A mom says she lets her kid skip school once a month. Experts disagree about whether that's a good idea.

• A mom told her TikTok fans that she let her child choose one day out of the month to skip school.
• Most commenters praised her decision to allow the girl more "mommy time" by letting her stay home.

When Noel LaPalomento said on TikTok that she let her child take a day off school each month without being sick, she received almost universal praise in the 4,000 comments on the video.

Most supported her choice to give her 6-year-old daughter, Giada, more "mommy time" in the form of relief from the rigors of the classroom once every four weeks.

LaPalomento told Insider that she was delighted that she'd helped open a debate about kids facing increasing pressure at school.

"They'll say, 'Wow, I really wish my mom did that with me when I was younger,'" she said. "A little thing like that can make a difference in a kid's life."

In her post, LaPalomento, a single mom and influencer, shows clips of Giada enjoying one of her days out of school. She happily pushes a doll in a toy stroller and eats cotton candy at the mall.

"I told my daughter she can pick one day each month to stay home from school without being sick," her mom captioned the video. The first grader can choose what she'd like to do, similar to the plot of the Netflix movie "Yes Day."

"That's so smart, I'm totally doing this with my future kids," one commenter said.

"As a teacher, I support this," another said.

"A lot of the people who agreed with me were teachers," LaPalomento told Insider. "They said it was a great idea."

She said that on a typical day off, she might take Giada to a restaurant followed by the mall to buy "something like a bath bomb."

LaPalomento said her child would miss 9 days out of the 181 in her current school year

The 26-year-old said that she took matters into her own hands after recognizing that Giada was frequently overscheduled and worn out. She said Giada got up at 6:30 a.m., arrived at her private school by bus at 8 a.m., and got back home about 3:30 p.m.

"It's a very long day," LaPalomento said, adding, "My daughter comes home depleted. She has to do homework — on top of spending seven hours in school. Then, after I've fed her and she's had a shower, it's 8 p.m., and there's no time to do anything else before bed."

She said the change in their lifestyle had brought them closer: "Giada will talk about us having a long weekend and all the fun we'll have."

LaPalomento, who lives in New Jersey, also justified her decision in the comments section of her post. She wrote that Giada's absences were on "nine days out of 181" — the total number of days on the academic calendar.

Some people were skeptical about LaPalomento's parenting decision

Still, there was some backlash from critics who said Giada was missing important aspects of her education.

"One day a month is a lot," one of them commented.

"Do you let her skip assessment days?" another person asked.

"This is what I call weekends," someone else wrote.

Amy Morin, a psychotherapist, and Chris McGovern, the chairperson of the Campaign for Real Education — a pressure group of parents and teachers that advocates for standards in schools — largely disagreed on the issue.

Morin told Insider that it was helpful for children to have such "proactive ways to work on their mental health."

"In today's world — where there's so much pressure on performance, and kids feel like they have to be achieving and productive and overscheduled — it is a really good idea to take a break once in a while," she said.

The psychologist, who wrote the book "13 Things Mentally Strong Parents Don't Do," said that she'd treated several patients overwhelmed by stress from their schooling.

"I see a lot of parents and families in my therapy office who wait until their kid has a serious mental-health issue to take a mental-health day," Morin said. "So for a child who has extreme anxiety, taking a day off is too little, too late."

She went on to advise families to use their mental-health days wisely.

"You can obviously have fun, but you also want it to be a life lesson for your kids about why you're doing this," Morin said, adding: "You can tell them, 'It's OK to step back from math homework once in a while and go enjoy ourselves. But how are we going to do that?'"

She recommended activities such as getting exercise or doing something together, like baking or art projects.

"You don't want to have kids that sit around playing video games all day or think it's an opportunity for overindulgence," she said. "This may not be good for their mental health in the long run."

A former principal said that LaPalomento was 'abrogating' their responsibilities

Meanwhile, McGovern criticized LaPalomento's decision to take Giada out of school, calling it "indulgent."

"The parent is abrogating their responsibilities," he said.

"This woman who is indulging her child thinks it's going to help them with mental health," he said, adding: "It's probably going to do the exact opposite."

The retired teacher and former principal said that kids needed "direction and leadership." He said they were more likely to thrive academically and emotionally with a formal structure.

"You'll find that most children crave boundaries and order," he added.

He said that parents who took their kids out of school on a whim created headaches for teachers.

"It makes it impossible for them to educate children when children are missing on a daily basis." He added that it caused dissent and jealousy among students with parents strict about attendance.

In US schools, kids are struggling academically

McGovern said that as well as creating "spoiled brats," kids' skipping school could have serious consequences for the whole educational system.

According to the Programme for International Student Assessment — an organization that says it "processes data and analysis to inform policies" — at the age of 15, American schoolchildren have significantly lower rates of performance than those in other countries.

"They are three years behind places like Singapore, China, and South Korea," McGovern said.

Tanith Carey, whose parenting books include "What's My Child Thinking?" praised LaPalomento for encouraging Giada to choose which day to take off school each month.

"It is good when people give the child some control over the activities they do together," she said

Carey predicts that as the members of Gen Z start to become parents, more people "will go their own way with education for the sake of their children's mental health."