Unavoidable family matters or emergencies sometimes mean parents can’t send their children to school.
But one woman’s post on social media shocked many after revealing that some parents are now using birthday celebrations as a reason for their child’s absence.
Birthday excuse shocks netizen
Sharing her experience on Threads, the woman wrote: “This is from my child’s school group… if it were me, I’d think 10 times before writing an excuse for my kid not going to school.”
She attached a screenshot from the class WhatsApp group showing a parent who explained their child’s absence by stating it was due to a birthday celebration.
What surprised many was that the absence was recorded for two consecutive days, Thursday and Friday.
Teacher calls out unacceptable excuse
The class teacher quickly responded, pointing out that the student’s birthday had already been celebrated yesterday, questioning the need for a second day of absence.
The teacher proceeded to clarify that ‘celebrating a birthday’ is not an acceptable excuse for a student’s absence.
Next time, this cannot happen anymore… there’s no such thing as ‘birthday celebration’ in the system,” the teacher said.
Netizens’ comments
The incident sparked heated discussions among other parents in the group and later went viral after being posted online.
‘Back then we had to provide a medical certificate or a written letter. But now just WhatsApp, so easy!’
‘So now there’s really no formal letter anymore? Meaning, absences are only explained through WhatsApp nowadays?’
‘Hahaha…I once read that a parent wrote the reason their child didn’t come to school was because ‘already woke them up in the morning but they refused to get up’. I was speechless after reading that.’
