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Everything Keeps Changing

Exploring why I’m not currently making my kids do their school work, and I don’t plan to.

I’m not making my kids do their school work. My best friend is following her kids’ school’s quarantine education plans. I think everyone I personally know who has kids is checking all the boxes their respective schools lay out for them. So, I feel a little bit like a bad parent for saying I’m not going to do it. But I won’t.

This whole new virtual schooling system came crashing down on us like The Iron Giant: both because some well-meaning, innocent, but lumbering technological outsider crushed our world a little bit and because that movie was a huge flop that people didn’t realize they were going to look back on fondly.

One of my biggest reasons to resist participating is we’ve got this under control. We were on spring break when we were told the schools weren’t going to be open again when we got back. So, we started to plan for the worst. We’ve homeschooled before, so we knew what it would take. I did some research into what they should be learning and surveyed the kids to find out where they actually were in their respective classes. Then, I built a lesson chart and found resources for teaching them. We got started on the day that class should have been back in session (if not for the pandemic), and everything has been running smoothly.

A week later, my middle schoolers were expected to start participating in online lessons which mostly consisted of slide shows and math quizzes. A week after that, the elementary kids’ school finally rolled out a virtual education plan that was disappointing in a whole different way. They (ages 7 and 10) are supposed to be using a half-dozen different apps for different school-related activities and also meeting with their teacher and all of their classmates via google classroom video chat. We tried that once, and will not be doing it again. It was stressful, confusing chaos that my seven-year-old was doing everything he could to avoid.

My kids are actively reading (A LOT), writing, doing math, learning science, history, and culture, and doing art, each for at least a couple of hours per week. The teenagers are also getting virtual violin and piano lessons from a friend of ours. Bonus: we’re usually done by lunch time, and then they spend two hours outside during the warmest part of the day! But the best part is continuity. We’ve been doing this since the end of their normal spring break, so they haven’t had to change tracks, figure out a new system, and be the guinea pigs for something their teachers have never done before either.

Let me be clear: love my kids’ teachers! They’re all working very hard to make this happen and I know it’s difficult. Actually, difficult is probably not even the right word. They’re being asked to damn-near work miracles, and they’ve produced something mostly workable from basically nothing on a completely unreasonable deadline. For my family, though, the patchwork system is more trouble than it’s worth.

It’s only a few months of work for us. I’m not in school until August, and I have all the time in the world. I homeschooled them before because I love it and I know I’m better positioned to meet them where they are, so I don’t mind. One of my kids is behind in math, and we can work on that together in this time. One of my kids resists handwriting like pencils are porcupines, and I have the time (and sometimes even the patience) to coax a little scrawl out of them. We get to bake, clean, and do science together. Today, with my seven-year-old, I learned that the Anglo-Saxons all drank beer… even the kids, and probably didn’t bathe. With my ten-year-old, I looked at pictures of wasps and discussed important, identifying features to compare to a dead one she found in the yard.

So, we’re not doing the school work. We have at least one teacher still asking if we are going to, even though we’ve emailed everyone to let them know we aren’t. We’re not participating in the google classroom chats. But we’re doing our own thing and doggedly trying to make progress in spite of the times… and it’s fine.

We just want to stay safe and sane and positive. Education is important and we hold it in high regard in this house, but according to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs… lets just say the pandemic has us focusing a little more on foundations right now.

Homeschooling Again

It’s hard to be an adult right now; it might be even harder to be a kid. Being an adult trying to raise kids is a tricky game I’m not even sure I know how to play, but I’m trying.

We are living in strange times. I wasn’t expecting to be writing about something like this when I made this blog. Many aisles at the grocery store are empty, many businesses are closed, others are shifting operations to help produce personal protective equipment for doctors and nurses or hand sanitizer to help us recover from a panic-induced shortage. We were being asked to limit social gatherings and stay 6 feet away from others. Then, we were being respectfully asked to choose to stay home. Now, we’re being told that we legally have to stay home.

People are losing their jobs and worrying about how they’re going to pay bills and what’s going to happen if they get sick. Essential workers are still going to work, but their kids aren’t going to school and it’s hard (if not impossible) to find child care. Some of us are saying the people and the government aren’t doing enough to control this thing. Other are saying we’re doing too much, and overreacting. But the general theme seems to be that we really don’t know exactly what’s going on, because we’re being told different stories wherever we look.

