Question about a teenager going to less days/week

I debated asking this question here or in a mental health sub, but I figured I’d at least start here. My son is 16 and a sophomore. He struggled hard with general education classes, not so much understanding the work, but more keeping up on homework and desire to even be at school. He is extremely mechanically intelligent and loves working on cars so something mechanical is the path he wasn’t to follow. With his struggling, fhe school recommended an iep so him, myself and the school sat down and met to get that going. It helped but not a ton. The school has a program that they brought forward to him and I to see what we felt about it. Especially, he goes to school every day but is not part of the classes. He goes to a class with other students and they are online and can work at their own pace. There is a teacher in there but essentially, he’s just there if questions pop up. It’s been very successful with him. I met with the school a few weeks back and he will graduate (or is set to graduate the first quarter of his senior year. This is as far as the system lets him work ahead, so he can’t just blow through it all and graduate in the middle of next year, there is a stop in the system to make him wait. Great, he’s doing well, he’s happy, he’s becoming more confident and actually learning. He’s always had issues with attendance, but before it was because he just hated school. That issue is still there but it’s changed. He was making excuses (sick, something hurts, couldn’t fall asleep, etc…) I sat him down and asked him to just be real with me. Being this far ahead and showing that he can do the work, I have no issue with a day here and there. Well, he explained that he gets his work done and hits the stopping point in around 2-3 days, after that, they can’t do anything else so he just sits there. All day long, just sitting. I asked the school if he could join shop class to keep him busy and they said he couldn’t, he’s in the program so he is in it and not part of the class system. He also told me that my son wasn’t lying about not having anything to do after he hits that stopping point. He has adhd and pretty hard core anxiety like dad here so sitting in this room when he doesn’t have work to do is very hard on him. I don’t realize just how hard it is until today when I had to sit and be safety watch at work today, I was going crazy so I can’t imagine him doing it two days a week. In this program, he is still held to attendance standards but they are very forgiving at approving them when he tells me he’s sick. The problem is now that he’s being honest (I know that’s not really a problem). I wont lie to the school so I tell them what he told me and they mark it as unexcused. He’s sees a regular doc for his adhd and anxiety and we go see her soon. My question is-Has anyone ever heard of or seen a student having a note on file from a doctor to reduce the number of days they go to school? My thought was to take him down to 4 days and go M,T,Th,F to split the week up. I know slowing down his work would help too but I also know I am the same way at my work and it’s almost an impulse when the work is there, it’s like you just have to push through and get it done. Sorry this was so long, but I wanted to lay it out to hopefully limit the amount of replies saying “you’re just trying to get your kid out of school.” submitted by /u/Sure-Abalone-1040 [link] [comments]