Homeschooling is impossible- end of my tether

[Edenspirits]

Both DH and I have keyworker status - I teach full time at a university so the department of education have given lecturers keyworker status and DH works shifts in a blue light call centre.

But the school have said they have no spaces as they are full.

I broke down today in tears as I am trying to teach live and plan my lessons and DD who is 8 is on her own most of the day and I have no time to school her. She needs my support and isn’t old enough to do it on her own despite trying to set her work. My lectures can be up to 2 hours.

I feel like I am neglecting her as she is mostly watching TV.

aibu to feel like I am going to have a breakdown if this continues for much longer.

also could she follow the old English with holly lessons while ur working

@willFOURbagsbeenough

So I did! You numpty.

Except you didn’t. that wasn’t dismissing the OP. No need for name calling.

Go on then. What did you mean by that comment?

Solidarity.

We both work at the university and it is a nightmare. I get up at 5am.

Yesterday some of my students complained that they wanted 6 hours a week of lecture recordings because that is what the in person students had last year. They get 2 hours of pre-recordings (that take me 5 hours to make), 1.5 hour of live seminar, about 2 hours of readings and quizzes.

My kids are unhappy. My students are unhappy and I've got a permanent sleep deprivation headache.

The fiction at university means we are pretending that all is well, we just happen to be at home. It means we are killing ourselves to deliver a worse experience.

Non-Tv options:
Painting
Drawing
Clay
Reading
Activity books
Online: khan academy, duolingo, CBeebies stories.

Don’t try to homeschool by replicating school.

Can you get her an online tutor for one or more sessions a week?

It means we are killing ourselves to deliver a worse experience.

This is the key, isn't it? I've never minded working flat out at work in the short term towards something better, but this isn't even treading water for everyone.

Go on then. What did you mean by that comment?

Since you asked so politely and apologised for the name calling?

Oh shush! They absolutely do have time when they aren’t working! OP had time to post here for starters!

Look I realise this has hit a nerve with you and you’re feeling defensive but stop being silly.

This was a supportive thread until the inevitable provocateurs predictably showed up. These queenly rebukes don’t make their authors appear grown-up, condescending or superior. They read as exactly what they are: deliberately incendiary, myopic, and very immature.

The idea that anyone is under the least obligation to ‘defend’ their behaviour to complete strangers on the www is what's laughable here. No one's status exceeds that of online stranger, no matter how lofty their didactic aspirations. All they are is typeface.

And who cares about impressing a bunch of fonts?

I'll answer then. There is no possible interpretation of your comment other than that if OP has time to post on Mumsnet, she has time to do a better job of homeschooling her child.

But that's not dismissive apparently. Hopefully you can pat yourself on the back for making her and all the other posters coming here for help feel so much better. Have a lovely evening.

@dreamingbohemian

I do wish schools would figure out some resources that would let kids directly enter their answers into a website or app, because printing and scanning and uploading PDFs is so fucking tedious and time-consuming.

DC takes a picture of her work and uploads it herself. Is that possible instead of scanning? It's not like it gets marked... (or not round our way, beyond noticing its been done).

My initial reaction was shock that you don’t qualify for a kw place as wfh doesn’t mean that it’s not critical that you are not disturbed,

DH and I WFH, not kw but on back to back meetings but we can tag team sometimes and my work can be done slightly more flexibly in terms of the hours I work to an extent (lecturing can not) although it is still a nightmare and very stressful at times.

One thing that has massively helped us which may help you (or you may feel she is too young for it - my dd is 10), is she is joining a zoom call with a friend and they are working through it together and supporting each other. They are getting some social interaction too. Perhaps if you were able to join her up with a friend whose parent is able to help her, she may be willing to help support your dc too?

whiteflores

I'm increasingly feeling like it's time for women (and yes, it seems that the burden falls on us) to to say no. No, I'm not home schooling as well as my job and all my other caring responsibilities. It isn't working.

Either kids are at school or it's paid parental leave.

Enough.

Completely agree with this. The whole situation is completely impossible and putting unhealthy levels of pressure on working parents. And you can bet your bottom dollar the expectation that parents can effectively cut themselves in half and be in two places at once, doing two things at once (one of which they have zero training for) would not be there if the majority of parents doing the juggling were Men with Big Important Jobs.

OP, the mental health of you and your DC is the most important thing here. You can only do what you can do. Don’t make the mistake of working every hour at weekends, as some here have suggested. Keep some protected downtime, or you’ll just burn out and may have long term problems as a result, way after the pandemic is over.

Glad you have found a solution that works for you!!!

Thanks @TantieTowie, that's worth a thought. The uploading is a bit finicky because it has to be done in a certain way because it is marked. But maybe we can teach DS how to do it.

