ILP remote schooling / remote working thread for general venting and yelling FFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUU!!!!!

i don't think it'll take 15 years to develop a vaccine.
i am not a medical expert. but i see lots of scary stories about how people feel after they have "recovered" from covid and the potential long-term health impacts and i don't want to put my kids through that, even if i do wish they were at real school. just one dude's opinion.

heard my kindergartener listening to an educational song for school in the other room, thought "that sounds familiar" ... it uses the instrumental track for "lemonade" by gucci mane: https://video.link/w/Gjpqb

a few months in now and I've got some strong feelings about this guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PTfZNg9ri8

So uh, yeah. It’s obviously been a struggle for the past ten months, but it’s about to get infinitely more difficult for me, for a while, and I’m sort of freaking the fuck out about it. I know it can be done, but I’m so anxious and overwhelmed that I can’t even start to process how to prep myself.

Long story short, my wife is heading out of state to spend a month to take care of her mother during a surgery and recovery period. Obviously, yes, challenging during COVID and bad timing, all that, but that’s besides the point for now.

Up to now we’ve been tag teaming my 9 year old son’s remote learning. We swing in and out and, thankfully, my wife is a consultant with very flexible work hours. But while she’s gone, it’s falling on me entirely and my work is not flexible at all. It’s very 9-5, tons of meetings, lots of calls, not much at all that can be easily pushed to “off hours”. I’m going to let my boss know what’s happening and I’m hoping he will be somewhat understanding, but this still feels like such a terrifying thing. I’m worried about not giving him enough time, I’m worried about falling behind at work, I’m worried about us both being patient with each other, etc etc.

A week of this would be no problem, two weeks, totally doable. But a month makes this feel so overwhelming.

Obviously I know single parents manage this all the time and often with more kids, don’t get me wrong, but my work is set up to be so inflexible that we’ve often commented in the past how fortunate we were for her to work flexible hours because I couldn’t keep up with my job too.

Any advice?

Argh, that sounds like a really tough situation. With my parent head on, I'd say it's about being realistic about what you can achieve - and recognising that it's your relationship with your boy that's the priority. You could sit down and formulate a plan with him - let him know you're going to work through this together and that you need him on your side etc. Could you visualise it somehow - put up a timetable for him etc? You could break it down into the four weeks so you'll at least have a sense of it being a little more manageable. All the while, being fully cognisant that it'll probably be a shitshow at times, you're bound to fall out and that's absolutely fine. I imagine you'll be concerned about what he's doing when he's *not* engaging with the remote learning? Again, you could have a chat about what's acceptable in terms of screen time etc. Have some firm-ish boundaries about what is and isn't acceptable during school hours. Basically, be kind to each other.

With my teacher head on, I would totally email his teacher(s) and explain the situation - be completely honest about it. They'll be on your side and might be able to send out work that'll help things along or suggest a couple of project-based things he could do. There's nothing stopping you opening that line of dialogue now - give them the heads up. Do you have any particular areas of concern with his learning? You could absolutely prioritise these and have a couple of small areas of focus. I'd be surprised, but if for whatever reason you don't hear back from them, well, it sounds like you're doing an amazing job with his remote learning anyway and whatever bullshit you might read I can absolutely assure you teachers are hating this too, totally winging it and well, a month isn't going to matter!

I hope that doesn't sound schoolmistressy! This remote learning stuff is a big load of old bollocks and we all have to make sure we keep some perspective about it. ALl the best to you and your family.

those are good tips. i agree re: emailing the teachers. i would sell this to your kid as their chance to show extra responsibility (and maybe dangle some reward if they do a good job of keeping on top of things themselves) rather than as an obstacle or a crisis. but internally you should prepare yourself for some school things possibly slipping through the cracks and going easy on yourself about that.

Thanks Chianski, that is really helpful. I definitely think I will email his teacher, that makes a lot of sense. His teacher already does a great job of providing them weekly to-do lists and schedules that keep him pretty focused and self-directed, it's when he hits a speed bump of something he doesn't immediately grasp that he loses focus and needs more attention. He's smart, but gets easily frustrated at things that don't come naturally to him.

Yeah, the several hours between the end of his school day and the end of my work day are a big concern. That seems to be fairly reliably the hours when my work gets more crazy and I'm hesitant to open up the door for just more screen time, but it's not like the February weather is going to be cooperative in terms of getting him outside more.

