Home-schooling. Distance learning. Whatever we call it, we are all winging it. Children – who have been torn from the security, safety and routine of their school environments. Parents – who are trying to juggle their work, their other children, their routines, trying to understand how best to convey schoolwork and learning to their disinterested offspring who view home as a space to play rather than to learn. And teachers – who have had to suddenly develop expertise in an entirely different way of teaching for which they probably haven’t been prepared. Plus juggling their own children, being on rota in school, and supporting the children and parents at home. Sheesh. All of us are winging it. All of us are succeeding at something to which we are new and for which we are unprepared. But at the same time most of us feel like we are failing.

My experience of this is feeling like I am drowning. But drowning in an unfamiliar substance – baked beans perhaps? I wonder if any of us, parents and teachers, have ever had much experience of Google classroom before this pandemic? Considering Google are pretty much on the way to world domination, I don’t understand why it isn’t a better programme, why it isn’t better organised? Google – you need more folders, you need more folders!!

So – emotions. It turns out that I have all of them in quantities that are really quite unprecedented. I feel like a walking soap opera. Within an hour I can run the gamut from hopeful with confidence, to anger, upset, guilt, to utter despair and then back again to feeling hopeful. These emotions correlate with the pattern of the day; an unrealistic picture of the day at the outset – it will be so organised, and I’ve opened all the tabs, put out paper, the amount to do seems realistic, it’ll be sweet.  Then we hit the point where it all falls apart, the 30 mins of maths turns into 3 hours of trying to understand, let alone teach, concepts that I haven’t touched for years. It turns out that I’m one of ‘those’ people – why would I use long division when I can use a calculator – resulting in this mathematical ability receding to the outermost recesses of my brain. Where it’s dusty and covered in cobwebs.

Then we get to the stage where I feel overwhelmed and end up getting angry with my child for not achieving what I have arbitrarily decided is the ‘right’ amount for the day. Then the guilt hits that I am the worst mum in the world: I’m impatient, I expect too much, I’m ignoring my younger child and leaving it to Netflix to raise her, I’ve upset my older child rather than supporting her and nurturing her and helping her to cope with all these changes that she too is having to face. I’m a dreadful parent, children’s services must surely be on their way? Then we make up, we get the work done and we’re full of hope again by the end of the day. Then it starts all over again the next day. Even Eastenders doesn’t project this much of an emotional rollercoaster onto its characters. 

I’m very much hoping that other people – well, let’s face it, other mums – identify with this and it’s not just me that is heading for a nervous breakdown. I have discovered that I want to hi-five my husband – in the face – with something solid– when he walks in at the end of the day.  He hasn’t had to endure this home-schooling rollercoaster of horrors and I find myself resenting him for it sometimes. Not fair on him at all, I admit. He could have been working down in a mine for 12 hours and I’d still think I got the shitty end of the stick. But then a hug from him enables the sane part of me to shine through again and Frankinstein’s monster starts to fade away. I realise that I am lucky to have this time with my babies. I love them more than words could ever adequately express and this extra time with them is a gift.  In the future I know that I will look back and feel pride at having this extra role in shaping their learning and their futures, that we bonded over subordinate conjuctions, and that we problem solved together. That our little team made it through the pandemic and came out even stronger and more in love as a family than ever.

But first I just need to get off this rollercoaster …….