How To Deal If Your Kid Hates Remote Learning During The Coronavirus Pandemic
Across the United States, millions of parents and caregivers are now doing something they never thought they would: homeschooling — or perhaps more accurately, overseeing remote learning while in many cases simultaneously attempting to work full-time. It’s been called the biggest distance learning experiment in history. That feels pretty damn diplomatic to me.
My own kid has been out of school for three weeks now (while his younger brother has been out of daycare), and I feel so fortunate that they’re young. The remote learning “curriculum” my 5-year-old is following basically involves a lot of art projects, games, and reading him books.
Even so, getting him to sit down and actually do it has been hard at times. Typically, he’s the kid who runs into the classroom every morning without looking back at us once. He loves his teachers and his classmates. But Zoom morning meetings with a bunch of fidgety 5-year-olds on mute are painful. His father and I don’t have the skills or the patience to make even his super simple math exercises fun. Often, he’ll resist, begging for Legos again. Or TV. Anything but learning with mom and dad.
All of this certainly goes for parents of older kids who are at a point in their education where the stakes are potentially a whole lot higher. We know summer learning loss is an issue. What will happen now? How can parents who are under an enormous amount of stress — and in many cases facing huge health and financial challenges — keep their kids interested in remote learning as the weeks and months wear on?
So as always, we turned to the experts to get their advice on forging ahead when kids inevitably hit their coronavirus homeschooling wall.
1. Lower. Your. Expectations.
“Most of us aren’t trained as teachers. Many of us are also working. Most of us are doing the best we can,” Kim Allen, a human development specialist with NC State University, told HuffPost.
Rather than stressing about homeschooling...
