious, but DH feels that he's getting too old...and i respect that. Only thing is it means our next trip will be either March Break, summer or Christmas. yikes...not the best time to come in terms of crowds or weather.

So how about other families? At what point whill you stop taking your kids out of school? Or is there no time and you're ok with it?

I'll answer with a big old "It depends" You need to start with your school districts policy for absences. Based on what I've seen here, the policies are all over the place. Then you need to consider your child and his personality an academic status: some kids can miss the work and pick up right away and have no problem when they come home. Other kids will struggle and never catch up. Some kids are going to NOT want to miss days because they will feel extra pressure (that was my kid), and some won't want to miss their extracurricular activities...or they might be involved in extracurricular activities where missing practices or games is just not an option.

For us, when our daughter was younger, missing school for a week during K-5 was not an issue. But by the time she was middle school and high school age, SHE didn't want to miss the time in school because she felt that she'd never catch up (and this was not a chidl with academic issues). Now, I would be very wary of a week out of school, even at elementary age because of some changes in our states absenteeism policy.

There are other times you might want to consider that will not be as crowded as Christmas, Summer or March Break, but where you can minimize the absences from school. Here in my district, the 'ideal' time when a lot of parents plan a vacation is coming soon: Our district has off the Monday before Election Day, Election Day and Veterans Day off. Usually they fall the same week, so you can go for a week long trip and only miss two days of school. This year, you'd miss three days if you went that week, but it's a better option than missing five. Other times this might work, depending on your school calendar: Columbus Day weekend, Martin Luther King Weekend, Thanksgiving Week (we have 2 and half days of school that week), Presidents weekend, anytime there's staff development in your district, if you have a 'fall break'.....
 
Thanks for the responses. Sounds like a lot of you are the same as us where 10 or so is the cut off.

We're from Canada so unfortunately don't have any fall breaks. At most we get the odd Monday off for a PD day.
So it'll probably be March Break or Christmas (super crowded) or summer (awful weather with heat and rain).
 
We took our oldest out of Kindergarten for a whole week, but other than that, we try not to take the kids out of school.

Our oldest is in 6th grade now (middle school), our middle is in 3rd grade, and then we've got the baby.

If we are going during a school vacation week, which we often do...we will consider up to 2 days prior to vacation week if it means cheaper airfare. And our oldest usually sulks about that...she loves school. We really try not to do it.
 
To add to the post though...there are many who do take kids out of school as there seems to be no 'quiet' time at Disney anymore. o_O
 
We have never taken our daughter, 4th grader, out of school for a vacation. I believe (in our daughters case) that classroom instruction by her teacher is so valuable. She missed three days of school when she was in 3rd grade due to asthma and I could not believe how much she missed and the amount of homework to make up.
 
I thnk that it is such a personal decision. In my DD and DSIL case, if they had not taken Kady out of school, there would have been n family vacations together. My DSIL works where seniority is in place, and he was lower on that list. Forget Summer. Forget Spring or WInter break. Before Holiday's were blacked out, and the weeks after booked first. He is still limited when he can choose vacation time, but at least is high enough to book a week in Summer. The company also changed the policy so employees do not have the opportunity to book all their vacation at once. You book one week and it moves to the next guy, an keeps making the cycle. When the top guys could book their four or five weeks, any chance of a family time was out. For a while all he got was a week in January.
 
I have when they were in elementary school and I'm doing it again (oldest just started high school, youngest in middle school) for the last time. My son is in 9th grade. I'm worried. If it was just our immediate family , I would not do it (we stopped pulling them out at 6th grade when I went per diem in my nursing job, and could get a week in summer) But several of us in my husband's fmaily are running the half marathon. So it is a huge family trip....all staying in a few large villas at SSR... All cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents. That's' a once in a lifetime trip, so I'm pulling him out for 4 days. Our school district allows 5 days for vacation, so that's good, but I am worried about the work. He's not worried (thankfully)...he's a pretty laid back kid and really doesn't get stressed out. Luckily we have block scheduling....so we're going at the end of most of his classes. two weeks later he has all new classes, so at least it won't affect him all year. We'll see. I have to say the other trips were fine, and never a problem makign up the work. Our next trip is planned for August, and will be summer trips from now on for us.
 
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We pulled our kids out of school once for two days when they were in grades 2 and 5. It totally stressed them out. We won't make that mistake again.
 
The last time I took my DD out of school was when she was 13 and in 8th grade. It was the week after Spring Break for a championship swim meet in Clearwater, FL. I would NOT have done it for a vacation. The last time I did it for a vacation was when she skipped the first 4 days of school when she was 8 and in 3rd grade. We were finishing up a nearly 3 week trip to China and Japan and were in Tokyo that week. My DD missed a week of school when she was a Freshman in HS because she tore her ACL and had to have surgery. It was very difficult for her to make up the missed time even though the teachers were very understanding. They would not have been understanding for a vacation.

So, I guess my answer is 3rd grade. Since then we vacation over school breaks. My DD's education is more important to me than low crowds.
 
I think we've learned that each situation is different. What works for one family doesn't work for another and what is acceptable in one school district wouldn't work in another. There's just so many variables.

As for us, we've pulled my son out of school for 3-6 days every year and will again for three days this year (he's in 7th grade) We've never gotten any negative feedback from the schools. Sometimes we've been given homework before or after and other times he's just had to give a presentation or write a report on what we did, where we went, what he learned, etc. Its very common here (or maybe just common for our group of friends and my sons classmates) to take 1-2 week winter vacations and escape the cold of North Dakota around January or February. In my son's district, they do not get a fall or spring break and with a large population being farmers, there is a limited time for vacations.
 

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