Hi OP, let your DD watch the BBC children's bitesize programmes which have been especially made for lockdown. Rest of time let her do what she enjoys Games, arts, toys. Get some handwriting books and word search books and lots of e reading books, books, comics. Teacher told me just reading is good for them everyday if nothing else. Do not be too hard, when I was younger my cousins were off school for a year due to illness and caught up. Best wishes.

The problem I have is that when DS is otherwise occupied (down time after school work) and I could get on with some focussed work, I'm so chuffing knackered I want to lie my head down on the table and sleep.

I am coasting. I have never coasted in my work. I have rarely let my personal life impact on my work. I hate this, but I really need to give myself a break.

@Notthis2

I think its totally insane and can't believe it's not spoken about more. I say this as someone who is freelance so loosing thousands but at least I'm able to homeschool and doing reasonably well!!! I'm still getting up at 5am to work and working in the evenings however. I do have three dcs and one a toddler so teaching two other kids full-time while my 3 year old watches too much tv. We are literally teaching the syllabus. I'm a former teacher so I can see that we are covering all the work that should be covered in class. There's no schools open to anyone whatsoever in Ireland and we have no online classes at all ! Its just amazing that people think its even possible for a parent who is working full time to cover and teach or even do the basics and yanno mind children. Its like someone arriving into a class I teach and giving me some toddlers and another job and going here you go mind these and teach too etc. Its easy to see in that example its impossible obviously . Yes it's not the schools fault that its a pandemic but I think in all honesty the message should be " we are closed (as I said in Ireland they are closed completely) so we can't provide an education right now" and let parents try and keep a roof over their heads without this added pressure . I'm referring to primary. Its like its been forgotten that our taxes are paying for schools and still are while parents are teaching the syllabus now. My youngest child's pre school is also completely closed so they have now nearly missed 7 months with last lockdown and now this one and the preschool receives ecce funding for my child's place.. where is that money now?? There's so many threads about teacher bashing but I see loads of posts bashing parents , many of whom are barely keeping their heads above water.

@Notthis2 Schools in Ireland are not closed. They are doing remote learning same as UK but with no support for any key workers

@MarieIVanArkleStinks

Oh shush! They absolutely do have time when they aren’t working! OP had time to post here for starters!

Look I realise this has hit a nerve with you and you’re feeling defensive but stop being silly.

This was a supportive thread until the inevitable provocateurs predictably showed up. These queenly rebukes don’t make their authors appear grown-up, condescending or superior. They read as exactly what they are: deliberately incendiary, myopic, and very immature.

The idea that anyone is under the least obligation to ‘defend’ their behaviour to complete strangers on the www is what's laughable here. No one's status exceeds that of online stranger, no matter how lofty their didactic aspirations. All they are is typeface.

And who cares about impressing a bunch of fonts?

I really enjoyed this, thank you!

@willFOURbagsbeenough

You are a piece of work. You clearly have no idea what you are talking about, so why don't you take your ignorant, unhelpful nastiness elsewhere please. Ta.

@hammeringinmyhead

I'll answer then. There is no possible interpretation of your comment other than that if OP has time to post on Mumsnet, she has time to do a better job of homeschooling her child.

But that's not dismissive apparently. Hopefully you can pat yourself on the back for making her and all the other posters coming here for help feel so much better. Have a lovely evening.

Well you’ll never admit it but the actual interpretation of my post was that OP had time other than when she was working. I was not at all suggesting she could educate her child in the 5 minutes she used to post on MN. I haven’t dismissed OP at all. I was dismissing another posters insistence that OP couldn’t possibly have any time when she wasn’t working.

[quote ZippedyDooDa]@willFOURbagsbeenough

You are a piece of work. You clearly have no idea what you are talking about, so why don't you take your ignorant, unhelpful nastiness elsewhere please. Ta.[/quote]
I’m not sure what your issue is. I haven’t been nasty to anyone, I actually did offer suggestion to OP.

A suggestion that many others also made btw.

I'm in a similar situation. My daughter sits next to me as I teach live lessons and plan for the next day. I'm unable to help her with her work most of the time. She certainly isn't working as much as she was last lockdown when I didn't have as many live lessons. She's also spending more time alone as sometimes ( meetings and phone calls to pupils) it's just not appropriate her being in the room with me.

To the couple of posters who suggested asking if Universities could help with childcare costs, this will never happen. Almost all Universities have offered redundancies, 3 of my ex colleagues and 1 of DH current colleagues have all taken redundancy. I actually think a small number of Universities may not survive this crisis.

I was dismissing another posters insistence that OP couldn’t possibly have any time when she wasn’t working.

Who said that?