That's how Little Cuter described her family's approach to staying home.
We're living our best life, right FlapJilly?
Right, Mama!
That was all well and good until this weekend, when being grateful for food and family and shelter and the internet and a backyard and (finally, now that the snow melted) playing outdoors just wasn't enough for a little girl who's supposed to be enjoying the last two months of kindergarten.
Getting ready to start the grades is a big deal, at least for the scholars at Prince Elementary here in Tucson. There's a strong sense of putting aside childish things, of accepting the responsibilities of homework and reading on your own and of climbing the stairs to the classrooms of the 1st and 2nd graders.
e-Learning is fun and productive and full of creative, do at home presentations that would not be possible from FlapJilly's classroom. The Marvelous Mrs. MacCambridge and her colleagues have done a great job, but the kids are operating in their own personal silos. The social skills they're supposed to be honing are family-centric at a time when their developmental needs are pushing them out into the wider world.
And no matter how lucky she is to have an upstairs and a downstairs and a front and a back and an inside and an outside to roam, yesterday it all became too much.
Nothing new will EVER happen again.
How do you explain indefinite to a 5 year old? I can't even explain it to myself.
The thing is we don't know what this will do. I was thinking of it this morning that this has impacted health-wise and economically the whole world and the last time that happened was WWII. Although I was born during it, I was a baby and it didn't impact me. And it's not hurting us all equally, which is another tough aspect while some are losing everything, others are inconvenienced. How to explain that to a child without scaring them is beyond my pay grade. It scares me.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many heroes, and parents trying to keep it together are among mine.
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I had a video conference with my primary doctor this morning. She and her husband are both doctors and they have two children. I asked how the children, one school age, were doing. They are fine, health-wise. The little boy, about 8, who would sometimes say he didn't want to go to school, has been asking when he CAN go to school. He misses his teacher. He misses his friends. That sums it up for so many children.
ReplyDeleteI miss the kiddos, too.
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