During the second or third week of school, I jotted down some notes so I could remember the difficulties and the frustrations surrounding the newness that is virtual learning. So that I don’t risk sounding terribly dramatic, I’ll acknowledge that at this point, we have had some time to find our groove. Most days are not as chaotic as in those first few weeks. We are blessed that virtual learning is working fairly well for our kids. We are blessed that we both work from home and can be there to support their learning. We know that this is a difficult and hard season for so many, ourselves included, but we still have it easy in many ways. Despite the fact that we have settled into a routine with schooling, these days are still hard, and immensely more difficult on our children.
So how do we approach these days? The attitude that we model to our children is going to be crucial in how they look back at this time, and vital to the development of their character.
On Monday, the internet was down until noon, so school inevitably takes until 4 or 5. Afterwards, I finally rustle together dinner and try to have a bit of fun with the kids before baths, dinner, and bedtime. Then I finally get to start working on my Etsy orders sometime after nine.
Tuesday was a little better, but Ada has high blood sugars all morning, and it ruins her focus. I do not realize this despite checking in on her since she appeared on-task… just those tasks were taking way too long because of the high blood sugar. I spent my time Tuesday on what I can only call juggling schooling a preschooler, keeping a second grader focused, and teaching a fourth grader common core math. Plus, I spent an hour on the phone with Kaiser trying to acquire new omnipods that were delayed by weeks in a desperate attempt to avoid going back to shots. Ada didn’t finish school until 5 which is unusual for my GATE kid, but she hates typing. What nine-year-old knows how to type anyway? Poor Ada found herself so frustrated at the start of the year since she had not been exposed to Google classroom or the other litany of programs that the other kids had experience with at the end of last year.
Wednesday included state testing so I really needed to be inside helping, but it was also the only possible day to mow the lawn that week without suffocating on smoke from the California fires. And in the afternoon, I had to somehow be at the school to pick up books and in a 504 meeting on a zoom call at the same time. That left Aaron to make the hour-long round trip to pick up the pods, during work hours no less.
Thursday and Friday were admittedly calmer, but I was exhausted nonetheless. The most wearing part of the week was that every night, my sensitive middle child cried… cried because she missed her friends, cried because she wanted to have a porch playdate (which I couldn’t even make that happen due to the smoke), cried because her teacher was sick and it was just one more bad thing that to a child feels never ending. It is so hard in those moments to not be able to fix your child’s hurts.
Every day we get the chance to persevere as a family, to solve problems as a family, and to forgive each other’s failures when we take out our frustrations on someone undeserving. We get to go to school barefoot, on the couch. We get to witness everything our kids are learning. Our kids’ teachers are nothing short of incredible, and already I can tell they are some of the best teachers they will ever have. We have the most amazing social pod, and we have come to depend on them and love them in newer and deeper ways. Aaron and I had the best pandemic date night and learned how to make sleepovers happen even with diabetes in the mix. We’ve had less activities and more games of Sorry. I have found the time to tell our kids stories of how we got together, and to show them our wedding album and old greeting cards I made during my stint at DaySpring.
As adults and believers, we know that hard times grow us in ways that easy times rarely do. Some of our kids are facing the first truly hard trial in their lives, but we have a chance to teach them what to do with that fear… to lay it at the feet of Jesus. We have an opportunity to teach our kids an abundance of life lessons and to build their character and perseverance as we walk them through this tough time hand in hand. Lastly, we have a choice to focus on all the bad and live each day like we’re drowning, or to focus on the blessings in each day instead. I wholeheartedly believe we will look back at this time and see how much closer we became as a family. We will look back at this time and surely not want to relive it, but we’ll be glad that we lived it too. Because this is the hard and the beautiful.
“Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”
Romans 5:3-5
Beautiful 🙂 I miss you!