When my son was 10, he was chronically ill and so I pulled him out and homeschooled him. There was NO WAY that he could’ve continued public school and actually gotten the information that he needed after missing so many days. He was welcomed back once he was well enough to attend. (That didn’t happen for a long time. Homeschooling worked for us)
To say that the girl is happy there and that ‘this is the only place she feels normal’ is stupid. School isn’t a social play group for children. It’s a place to learn. Kids who come in and out fall behind. It’s not fair to the sick kid to push them along. They miss a ton of material that goes beyond the worksheets and the book learning.
When I homeschooled, I didn’t allow my kids to move forward until they’d mastered the step they were on. I didn’t coddle them or hope that they’d pick up missed work down the road. Sometimes they leaped ahead, sometimes they crawled; but we knew right where they were.
Schools will bend over backwards to help a sick kid, but sometimes it’s too much. Let the kid take the rest of the year off, then come back fresh in the fall and repeat a year. It will be best for her in the long run.
I am sick of parents having so much compassion for their children that they handicap them and shield them from what the child actually needs to succeed.
When I grew up, homeschooling was never heard of. But I remember every year in high school and college, there would be a classmate that would be held back a year because of an illness or an accident. There was no dishonor and they were welcomed back by all. Usually the person who was held back ended up being more popular, because they now belonged to "two classes."
I agree with most of what you posted and respect your experience and opinion. For the girl in the article, if she has Childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), then she will miss at least a year of school, the second year a few weeks every semester and the third year a few days a month. It looks as if she is in her first year of treatments which is the worst.
The home tutoring program with my son's school worked out fine. But that was only twice a week. The remainder of the teaching was done by my wife and me when I got home from work. He did the same assignments, tests and projects. His tests were timed and administered by a teacher on one of the two tutoring days. Basically it was home schooling lite. We did most of the 'fill in the blank' instruction in absence of the teacher. If he was sick or undergoing his chemo treatments during a scheduled test time, the school adjusted. We were VERY involved in every detail so the school was not taken by surprise my son would be three days late with a science project or delayed test. We sat down monthly with the school admin to evaluate progress and keep everyone, us and the school honest.
We did it this way because the school (although public) was supportive and staffed with good Christian people (Texas y'all). Supportive that the 5th grade teacher he had set up a desk for my son with his name on it, full of his supplies and text books. The school provided additional textbooks for home use. So it worked for us and it worked probably because both sides wanted to make it work, dedicated involvement and my son a very good student before even his diagnosis. Plus the kids in his class he was with most of them since K. They wrote him letters, drew pictures and welcome home banners when he got home from his various hospital visits.