LYDIA CHERRY – PERILS OF COVID 19 MUM
The UK is on lockdown during the developing COVID-19 global pandemic; many parents face the challenge of educating their children at home. Bajan Mum Lydia Cherry shares her experience.
Lockdown has taught me that some relationships are best served with a bit of distance, even for a few hours daily. There will be pangs of missing my children’s daytime hugs, yet this does not outweigh my sheer relief that they are returning to school.
After the most bizarre 12 months, I can pat myself on the back, crack open a bottle of fizz and celebrate that I have not entirely imploded due to the demands of homeschooling.
I had no delusions about working from home with children present. Still, I thought at least the period would provide a time for us to be quiet, reflective, and more creative and allow us the opportunity to hanker down into some meaty projects. I vowed we would all come out invigorated, ahead of the curriculum, eating healthily and glowing with a new positivity.
A year later, I stand corrected. Fatter, slower, no completed ‘meaty projects’ and bemused by earlier predictions. It took precisely one week for me to lose my sense of humour, and by week two, our only two students had been suspended for fighting over who got which computer. By three weeks, the inept home school teacher, who was binge eating gummy bears from morning to evening, should have been sacked for drinking on the job, but we failed to find a replacement for me.
I have been humiliated by my forty-five-year-old brain, which can no longer jump from subject to subject as it once had. I had to wonder what kind of psychopath was creating these schedules. French, followed by Mandarin, followed by Spanish, followed by micro bit and HTML programming. Languages challenge me because of what is currently on the page displaces whatever is in my head. As a result, by the end of my daughter’s school day, I could barely speak English – my mouth only making a series of beeps and ping sounds. Online teaching is real, but technology has been a challenge for this dinosaur, having to navigate multiple platforms. Learning what sometimes feels like hundreds of profiles and passwords. The rest of the time, my face glued to the screen rather hurriedly scouring for mathematical and geographical definitions before my children realise how stupid I really am.
Nonetheless, we are lucky as our children go to excellent, well-organised schools. My brain literally hurts at the end of these mind-boggling days with the sheer weight of multitasking and management. The children caught onto online life much faster and so impatiently roll their eyes at my sheer incompetence as I spot-check their screens. Within these walls are budding cyber-criminal masterminds. As a result of being slow to catch on, they run circles around me with all the devices, and unless the core curriculum contains Minecraft and Tik Tok, they most certainly won’t be winning any house points for the effort this term.
To be fair, who could blame them? Of course, they are distracted and lacking inspiration – this is wholly unnatural for childhood, especially during the winter months. A year on, we have lost track of space and time, and it doesn’t matter because it makes no difference. We aren’t going anywhere. We did contemplate moving to Barbados earlier this year to ride out the rest of my homeschooling sentence. Still, UK quarantine rules put that to bed with the mere threat of teaching binomial equations alone with two children, locked in a Heathrow hotel room for two weeks. Please, no – anything but that.
Here at home in London and driven to near madness was the constant hunt for the device -chargers around the house. “WHY CAN” T I FIND ANY CHARGERS??? I’ve read the material; I understand shouting is ineffective communication, but quite frankly, that’s usually said by someone who isn’t doing most of the parenting.
Despite this, there were some positives: for the most part, I enjoyed my children’s company, I learnt the pleasure of gardening, I picked up my rollerblades, and despite my brain’s best efforts not cooperating, French did come along quite a long way since CXC days. When I asked my children what they would miss most about homeschooling, my 7-year-old said, “the food”. Unsurprising as they do not offer the menagerie of unhealthy snacks practically after every class at their very sensible schools. Most importantly, it is very telling of our relationship – I will miss their lovely faces, and they will miss the service.
