Are your children behind in school after lockdowns?

[CricketCat]

Something bugging me since parents evening.

My son is in year 5 and was already trailing behind in English and Maths in year 3. Then lockdowns happened and he’s lost 2 years of solid study.

On parents evening the teacher told me he’s really behind now and that I need to sit and do homework with him. I told her that I thought year 5 work was independent (I never had help in yr 5) and she said but “he’s really behind, you need to sit and make sure his work is corrected before he submits it. Which felt like she didn’t want to correct his work.

Then when I asked her if she would recommend tutoring, she said yes, so I organised this.

Now I’m feeling really shit; because I couldn’t help him during lockdowns. I had 2 jobs both directly and indirectly involved with covid and things were crazy. Also my dad died during the time which added to stress and it was a horrible.

Is anyone else in this situation? And how much help should I be giving my son, without doing the work for him and making him sit there 1 hour at a time so he can think about his work.

I guess my AIBU is that somehow I’ve been made to feel this is all my fault for not helping him, but we did all school work everyday, with tears and it was a horrible time home schooling. We gave up for weeks and the teachers never contacted us to check how we were and now he’s behind. Is it my fault?

No one likes to feel they are being criticised as a parent but I'd really try to remove the emotion from the situation.

You survived as best you could during the pandemic. Now you have to assess where your son is at and what the best way forward is.

Helping with homework is most useful when it's "scaffolding". Bridging the gap between what the child already knows and where they need to be. You just need to give little clues to help him make the leap. What's tricky is figuring out what's causing them to get the wrong end of the stick. That skill improves with practice.

I'd recommend little and often. Try and carve out 10 minutes a few times a week, to go over the homework (or workbook) with him. Even if it's done verbally, discussing it can really help/ cement the knowledge.

Op I've got two dc, one never needed help so with number two I was also hands off.
Parents around me always spoke of sitting with dc for ages helping them with hw I didn't know what they were doing.I have learned the hard way some dc do need more support and they don't pick things up in the same way as their peers.

That's my second dc, she's no less bright however than her sibling she's just learning in a different way.
Since I realised she was behind we've moved heaven and earth to support her, get her reading etc.
We don't spend hours on hw because she doesn't have any. Now she has a maths tutor and an English tutor and she's steadily coming along well.

Sorry the point was, in a large class of 30 there is no way a teacher or ta can fully support each child there isn't the resource.
It should really be made clearer that for some dc lots of parents intervention is the way forward.

I dont know if my kids are behind. I do know it was hell trying to do schooling and working.

You're getting a tutor, that's a good step. When they say help him with his homework, I wouldn't take that literally correcting him. I'd personally take that as trying to help him to correct himself where possible. I think that will help him more. So instead of 'this word is wrong', it's 'theres a word in this sentence with a spelling mistake, can you spot it', like if you have to coach someone at work you don't tell them what to do you ask them what they think they should do and then ask them how they think they've done and how they think they could do better and what they would change. It's different to how a teacher would do it with a workbook and red pen and gives them much more opportunity to reflect and learn. That's what I think anyway although I'm no teacher.

I'd also try and make it all a bit more fun. So if you have time (which I appreciate you may not) if he has any particular interests, try and focus the learning towards this. My daughter doesn't like maths but she likes card games and so we played lots of card games in lockdown with counting for example and it really helped. I appreciate there are time constraints though.

It's not your fault. You can only do your best to supervise his homework. He may not be very academic and that's okay too.