Dawn, From your description, this may be a symptom of our "customer service" orientation in education going beyong its point of usefulness and possibly harming the educational process. We must remember adult learners need flexibility, but they must also meet the requirements of the class. Meeting deadlines is a 'real world' component of many industries and is an important objective of the educational process for those content areas. I'll paste an earlier posting of mine, from another thread, that may be helpful here: Our calling as teachers is to help all students succeed. Life happens to us all. Adult learners are often dealing with these things along with school. To 'actually know' whether they are excuses, or not, may not be the most important question when deciding how to properly enforce academic policy. Sometimes it is best (educationally) to let someone fail a class and retake it when they have the time and focus to really learn the material. Points acquired to pass the class are secondary indicators that the class objectives were successfully completed. If we as teachers 'help' the student pass the class without fully meeting the objectives, we probably didn't truely help the student. Relaxing academic standards to help someone feel better during a difficult time in life, may actually be harming them. These are some tough professional judgements that teachers must make as a normal part of the job. The key is to balance human compassion with the reality of the situation. Kind words of support, empathy and encouragement can go along way to helping students overcome their circumstances. Rewards and consquences, applied appropriately, are an important part of a quality education.