With all of this chaos around us, we also need to manage our kids’ education. I do believe it’s for the best. My dude puts his face on random things in unsavory places like the airport. He should not be mingling with twenty other small people (who probably have the same tendencies) during a pandemic. Besides, I’ve homeschooled most of my kids before. I’ve got the skills and resources to get through this. It just makes for a wild household, with my partner working from home and my kids all watching Bill Nye, exploding baking soda and vinegar on the table, listening to podcasts about history, and trying to learn algebra, javascript, and violin.

With all of the tools out there to help them, it’s not that difficult for one person to manage. Also, if you constantly remind yourself that they do not spend anywhere near seven hours actively learning at school, you’ll do fine. Public schools just aren’t as efficient as homeschool can be. My kids are averaging about 45 minutes per subject per day, and I only expect them to do three subjects. Based on my (maybe obsessive) monitoring of their progress for the past several months, and what I’ve seen so far this week, I’m pretty sure they’re learning more in a couple of hours at home than they do in seven hours at school. Plus: I LOVE IT!

I don’t have to argue with administrators about whether my kid’s shorts are too short. I’m not receiving calls from school staff to inform me that my kid said something mean to another kid or stormed out of class after someone else said something mean. I don’t have to negotiate with other adults about how to handle my kids at all! (except for my partner… we spent a lot of time in friendly deliberations about this kind of stuff, but that’s easy)

Honestly, for this one thing: thank you, novel coronavirus! But also, please stop and go away! Obviously, there are a lot of reasons I’m not a big fan. I’m downright scared of this disease and what the ramifications of this disaster are going to be. Also, as much as I’m loving having my kids home and sharing the magical world of math and science with them every day (and that’s not even sarcasm), I also want to go get my master’s degree and I really don’t know what’s going to happen with that right now. Can we please go back to normal?

Get Out!

Winter is really tough in this house. It’s a four-bedroom, ranch style house built several decades ago. Since it was built, the garage has been converted into a large bedroom and an even bigger extension was added to the back, blocking all direct sunlight from what is now the middle of the house. That’s where my computer is.

We have a pretty big yard. That’s where we all go to get away from the confines of the house. My middle child and I sometimes garden, my son and the dogs play, and my older daughters like to lounge in hammocks or hide from the rest of us. We also go for walks, go to the park, explore open-spaces, go hiking, and use the quiet road out front for biking. We’re a rather outdoor-oriented family. But no one wants to go outside when it’s cold.

So, we stay inside and drive each other crazy!

We rely heavily on access to the outdoors to keep us functional. Several studies have shown that ADHD symptoms can significantly decrease during and after time spent outdoors, and in nature. (Check it out!) I know it’s true for me, my partner, and our kids, but it’s hard to get us all out among the trees with everything is icy or muddy, windy and cold. I would love to say that we’ve found all kinds of solutions to this problem. We really haven’t.

Here are some things we’ve tried that work (at least a little):

Getting out on the days when it’s a little warmer and less windy
Exercising indoors (kids swim and take dance lessons, partner and I lift weights)
House plants for greenery
Improved diet (what that means probably varies by person, so I’m not going to try to tell you what to eat)
Date nights, taking kids out separately, anything to get one or two of us away from the crowded house once in a while
Leaving! Mini vacations, even just a short drive away, to a place I don’t have to clean!
Something to look forward to!

This year, our thing to look forward to is a spring break vacation to the Florida Keys for a family reunion/vacation with my partner’s family! I’ve never been to Florida at all, and I haven’t seen the ocean in years. We’re all super excited, which helps us get through the tough days.

Still, even all of the tips and tricks I’ve tried haven’t made me feel as good as longer days, more sunshine, the sound of crickets and cicadas and wind in the trees, and spending all day outside. I miss counting the colors of the flowers, watching the dance of the bees, feeling the grass tickle my feet, and reading books in the sunshine. It’ll be back soon. In the meantime, maybe I’ll try a light therapy lamp?

I Hate Shopping!

It’s the Sunday before Spring Break and I’m super spent. We’re going on an awesome vacation for the whole week that the kids have off! It’s gonna be sunny and oceany and awesome! But I realized a couple of weeks ago that we hadn’t done any of the kids’ “warm weather clothes” shopping.

