School and IBS

One, you need to get your doctor to write a letter to your school telling them that you 1) have a legitimate medical condition and 2) you need to be accomodated long-term. Then you and your parents need to meet with the school and set rules about when you get your schoolwork and how you make it up. This should not be anything new to the school administrators, because kids get sick with long-term conditions from time-to-time. No one tells a kid with cancer to suck it up.

BTW, if your school gives you problems, then your parents take it to the schoolboard. Your medical condition puts you on the same level as kids with physical or learning disabilities and by federal law they HAVE to accomodate you. Start brandishing the phrase "No Child Left Behind Act."

A co-worker of mine had a grandson with autism; the local school denied he had it and tried to put him in a regular classroom. His parents and grandmother paid for private schooling for a few years before the NCLBA came along. Ah, to have a grandmother in the legal profession! She attacked the local schoolboard with doctors, private school teachers and reams of paper. She said she had them squirming and silent while she presented the case that 1) her grandson was autistic and 2) the federal government required that the public school system accomodate him and give him a proper learning environment. They had to acquiese in order to keep their federal funding. The family was able to give up most of the private schooling--which had been very expensive (they send him to do some additional after school intensive therapy)--and several other autistic children were also able to start going to that school after that.

Because of that act, your school has to provide you an in-home tutor if you cannot go to school often enough (there was one guy on here whose school had him and a few other sick kids doing schoolwork online with a tutor and they all met as a group in person a couple times a week for a couple of hours). They have to bend over backwards to make sure you get an education, or risk losing millions in federal funding for all the schools in the state. I suggest you put your parents to reading up on your rights under that act, so that if they can't get the appropriate help for you by asking nicely, they can present a case to the schoolboard, with the implied threat that they will sue or report them to the federal government if they don't meet compliance standards.

It might also do to remind your parents that, as tax payers, all of you are customers; you should demand a certain level of customer service from an institution which they pay for (I heard that argument on a talk radio show not too long ago).