Home-schooling pushed ex-Marine to "breaking point"

[Ori2021]

Has anyone else read this story on BBC news? Parents are victims of this pandemic too. The toll on parent's mental health is really bad; this article just highlights it. I don't know what could be done to support people like this man, and parents in general like me, but I find it amazing that parents have just been told "get on with it," and quite literally, flung under the bus. It's damaging people's relationships with their own children.

Good on this man for telling the truth about his experience. It is AWFUL trying to home-school, and work at the same time. Some people are managing well, and hopefully there is light at the end of the tunnel but I do think the Govt. need to think of a way to recognise the daily struggle that parents and families and their children are facing.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-55723022

Honest I think he is being over dramatic,he has two primary aged children. The average school day is 6.5 hours.
When you take out lunchtime, breaks, assembly, PE, toilet breaks, art, drama school plays, teacher telling off naughty children, explaining yet again how to do something to those children not paying attention, then the average child only spends about an hour a day actually learning.

So as long as he doesn’t need to spend any time feeding his children, supervising them, getting them outdoors exercise, explaining what to do if they’re not paying attention and telling them off if they’re misbehaving, it’s fine?

Ah come on, the article says he stopped getting dressed or going outside because he had to stick to the teaching schedule...but he didn't. Nobody does. If you can't do it all, don't do it all.

Its more likely that he has mental health issues anyway (how could he not, tbf) and anything could have tipped him over the edge.
It is stressful, but people make it far worse than it needs to be. You don't have to spend 6 hours a day schooling a 7 year old. Do 1 hour and let them read and watch tv and draw and play. Adapt!

@SeasonFinale

The reality is it is a total non-story. It is the story of millions of people right now. 2 parent family has to fit in homeschooling and their own work from home. There are people worse off and people better off. I am not sure what the actual purpose of reporting on what this one family is going through is.

This. There seems to be an underlying agenda with all these stories to push DCs back into school even though that will prolong all of the issues and mean we're stuck in a cycle of lockdowns for even longer. When people consistently vote for a party that doesn't value education, the NHS or MH. This is what you end up with.

I think the royal marine angle is because that’s a very stressful job, and shows how stressful this is!

@CaptainVanesHair

I think this is throwing up issues with schools themselves in terms of who needs more funding etc. Dds school have the kids on full time zoom lessons until 2. It’s been better for mess the teacher is there for any guidance, but mostly it’s just been so much better for the pupils. Not only are they being taught but the class can still engage with one another. It’s working so much better than the first lockdown. What I can’t understand is why no one made sure all schools had resources to enable this.

The thing is for every parent who thinks live lessons are fantastic there is another who hates them. Ime the kids are about 50:50 as well. It's also not so much about resources for schools but also resources for parents eg broadband that will cope with 2/3 people on teams at once.

@RickiTarr

I don't know what could be done to support people like this man, and parents in general like me, but I find it amazing that parents have just been told "get on with it," and quite literally, flung under the bus. It's damaging people's relationships with their own children.

As for this bit, what’s the alternative? It’s a national and global emergency. We all just have to do our best.

One small thing that would help I think is an acknowledgement that it is hard and that it is OK to be feeling shit about it/complain. At the moment what happens (especially on mumsnet) is someone will post that they are struggling home schooling/combining childcare and working etc and within a few posts ones person will accuse them of wanting to kill grannies THERES A PANDEMIC YOU KNOW, another person with ask with faux innocence why people become parents if they arent happy to juggle three school children and one laptop, and another person will post that its so much worse for (single people, nurses, people with covid, OAPs, Single OAP nurses with Covid). As this thread demonstrates.

Can we not just acknowledge that it is SHIT. It is Shit for lots of other people at the moment, it is extremely shit to be in ICU with Covid, its shity shit shit and its fine to moan.

But it's a false comparison. Lots of people I know who have been in conflict zones have a much lower threshold for stress because they have PTSD.
Plus male soldiers often disengage from family life and hence find it stressful to manage and organise when they re-integrate.
It's actually quite paternalistic and patronising to think a marine would cope better. Generally they're not the ones coping at home with juggling childcare, education, working.

