If you’re used to just being a parent and seeing your kids off to school every morning, the current lockdown situation that’s affecting everyone around the world might have come as a shock. You love the idea of being able to send your kids off to school so that you can focus on the role of being a parent.
Now, though, you’ve been thrust into a new role of having to help them learn from home – and it’s not easy. You’re still adjusting to it, and so are they. However, it can get easier as time goes on – you’ve just got to equip yourself with the right resources. Let’s discuss how to juggle parenting with homeschooling in the current climate.
1. Communicate
This first tip might not sound like anything more than a bit of common sense, but if you have good communication with your children at home right now, it can make or break their new learning environment.
Communication isn’t limited to just being able to talk to your children, especially in their new homeschool setting. It can involve chore charts, homeschool planners, calendars, and even to-do lists to help them settle into homeschool life a little easier. The more ways you give your children to communicate with you about homeschooling, the easier it will be to maintain your role as their parent.
2. Pick the Right Tools
When you first learned that you were going to have to teach your children from home, you might have made a mad dash to pick out any and every resource available. However, while this might have made you feel slightly more prepared for an unprecedented situation, if those resources don’t match up to what your children need in terms of learning, they won’t get you very far.
For example, if your children are struggling with reading comprehension, there’s no point paying for an online math tutor, is there? Instead, you should consider the top reading comprehension apps to help them adapt to reading a bit better. The more attuned you are to their learning needs, the better you’ll all cope.
3. Expect the Unpredictable
Perhaps one of the best ways to acclimate yourself to homeschooling your children as well as being their parent right now is to expect the unpredictable. The reality is that you’re all in this together – both you and your children are experiencing this for the first time.
This means that none of you know what to expect from it. Try to keep checking in with your children regularly about how they’re finding everything, and ask them what you can do to make the entire situation a bit easier. This will boost your own confidence in your ability to homeschool them, too.
4. Share the Workload
Just because you’re now in charge of homeschooling your children, doesn’t mean that you have to bear the burden alone. Instead, try to divide the household’s responsibilities, so things are on a more even keel.
If your children are a bit older, get them to pitch in and help with the chores. This will ensure a much more balanced sense of responsibility, which will help you cope a bit better.
Learning how to cope with homeschooling your children right now as well as being a parent, can’t be easy. However, the stress can be controlled and reduced with the right resources, as the ones talked about above.
