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Comment by Blahah | Hacker News Reader

Honestly this is the last thing I'd be worrying about. A child can skip 6 months to a year of school and have almost no negative effects on their life outcomes. If they get sick and die, or their close family members do, they will definitely have negative effects on their outcomes.

There are tons of resources and communities for homeschooling on the internet. Happy to help point you to stuff if needed, but please prioritise health over potential educational slowdown.

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> please prioritise health over potential educational slowdown

My apologies - I didn’t at all mean to make it seem like I was downplaying the public health aspect. I fully understand this is likely what’s necessary and that public health comes first. That being said, it is a source of anxiety for me as someone who values academics because, for me, it was a path to a better life.

Don't worry about it. You sound like a good parent who will think of ways to keep your kid engaged.

Think of some ways you can help kids who won't have a steady source of meals if they're missing school.

Few weeks or even months of lost school - especially at an early age - is something that can be compensated for somewhat easily. Schools are very inefficient at teaching. You'll help her a bit, ensure she does some focused learning, and she'll be fine.

As a parent, please take my advice: Your children's learnings will be okay in the long run.

Your child can take a year off of school and still be fine. Just think about the age difference in any given class and that will ring true.

No need to apologise at all! You sound like a responsible parent - I commented mostly for other people reading. Your child is gonna do great because they have caring parents.

I would truly love an opportunity to not work for 6 months and have my child not go to school so I could spend that time with them. I'm sure you'll be able to find ways to spend that time enriching their life. Caring is the most important step.

The fact that you're worried about your kids falling behind means odds are, whether you realize it or not, you'll keep them on track and doing fine.

You should not worry since it is a global event and not only your child is affected but everyone is. If it was only one child or insignificant portion of being affected and education of others continued along then your worries would be well founded. As it stands studies will continue as soon as circumstances allow it, maybe your school switches to online learning for some time, or there will be effective drug found that resolves the situation.

> A child can skip 6 months to a year of school and have almost no negative effects on their life outcomes.

Citation needed.

A proper justification, such as a closed school, would explain the delay in the child's education, and likely negate most (all?), negative reactions people might have about the resulting delay.

Citation may be needed in general, but here… that's sounds like a reasonable guess.

In most cases personal problems are the reason why children/young people skip school, not the result – that's why skipping school sounds problematic. But there are cases when it's entirely justified and it's entirely manageable then – surely an epidemic is one such case.

If you had a random six months of your education removed from your memory, how long would it take you to relearn it? If it was prior to high school, would you even bother relearning it?

How important is any particular six months of your education to your ability to do your current job?

Missing 6 months of school isn't ideal, but I think we tend to overestimate the importance of hitting every nail on the head when it comes to education.

Not to mention the fact that if most children in the US miss 6 months of school, they will have that as an excuse when they start sending out resumes in however many years.

> If you had a random six months of your education removed from your memory, how long would it take you to relearn it? If it was prior to high school, would you even bother relearning it?

Due to a mistake in the records, I skipped an entire year of math (pre-algebra, which I was supposed to take in 8th grade). My algebra teacher decided the first month was going to be review, because she didn't expect most of the students to need a refresher after summer break.

Turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to me, at least for that subject - not only did I have no issues catching up, turned out that was close to my natural pace. The topic was no longer boring and became one of my favorites after that.

Are there citations for evidence of the opposite?

No one claimed the opposite; someone merely asked for evidence for an assertion.

Since that assertion is important to a larger argument, it's reasonable to ask why we should believe it.

Everyone's shitting on this dude but I had this exact scenario and I tie a lot of my struggles as a child student to this circumstance.

Miss 6 months of school while changing schools. Come in, I don't understand the math underlying what they're learning. I fall behind because I'm playing catchup while still trying to stay on top of new material. I have no discipline or direction from home so I don't put it any extra time or anything, I just get home and ride my bike around. This makes me hate math in general, and next year I'm still not entirely caught up or even sure of what I learned the previous year, so I'm failing harder. I don't know if there were any extra resources available or not, I was like, 13, but I was also a holy terror so I bet even if the resources existed they wouldn't have been provided to me because my poor performance was chalked up to me being a problem child in general - never mind my stellar performance in literature classes.

And so on. Throughout my entire public school career. By college I "get it" and am trying to catch up but it's already so ingrained in my personality that I'm "not a math person" that I instead pursue a useless humanities degree, then fuck around in Asia for a couple years. Then finally, at 26 years old, I genuinely get my shit together, learn what I missed 13 years prior, find out that I actually am capable of all that, and now I'm an engineer.

So, sure, do what you can to not get your kids killed, obviously, but I don't agree that it's fair to shit on this parent for worrying about what missing 6 months of school might do to their kid. I mean it sounds like they at least know more about discipline and enforcing learning on their kids than my parents did, so maybe the kid will be Just Fine, but homeschooling is no joke either, and the kid might still end up having to play catch up.

Why not just re-do the year you half missed instead of trying to play a catch-up game that obviously isn't going to work? Starting to work 1 year later is really not a problem.

Because only the Bad or Stupid kids get Held Back. That was a fate worse than death in my eyes, and I don't think my parents would have supported it.

It sounds like you have identified the root issues, and they seem quite interrelated.

Your situation is very different and irrelevant because while you did miss classes your peers didn't and continued along, in a current situation everyone will stop as a group and continue studies as a group, which is very different from your experience.

Is this a lot different for a kid moving into a school that's six months or more ahead in terms of the things taught?

As a parent to a child who missed significant amounts of school and is graduating with her class this summer, I 100% agree with you.

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