It's a non story really as far as this family are concerned. The article says he and his partner are both keyworkers and his children are going to school in this latest lockdown.

Do 1 hour and let them read and watch tv and draw and play. Adapt!

They do tend to get a bit stressed and sad when you homeschool them for 1 hour then ignore them for the next 8, though.

I think people blithely responding that it’s totally fine, you just have to rearrange your day a bit, are missing the pint that the difficulty is homeschooling and working. So no, if I’m working that day I can’t get mine out for a lovely long walk instead of BBC Bitesize, or bake with them or play with them or whatever other wholesome fun family activity gets suggested, because I’m working.

It is very miserably stressfully hard, I’m not at all surprised that he struggled, and honestly I am getting a bit tired of stressed working parents being lectured at by people who don’t work/do very PT flexible hours/are furloughed that we just need to belt up a bit and it would all be perfectly doable

TBF I think this guy does have it worse than most of us, have you seen his injuries? Hat off to him.

@SabrinaMorningstar

But it's a false comparison. Lots of people I know who have been in conflict zones have a much lower threshold for stress because they have PTSD. Plus male soldiers often disengage from family life and hence find it stressful to manage and organise when they re-integrate. It's actually quite paternalistic and patronising to think a marine would cope better. Generally they're not the ones coping at home with juggling childcare, education, working.

I can see that and it’s a fair point but it isn’t hard to understand why ‘ex-Marine’ is used as shorthand for 'psychologically tough individual’ in this story, despite the flaws in the logic.

It is hard. But the underlying agenda of all these stories is about pushing DCs back into school when the risk assessments for sending them back don't stack up.
And it's exhausting having posters pretend that they're saying x (home-schooling is hard) when really everyone knows that a few posts later they're going to be saying y (open the schools and send all the DCs back) with no consideration for teachers or school staff or the burden on the NHS or the long-term health implications for both DCs and adults.

This. Marines are trained to cope and function optimally under extreme stress. It’s designed to illustrate just how stressful and difficult homeschooling has been for some families.

It’s not news that the stress of combat and the stress of small children are two completely different things, though. It really doesn’t follow that big, tough men are necessarily cut out for home educating children. All stress is not the same.

@SabrinaMorningstar

It is hard. But the underlying agenda of all these stories is about pushing DCs back into school when the risk assessments for sending them back don't stack up. And it's exhausting having posters pretend that they're saying x (home-schooling is hard) when really everyone knows that a few posts later they're going to be saying y (open the schools and send all the DCs back) with no consideration for teachers or school staff or the burden on the NHS or the long-term health implications for both DCs and adults.

Maybe if you didn’t extrapolate people’s true motivations in your own head you’d find it less exhausting?

Surely it’s not that hard to imagine that some, indeed many!, of the people saying this is very hard are saying it because this is very hard, not because they want to kill teachers.

BalladOfBarry - I wasn't responding to your post. Just ranting indiscriminately
I agree it's lazy shorthand with the 'marine' story but I just hate all that casual sexism.

@SofiaMichelle

YABU to think that having kids at home isn't just another part of this shit show we're all living through.

But I never said parents were the only people suffering? Of course I realise it's a bad situation for everyone, but the purpose of the thread was to spotlight the mental health issues experienced by parents. That doesn't mean I don't recognise the struggles of others.

I do think it was brave of this man to write this article and to speak up, as it's ok to say you're struggling to home-school. Parents are expected to parent, of course you take responsibility for that if you're a parent but the reality is it's taking it's toll on a lot of people, who could never have planned reasonably or purposefully for the situation they find themselves in.

No-one mentioned killing teachers @GoldenOmber - that kind of hyperbole is exactly why it's exhausting trying to have serious conversations on here about Covid.
I still hold out hope that MNHQ gets on top of their guidance and modding for these threads and starts to treat the gfs and trolls the same as elsewhere.

I don’t mind this story let’s face it the media is spinning a lot of the time on not a lot.

But a more realistic portrayal of difficulty would be a working mother (usually) dealing with nursery closure, Scotland, and home schooling. If people want to read about breaking points. I’m sure there are many example.

I didn’t read his article just can’t do this type of journalism anymore so not really talking about his story so much

I find it amazing that parents have just been told "get on with it," and quite literally, flung under the bus

Well, no. They may have been metaphorically flung under the bus, but they certainly haven't literally.

