Still home and still grateful
5 Reasons To Be Grateful That Children Are STILL At Home
So many things have happened over the summer and in the first few weeks of fall that it’ll be hard to catch up…
First of all, we made the decision early on to keep our four children out of school if allowed. In August, our school district made us decide whether we would either enroll the kids in the virtual program until the district deemed it safe for kids to go back to school in-person or commit to a virtual learning for the entire semester. We chose the latter, in mutual agreement with the Ex-spouses.
When schools here re-opened last week, we were – once again – put in front of a survey, having to commit to either onsite (if schools remained open) or virtual instruction for the entire next spring semester. Once again, we chose the latter, even though our children were looking forward to seeing their friends again and everyone in our house is getting tired of zoom. Here are the 5 reasons we presented to our children, which led them to be happy (or, at least, content) with our final decision:
- We want to keep you guys safe. It is not that we do not trust YOU that you won’t wear a mask and protect yourselves; we cannot blindly trust 700+ other people at your schools and their extended families. (This one is the biggie; kids want to feel responsible at a very early age and the more they feel that they are entrusted with – reasonable – responsibilities, the more agreeable they are to your parental decisions.)
- You have been online for your schooling since March and you are so good at it now; why change it halfway through a semester or school year?
- If you go back now, you have to get used to a whole new schedule, only to have to shift gears and getting used to an online schedule again should Covid cases in our area increase and schools shut down again. (This has already happened several times in our state, especially in the last six weeks, so it’s actually a pretty likely scenario…)
- You get to have more time in the mornings and afternoons for free play, since you are saving yourselves close to an hour each day on getting ready and commuting to and from school.
- EVERYONE is getting tired of zoom! You’re not the only ones, and we as parents completely understand your frustrations. But sorry, darlings, such is life and this is our current big frustration.
We are, however, here to help you. Our job as parents is to care for you, clothe and feed you, put a roof over your head, and therefore, we need to work and make enough money to be able to do all that. Your job as children is to do your best in school, and be kind people – to yourselves and others!
So you will do what you need to in order to be as successful as humanly possible at this online schooling thing, because Covid is out of our control. You will not take your frustrations out on your siblings or us or your teachers, who are doing everything they can to give you the same valuable education as you would have ordinarily received, sans Covid. If you need to vent, we are here to listen. If you need to punch a pillow, please use the fluffiest one you can find in the house and go at it! But please please please, try to ask yourselves if it is really all that bad. Everything happens for a reason and we can choose to focus on how hard online classes are (I absolutely HATED any online threaded discussion, worth a tenth of my grade, in every one of my onsite graduate classes!) or we can choose to focus on how great it is to be able to spend more time as a family. We can have game nights more often. We can utilize our afternoons to go for a bike ride together. We can finally catch up on movies we have all wanted to see for some time. Most importantly, we can be together and we can be healthy. It could be much much worse, couldn’t it?
Ashley@Shakenstirredandblended
Hi, I'm Ashley and I am a freelance writer and editor for one local and one national publication. In my spare time, I teach foreign languages and manage two households. Oh, and raise four children. It's a crazy life that I chose and I love every second of it :o)
