A Whole Lot of Time

It’s been a few months since I wrote my first post. I had assumed I’d have plenty of time to work on this blog. But you know how it goes. One thing after the next, and I didn’t set time aside for myself.

Well, now I’ve got time. And a whole lot of it! I can appreciate being home while we follow the “Safer at Home” order set by our governor. I can keep busy decluttering closets and purging things we don’t need. But this time at home, away from school and friends, is really hard on kids. Like, really, really hard.

Learning takes place in our dining room during the day. I don’t have a set schedule, but the kids are responsible for checking emails, Google Classroom, and making their own daily checklist of assignments to get done. That worked well for a few days. Then our 17-year-old daughter, Paige, got frustrated with her brothers for making noise, having too many items on the table, and just for breathing in general.

When she moved to the front living room, I could see she was upset. Upon checking on her, she finally released some honest concerns. This. Is. A. Lot. She just kept saying that there’s just so much! And just like that, the weight she was carrying slammed down on me like a pile of bricks.

Paige, along with so many other students out there, is a junior this year. She has demanding classes with heavy workloads, including AP classes. This is the year that test scores matter, and her GPA needs to stay as high as possible with college applications right around the corner. The more I thought about it, the more I could understand her frustration.

Students went from in-class, face-to-face interaction with teachers and students to distance learning overnight. They went from seeing and hearing teachers explain and demonstrate content with passion to having to read a whole lot of black and white. Think about that for a moment. So much black and white! Yes her teachers are doing an amazing job communicating and staying organized. But we went from hands-on learning to students opening eight different Google classrooms and reading post after post. She’s right. It is a lot. A lot to process. A lot to keep organized. And a lot to execute when it comes to self-led assignments. They also went from athletics, kickball at recess, and socializing in the lunchroom to sandwiches with siblings every single day. Just like that their social and interactive worlds stopped.

I have many concerns about the emotional state of my kids and their friends. I know I can tell myself “at least they have screens to connect to one another”. They have food at home. The weather is starting to warm up so we can get outside. And we are literally all in this together. I wasn’t sure what this post was going to be about, but I think I just had a lightbulb moment. If there were ever a time to demonstrate more patience, more love, more understanding with our children, now is the time. Paige, my boys, and all the kids out there are trying to navigate through these stressful days. This state of life is new to everyone. There’s no roadmap to tell us how to get through this. There’s actually not even a road map out of our driveway! So be kind to one another and appreciate those you get to see everyday. I think we’ve all wished to have more time in our lives. Although this isn’t exactly what we meant, we got it.