Working from home and homeschooling - how are people coping?

[Goandplay]

I’m tier 4. Schools not going back.

2 primary school children and 1 year 11 child.

Primary school have sent a timetable covering 9am to 3pm. My 2 DC’s will not work independently for very long. One struggles to maintain focus and concentration.

How am I supposed to do this whilst working full time from home?

How is everyone else coping?
Will my children be permanently disadvantaged because I can’t teach them for hours and hours of the day.

I "only" work part time but am single with no help at all from ExH. I cope by working when they are in bed. Maybe an hour during the day. And getting further behind.

We did about an hour a day previously for dc1, who is in Yr1

Awful we are not doing the online learning .

I too was sent a full timetable this morning for my DS in year 1. There is no way as a single parent I can give him the full attention he needs to complete all the work and do my demanding wfh job too.

My solution will be not to do everything but rather focus on what I deem to be the essentials (english, phonics, maths) and leave the rest (RE, PE etc). Realistically what else can you do...

LBC just reported unofficially that boris is going to announce schools will be closed until February half term

How would universities survive a year with no/very few students, though? The most prestigious might be able to get enough mature and international students, but most would be fucked

Exactly.
And what about reception aged children? Would you just keep them at home for another year? Lots of families won't have budgeted for that.

The idea is repeating a year has been discussed multiple times and there's just no way it can work without serious funding and an overhaul of the system... this is one of the reasons post qualifications applications to university hasn't been implemented yet.

Oh joy - there’s goes the tiny bit of sanity that remained!

@Goandplay

I am surrounded by people that can do the time table with their children (or seem to be able to) so I’m struggling to see wood for trees.

Thank you everyone.

There’s another thread about this here

It’s survival, OP. Don’t worry about the school work. I’m out the other side and honestly my DCs have caught up after doing very little school work for months at home (I just couldn’t manage it alone with work as well).

Just try to look after your mental health and be kind to DCs. It won’t last forever

Aim for 1 hour for each child. Tablet, telly, colouring and wing it like the rest of us x

Last time I did all the assigned worksheets in a 1 hour slot after we had lunch. I ignored my children for the most part for the rest of my work day. It's hideous.

We split our day up last time. We both worked 5:30-7:30, had breakfast together, I did a few hours with the kids and started work after lunch, OH had kids after lunch and then we did bedtime together before both finishing off work.

@goteam

My two age 9 and 6 will have zoom lessons from 9.30 - 3 and I work full time from home and have zoom meetings most of the day as does DH so we might cope but our wifi won't....

Private school?

Our school (primary) is very understanding or at least were during various isolations. They said they know many of us are working so we can do the work to fit us in the day, and just send the evidence through on dojo when done.
I get up at silly o’clock in the morning to get work done, and DH goes to bed v late. We are lucky in that we don’t always have to be available 9-5, so we can jiggle it around a bit. In all honesty I feel like I’m not doing enough either side.

Our DC’s secondary is more regimented and restricted to times but our secondary DCs are good little workers anyway.

Do you need to stick to the timetable? Can you not eg do some early in the morning before work, some at lunch and some on the weekends? If not I’d just tell the school it wouldn’t be possible and do your best.

We had both kids home today and I didn't cope well. I will need to consider how DH and I can do an hour each with them at the start and end of each day and let them loose on the PlayStation etc for most of the rest of the time...

I don't know if this has been mentioned but you can ask to be flexibly furloughed (ie reduce hours) due to the schools being closed.

I don't think exhausted covers it tbh . I don't think I can do it . I'm going to have to work longer hours so I can teach them too and they're fed up of being at home too. So unmotivated it's unreal . Ds1 is almost 15 starting GCSE's. It's a mess.

All I will say is Dry January can do one.

@Bagamoyo1no quite the opposite. Inner city, high fsm school in north London. I'm impressed but it's going to be hard. I was planning on a light touch approach, printing off a few worksheets etc and playing some BBC bitesize videos!

Sorry @Bagamoyo1

Mine are just watching TV, colouring, doing some of an activity book if they want and we're going to try and take a lunch break when it's not raining to take a walk. It's not idea but we work full time and they will survive. Do I feel guilty, yes, but I am prioritising all of our mental health. I'm not getting up at 5 in the morning to start work or anything else which is admirable but not for me. I'm lucky my kids are bright and they have a loving family, they will be fine.

I'm sure there is something in law that says employers have to look at flexibility working if requested and need a good reason to refuse it.

Lower expectations, quality definitely over quantity.

Wine sales are going to go through the roof if school is off until February 😂

DH nails the year 1 work from 7-8 if they’ve uploaded it in time. I literally manhandle my year 1 child into his live lesson for the allocated slot, we then spend the next 25 minutes trying to figure out what the teacher is saying as her WiFi is rubbish and I can’t hear her above the rabble. I usually text the WhatsApp group afterwards to get a general consensus of what they actually need to do which is usually writing a sentence or drawing a picture. I politely request him to do it, he says it’s boring and runs off. I then bribe him and he makes a poor effort, but it ticks the box so I have something to take a photo of to upload onto fucking google classroom.
My year 3 child will work independently from 9-11 but there seems to be a long break within that.
I find the live lessons the most stressful as we can’t test it beforehand, so sometimes we’re lucky and we get to hear 10 minutes of others trying to log in, sometimes it doesn’t work.
In the afternoons it’s ipads and watching TV, thank fuck. We don’t bother with PE or crafty stuff.
I’m trying not to stress too much this time. I barely listened in class and still did well. I don’t think my kids listen in any setting so I tend to overestimate what they can actually do. It all seems pretty easy until the teachers discuss grammatical terms, which I haven’t a clue about but I guess Google is an option if need be.

My HR manager emailed about being flexible with our working hours in light of school closure but to me that just sounds like I can work 7-9.30, through my lunch break and then 3-6.30 or something to do my hours and would go absolutely crazy with exhaustion. I think I would rather muddle through my usual 9-5 hours and they will have to accept my poor zoom connection. Most work zoom meetings could exist as an email anyway.

Yes, your children absolutely will be disadvantaged.

Because no, not everyone is in the same boat.

Everyone is in the same storm, and those with the better boats will thrive.