So, of course, instead of doing the shopping here and there over the course of those couple of weeks… we did it ALL yesterday!

To be fair, the girls spent last weekend with their dad, and taking people clothes shopping after school is basically impossible. Also, I’m definitely not going to deliberately tiptoe through the minefield known as “buying teenagers clothes in their absence”. (I will absolutely buy the first grader clothes without even asking him. He still doesn’t care, as long as it has a cool picture on it.)

So, yesterday looked like this:

Take the cub to swim lessons
Take the twins to meet their friend for a movie
Take the middle child clothes and sandal shopping
Take twins sandal shopping, but only find sandals for one of them
Take cub to Target so he can buy some Pokemon cards
Late Lunch
Take middle child swimsuit shopping
Take twins clothes/sandals/swimsuit shopping
Dinner

We actually made dinner! Usually, days like this result in ordering pizza or Indian food or tacos. But we made a homemade, breaded tilapia with broccoli and mashed potatoes! Okay, fine… the mashed potatoes were instant ones from a bag. I’m okay with that.

Also, we did it all in one day! Which is great when you say it enthusiastically, but also… we did it all in one day. Now I’m tired even though I slept pretty well and I’ve had plenty of food and water. And we still have grocery shopping and laundry and oven cleaning to do.

Definitely looking forward to that vacation!

Lists

Well, it’s the first Friday after my acceptance of acceptance to the masters degree program I chose, and to get myself off to a good start with this little accountability experiment of mine, I want to crank out a post about how I keep myself accountable.

I love lists. Calendars, which I think of as chronological lists, also seriously improve my life. I have a whiteboard where I write household tasks that need remembering (like I need to report that crack in my windshield to my insurance company), and a scattering of other helpful lists all over my house. I use them to remember which kid took a bath on what day, what we’re eating tonight, and when swim and dance lessons and days off of school happen.

I’ve also made lists of things my kids need to do: one list for before school, one for before screen time, and one for before bed. While they often can’t remember the six or seven items on the list, they can generally remember to check the list.

Naturally, I also make to-do lists… when I remember to. On days when I do, I get more stuff done than I realized I even had time for. On days when I forget, though, I might get some things done, or I might bury myself in Netflix and directionless browsing basically the entire time my kids are at school.

So, since my sister is doing it (and I googled it and apparently the whole damn world is doing it), I decided to try a bullet journal. I tried regular journaling to keep track of my side effects when I was taking adderall, and on a number of other occasions, but I quickly discover that I hate writing. My handwriting is pretty terrible, but the bigger problem is that I just have no patience for it and that leads to avoiding it. But I know I can do lists! Bullet journals are just systematic lists! I love lists and systems! And, yeah, my handwriting is still pretty terrible, but I know what I wrote and no one else has to read it.

So, here’s to trying out another coping mechanism for my ridiculous executive dysfunction problems! I imagine that, like most other systems I try, it will work really well… when it’s working. But then I’ll spend a week or more totally forgetting about it before panicking about all the stuff I’m not getting done. But that’s ADHD for you. It can be amazing and it feel like a superpower sometimes. Then it totally clotheslines your whole life once in a while (or frequently, depending on your experience) and reminds you to be humble.

Acceptance

Today, I sent a letter to a university to indicate my acceptance of their acceptance of me. It sounds ridiculous when I put it that way. What I’m really saying is I applied to a master’s program and was accepted! Today, I confirmed my interest in the program, and I start in the fall!

I just finished my bachelor’s degree in biology and am starting my master’s in environmental science. I hope to eventually get my PhD in urban ecology, but maybe I’ll have a career in there somewhere since a PhD will probably land me squarely in professor-zone. I love the idea of being a professor, but I think I might want to do something else first.

It took me 5.5 years to finish my first degree (with a 3.5 GPA, which I’m super proud of), because I had to schedule a lot of my classes around my family. I have four kids. They’re currently 13, 13, 10, and 7. They attend two different schools and all have extra-curricular activities for which they need shuttling.

Additionally, while navigating my bachelor’s degree, a variety of new and exciting diagnoses landed upon my family:

I have ADHD
My 10 year-old has ASD and ADHD
My 7 year-old has ADHD

So we require a lot of professional attention right now, which further complicates our schedules. Stay tuned to see how this all shakes out!