The other thing that makes this so daunting is that so many of the things I'd normally do to keep us occupied and entertained are off the table right now. I mean, if my wife was gone for a month in a non-pandemic time I'd probably pick a long weekend to go hang out at his other grandma's house. Or pick a weekend in the middle for a short road trip somewhere fun, or set up a ton of playdates. Oh, hell, take some time off on my end and we'd go join my wife towards the end of the recovery period. But right now it almost feels like a lockdown on-top of a lockdown.

I mean, so far (granted my wife hasn't even left yet) he's totally stoked about the idea and really excited about getting "lots of dad time", but I'm sure we'll hit some bumps once it becomes a reality. I like the idea of an reward, na.

Just when we get into a solid, though not perfect, groove and I’ve started to be able to juggle my work schedule around a little bit to accommodate some more time with him... they go and completely change up his school schedule starting next week. Hard not to feel like one step forward, three steps back at this point.

One of the hardest bits has been when I’m helping him with homework and he gets frustrated because I’m not tracking his line of thinking or he’s not tracking mine. Miss having that third party to kind of keep us both in check and not talking past each other.

It’s not like I didn’t hold respect for single parents before, but this brought me to a whole new level of respect. Working full time and trying to keep a child learning remotely alone is hard. I have no idea how single parents with multiple kids do it.

Yesterday, my daughter's school partially re-opened with a hybrid option. This means some kids attend in person for part of the week and some kids remain fully virtual (we picked fully virtual). After classes let out today, we got a call from the school that a student who showed up yesterday had tested positive for covid and a bunch of people have to quarantine. So that sucks.

On the other hand, last week my high-schooler returned to his welding class at the vocational school and that's been going well. In a couple weeks, he'll return to regular high school on a hybrid schedule as well. My daughter enjoys the total virtual instruction, but it's been driving him nuts.

That's bad timing re the covid case at school - hope it looks up from there.
Am quietly and cautiously celebrating tonight being - for now anyway - the last night I have to print out worksheets and prepare another day of 'home learning' which inevitably ends up in tears at some point. Cases are low enough where I am that I'm not too worried about any imminent Covid risk. I'll be on edge at least until we get vaccinated but god, school is very much needed for my kid.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Hey, I'm late to the party as usual, but just got a positive test. I'm not asymptomatic but it's a pretty lowkey cold (so far).

What was your approaches to distancing at home when you had it and the kids didn't? We have a small flat so I don't see many options outside of "fuck it and carry on as normal"

Isolating from each other just isn’t an option in our flat, so we crossed our fingers and hoped the vaccines would protect us. First time around, Stet and our son got it but not me. Second time around, only our son got it.

I've had my first ever positive test, symptoms like a bad head cold but not as bad as the one I had the other month, I've slept a lot but am able to get up and move around and function fairly normally. No chance of self isolating, I'm still doing our 6 year old's bedtime and sleeping in her room. Luckily she's no longer completely averse to testing.

And now said 6 year old has it. Maybe I should have slept in a different room, maybe she'd have got it anyway.

One of my friend's kids had aymptomatic Covid last month, and her two brothers got jealous and asked her to breathe on them so they could catch it too. But it didn't work! So I'm not sure distance is the only variable here.

We've been distancing (as much as possible with an excited two-year-old, i.e. not as much as would be helpful) and keeping the windows open, and they're okay so far, but I'm guessing it won't last long.

My partner is doing her school job from home, and looking after our daughter, while I isolate and work in the bedroom. Feeling super guilty right now and missing hugs, which is weighing on my worse than the actual covid (which is bad but not terrible)

Lord what a nightmare this was.

it was. I had to think really hard about how many school closures we actually had. I forgot the one where kids went back to school for one day after Christmas then Boris did a 180 and decided to close them, after everyone had mixed for a day, the clown. That was long.

Apparently we have teacher strikes to look forward to - which I support, and will only be the odd few days.

My kids grades tanked so badly during this time and are only just recovering now. A students to F and D students. my son was in 4th grade when everything shut down and now he still writes (prints) like a fourth grader. Thinking about getting him one of those old school printing books.

the long gloomy winter has come and im not reorienting my office

so

what are ppl using to backlight zoom calls?

ah shit its the parenting board

ok

what are parents using to backlight zoom calls?