If you were thrown into the world of homeschool with your kids with the Covid-19 stay home orders, you probably have spent some time pulling your hair out. I get it. I have too!
Homeschooling doesn’t mean social distancing or staying home.
While some have the idea that homeschooling means something similar to these lock-down conditions, that is far from the case. I have “homeschooled” all my children for their whole life, and they have always had classes and activities to go to. I just have the privilege of deciding what those are and who will teach them. I’ve never done it all myself in a social distancing format–craziness!
This last year the kids have had more activities than ever before, and there wasn’t one day in the week, that we didn’t have somewhere to go. So while I am used to being responsible the kids all complete their school work, none of us were used to staying at home.
Very horrible, no good Covid-19 Homeschool day.
Most days have their ups and downs, and I have come to expect that with homeschooling, but this day EVERYTHING seemed to go wrong.
The boys…
On this day, I just could not get my boys to do their school work. Everything was a battle. They’d laugh like hyenas one minute and act like they couldn’t read three words the next. Finally, after over an hour of struggling one son said his finger hurt, and he couldn’t write. There we even tears!
Fine. We switched to reading. The other son said his eyes itched. He threw himself on the chair and moaned. I’d had it.
“Go outside and play!” I ordered, “and don’t come in until you’re ready to work. We all needed a breather.
The toilet…
I ran to the bathroom to find…the toilet had overflowed. Apparently no one was there to witness it, because the mess was all over the floor. Sigh. I cleaned it up and did one more load of laundry, but only after accusing my husband of doing it. Bwaa ha ha!
The math…
I came out from the laundry room only to find one daughter screaming and ranting at the computer. “I can’t do it! It’s too hard! No one will help me! I’ll never finish this math!” I tried to be empathetic. Then I tried to be reassuring. Next I tried to help. Nothing I said or did made the matter any better. She too was ordered to go outside to calm down. Have mercy!
The pool…
Over lunch everyone seemed to be back to their happy selves, but I just couldn’t go back to the homeschooling quite yet. I was still so stressed out! I told everyone we were going to go swimming for an hour first. The sun and exercise would do us all some good.
I had just situated myself happily on my new pool float with sun shade with my drink in hand, (Ahhh!) when…wouldn’t you know, I was attacked by a bee. Screaming, I dove in the water face first and entangled myself in the float, so that even though I could come up for air, it took me a while to get loose of the contraption, but the bee was still buzzing all around. Madly I sway away from the bee.
The fight…
I now had an ear full of water, and it hurt. After watching my episode, the kids all wanted to go inside, so that was then end of my supposed stress break at the pool.
Back inside, I told the boys to go finish their writing paper while I lay down on the couch hoping the water would run out of my ear on its own. I was in pain! I wasn’t there two full minutes, before my two boys broke out fighting with the youngest all out hitting his brother. Really?
The office…
Still in pain, I shouted to my youngest, “Go tell Dad what you did!” He ran into our bedroom, my husband’s makeshift office while he is working from home, and shouted, “Mom told me to come in here for NO REASON!”
My husband was, of course, on the phone with someone from his office…
I can’t make this stuff up y’all! This Covid-19 homeschool day was the worst. The only upside was being able to laugh about the madness later. I hope you laugh with me. 🙂 We’ll get through this!
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