He has rebuilt his life, he will need the structure that he has built to cope with PTSD. He found it harder as it’s removing his coping mechanisms, the same as many people get through life by placing careful structuring in place. The fear that these are removed and the return to a dark place are torture. Some of the replies in thread are in very bad taste.

@SabrinaMorningstar

No-one mentioned killing teachers *@GoldenOmber* - that kind of hyperbole is exactly why it's exhausting trying to have serious conversations on here about Covid. I still hold out hope that MNHQ gets on top of their guidance and modding for these threads and starts to treat the gfs and trolls the same as elsewhere.

What I’m saying - pleading, really - is that it would be nice to be able to talk about how hard and stressful this is, without being accused of having an ‘underlying agenda’ for doing so, or only ‘pretending’ to care about the difficulties of homeschooling to hide their true motivation of endangering everyone.

Please let people talk about how hard this is. Please please please. I would not dream of dropping into a thread about teachers worrying about their workplace conditions and saying “it’s so tiring hearing teachers pretend to care about this when we ALL know that in a few minutes they’ll be insisting that parents suck up all the stress with no thoughts to our mental health.”

I’ve just come off a zoom lesson with my youngest child (5) and I’m literally sitting here trying not to cry. It’s so stressful getting him to engage even though it’s only half an hour.

My daughter is doing her work better but her handwriting isn’t up to the standard she does at school. She doesn’t want to do the work and we have to really push her to do it. It keeps being sent back to redo because it’s not the standard they want which is fair enough.. but It does feel like a bit of a slap in the face when we are doing our best. We are both working full time.

We can’t do the work at weekends when we aren’t working because they have decided this time to delete it all on a Friday evening. Children shouldn’t be doing the work at weekends or evenings. Neither should teachers. Again fair enough... but that’s the only time we have when we can give them 100% of our attention.

I’m turning into a shouty parent and I hate that.

Kids won’t sleep either. No one is sleeping well.

I hope this doesn’t go on for much longer but I know it will.

This situation is so difficult for so many parents. If you would like our help we're happy to do so free of charge. We're a tutoring agency but right now we're offering complimentary literacy support by our tutors who are all qualified teachers. There's no strings attached. We can see the strain and stress homeschooling is putting on so many parents and we just want to help.

It's so important that we continue to read with children to improve their literacy skills and ensure they're on track for their reading age. Literacy skills are required for all subjects and will impact a child's ability to eventually access their exams in the future.

What we're offering: a 40 minute zoom call twice a week with a qualified teacher & a group of students around the same age as your child. The teacher will decide on the book (one that is age appropriate and will stretch your child's vocabulary) and obviously deploy techniques such as questioning for understanding etc. The only thing you will need to get is the book for your child to follow as the teacher reads and the class discusses the content.

If you'd like us to help you out, and you need a 40 minute break a couple of evenings a week then please go to our website to sign up: www.booksmarttutors.co.uk

(Please note that we are limited to the numbers of students we can accommodate into one zoom call so this will have to be on a first come first served basis.)

@unmarkedbythat

It is not possible for the vast majority of us to combine paid work and effective home education. Most people will recognise that. As long as the lack of education is appreciated when dc do return to school and expectations are realistic and recognise that dc have missed out on huge chunks of learning, fine.

No its not fine. Some children will have been much worse affected by others, and they are the children already suffering disadvantage before lockdown. Children from disadvantaged households, children with additional learning needs, children who were struggling and behind their peers anyway. These are the children the system was struggling with anyway, and now they are going to be even further behind their peers. I don't have any hope that are schools have the capacity to be able to give these children the additional support they need to make up for this lost year. Instead the focus will be on supporting the kids who were already doing ok, to help them catch up, whereas the already far behind will be left even further behind.

I once mentioned an ex-marine and got my ass handed to me on here.
As a pp said, it's because they are supposed to be tough ie. a warzone didn't get to him but home schooling did.
Re. home schooling, it's not the end of the world if they miss things. Prioritise. Tell the school you'll do what you can. Have a routine but not outside school hours. Mental health and relationships so much more important.