Pulling kids out of school for vacation

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Amy Graff

Skipping school for a hiking trip on Tenerife, one of the seven Spanish Canary Islands

Today, our family hiked 10 miles straight up to the top of a mountain, where we looked up to a snowy covered volcano on one side and down to the deep blue Atlantic on the other. Along the way, we met a goat herder and his flock, picked a bouquet of wild geraniums, and finally arrived at a tiny village where we stopped in a cafe for a plate of fresh salty goat cheese that was so delicious my 7-year-old daughter offered to pay for a second serving with her own money.

My daughter has learned to love papaya on this trip and my 6-year-old son can now speak a little Spanish, thanks to the woman who runs the funky little hotel where we're staying in a fishing village with buildings dating back to the 1500s. We've spent hours and hours of time together as a family, something we simply can't do in San Francisco due to full-time jobs, school, and a dizzying array of activities, ranging from soccer games to birthday parties.

Hiking amid cacti on Tenerife

I know we're all having experiences of a lifetime--yet still I feel guilty about taking my children out of school. I wonder if I made the right decision when I made our travel plans nearly a year ago.

At the time, it all made perfect sense. My father generously decided to sponsor a family reunion in London--a life-long dream of my Mother whose grandparents were both born in England.

My Dad gave us money for plane tickets and the prices were hundreds of dollars cheaper if we waited a week after New Year's to fly out of London.

Plus we figured, if we're lugging our kids all the way to Europe and we've got a free ride to London, we should take a week on our own to explore another part of Europe.

We decided on Tenerife, one of the Spanish Canary Islands off the coast of Africa, where the weather is warm and dry year-round. Years ago my grandmother told me that the Canary Islands are the most magical place in the world, and ever since I've wanted to go. I found a cheap flight on one of those European airlines that charges for everything except using the bathroom on board the plane, and I think it helped that we were traveling after New Year's when travel prices plummet.

We alerted my son's kindergarten teacher and my daughter's second grade teacher of our plans. My son was asked to draw pictures of what he sees on our trip, while my daughter received a hefty packet of homework, which we're digging into every day. We're also trying to stick with our usual routine of reading with the kids every night--although honestly most nights we're out on our hotel veranda looking for shooting stars rather than reading Harry Potter.

But even though my kids are keeping up with their studies and broadening their horizons through experiences, I can't help but feel as if I'm not a team member by pulling my kids out of school.

Amy Graff

A mid-trail snack of fresh goat cheese and Spanish beer

A writer for Time magazine once wrote: "Following the academic calender is the social-health equivalent of vaccinating your kid: you do it for your kid's sake, but also because it helps the community function better. Remember that village that's raising your child? If half the village is trying to score an early-winter lift ticket, you've got a real problem."

In other words, if you're pulling your kid out of school, he's missing out on test prep and then he won't do as well on that standardized test, and sometimes the school's funding (if anything its morale) is dependent on good scores. What's more, some school's funding is directly tied to student attendance.

And then there's the burden placed on teachers when kids are absent. They have to prepare homework packets and help catch up students when they return.

I do think the decision whether to pull a kid out of school is dependent on the child's age. It's much easier for my kindergartner to miss class than for my second grader who was initially upset about the extended vacation. She worried about falling behind in class. But as we were hiking today and after we had just spotted a mother goat and her adorable kid, I asked, "Would you rather be here or in school?"

"Oh Mommy, I want to live here forever. Maybe I could be a goat herder. I think that I'm learning a lot about goat herding on this vacation," she said.

A lesson in goat herding isn't going to get my daughter into Harvard but it certainly will teach her a thing or two about patience.

Posted By: Amy Graff (Email, Twitter, Facebook) | January 04 2011 at 11:11 AM

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