Spinning Plates: An honest account of one working mum's lockdown experience
I cried when the second lockdown involving school closures was announced on the 4th January, I was filled with absolute dread at the thought of once again having a daily battle with my 8-year-old son over completing any school work each day. The Government prescribed 4 hours a day for my child’s school year. I think that when I read this, I laughed out loud, at the ridiculousness of already busy teachers having to source and set work each day and at the sheer impossibility of achieving even a quarter of it. I’m sure that some Year 4 children did manage to do 4 hours of school work a day.
“However, my experience was that getting my son to complete a task that should have taken 10 minutes, could take up to 45 minutes to achieve any portion of it, the bulk of this time taken up with trying to overcome his stubborn resolution that school work should take place in school and not at home.”
The fallout left me feeling like the bad guy, whilst my partner bonded with our son over computer games and was instantly promoted to fun parent. I also seemed to take on the bulk of the housework and cooking, already heavily in my court pre-Covid, but now even more so and exacerbated by the fact that my partner turned semi-nocturnal during this past year, staying up later in the evening to reclaim some “me” time after a full day of work and family commitments, leaving me to deal with the morning routine before I started my day of work and tackled the majority of the schooling.
The school posted a folder of work the night before Lockdown 1 started - they were given no warning and did as much as they could. The headteacher especially has been brilliant at keeping us updated on how each new Covid development would impact schooling and how they would implement appropriate measures. However, aside from two 5 minute phone calls from the class teacher, and one email in response to work that we had sent in, there was no individual encouragement or specific advice from said teacher and we were very much left to our own devices, relying heavily on the WhatsApp group for parents whose children were in the same class to see how they were tackling home schooling.
“BBC Bitesize became our personal saviour, marrying screen time with learning which coupled with a seemingly happy child went a little way to overcoming the feeling of being a complete parenting failure.”
In moments when sanity prevailed, the fact our child was happy, healthy and safe was enough, and concerns about catching up on education were relegated to a reasonable assumption that all children were affected and we would do whatever we could to help the school catch our child up when they returned. At other times, I have been consumed with worry over the amount that he may have fallen behind, excessive screen time, not enough exercise and the effect on his mental health as he became irritable and frustrated with all of the restrictions linked to “flippin Covid”. He had a complete rant one day during the second full lockdown as we walked from our house to the beach for exercise, (another daily struggle). I stopped him from entering a playground on the way as they were still closed at that point and he just let rip at how unfair it all was; it was clear that he could not understand why he was once again being kept at home when the school had managed to accommodate them all from September to December. In a way, I was relieved as I’d been aware that he had some of these thoughts but was not good at expressing them, so I let him vent and I think it helped a little although I did not have all of the answers that he wanted.
Throughout both lockdowns there were streams of WhatsApp messages from the parent group varying from overachievers listing the amount of schoolwork achieved each day to those of support when any of us had a wobble about not getting something or anything right.
“Those of us who were trying to work from home and cover home learning soon realised that it was just not a viable arrangement, something had to give and for most of us that meant our children spending far longer on screens and gadgets than we would have liked in order to buy ourselves time to complete our work.”
My employer (a local university) has been incredibly supportive and my team totally understand that some of us have been in effect working two jobs, but this did little to alleviate the constant feeling that I was always focused on the wrong task - if working, I was neglecting my child, if trying to home school I was conscious of the work I had to get back to.
But there has also been positivity. The Year 3 teacher (remote in all senses) was replaced in September by his polar opposite - my son’s Year 4 teacher has been a revelation in the way that she has managed to keep the home-schooled children engaged with what has been going on at school throughout Lockdown 2. This time round we’ve had Google Classrooms which we all had to learn pretty quickly, but after mastering MS Teams during Lockdown 1 for work, Zoom calls for keeping up with friends and trying remote yoga, mastering new tech has become par for the course. Even though having new work set each day brought with it yet another To-Do list for me and added to my already overburdened mental load, it did also provide a much more structured manner in which to see and tackle the work. In the end we knew that we couldn’t complete it all (and weren’t actually being asked to by the school), so we opted to focus on Maths and English as well as the lessons that held my child’s interest the most - we have both become very knowledgeable on Hindi festivals this year! My partner found that he was great at the computing lessons so took over these and they created some amazing work together. Most of the other parents who did not have overachieving children who had completed all work by 10.30am each day seemed to be doing the same and with constant support and feedback from the class teacher it has felt like we’ve been more successful this time around.
”Particular highlights have been the days when my son has created a significant piece of work, after some prodding.”
He’s written a couple of pieces for English and History and the imagination and prose that he has employed to complete these tasks has made me feel so proud of him and less worried about his overall standard of learning over the last year. At times he’s picked up on how stressed we’ve been trying to juggle it all and has dragged both of us away from work and on to the trampoline for family time watching the clouds or reading together (sounds lovely and it has been, but this has been during January and February!).
“He’s also gone off-piste and taught himself how to make short animated films using Lego pieces whilst I’ve learnt the software side to bring the films together and the absolute focus and pure joy he has over each new production has been a gift that we might well have missed had he been in the class room at that time.“
We’ve been lucky in that this might not be one of the most important school year for him, that he can catch up and that we haven’t had to worry about exams or new school transitions.
He’s now been back at school for 3 weeks and after some adjustment it feels like we are slowly getting back to this normal again. The first week wiped him out and his sleeping has been affected, whereas prior to this he was sleeping through every night, I’ve noticed lately that he wakes in the night or more recently has started to wake very early. He still gets frustrated and angry quite quickly, but less often than a few weeks ago and we try to address any concerns as soon as we are aware of them - only this evening as we were talking about the Easter break it became clear that he was worried about the school closing again and I was able to explain how unlikely this was.
This has been such a hard year to cope with, I’ve used the word scrambled about my brain more than I’d care to admit and I feel exhausted most of the time, but I cannot help but feel optimistic about the future.
“This extra time together has been valuable in terms of bonding as a family (when not sick of the sight of each other), and when you consider what we have managed to get through so far and the speed that we have all had to adapt, it is pretty amazing.”
I want to take this can-do attitude forwards and focus this energy towards activities of my choosing rather than those imposed upon me and I am already impressing upon my now 9-year-old son that everything we have been restricted from will feel so much sweeter when we get it back.
Some Useful Resources
Insights From Our Experts
Check out the expert advice from our Leadership Team and Advisory Board on supporting children’s mental health and wellbeing during the transition back to school after lockdown
Co-SPACE Study: Changes in parent’s mental health symptoms and stressors
Mental Health Foundation: Parenting during the coronavirus outbreak
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