I’m still relatively new to this parenting thing. I’m only 5.5 years in. Although I guess having worked in education for 16 years before that and priding myself on being ‘loco parentis’ to hundreds of children I had some level of foresight and experience, heading into the hardest thing I’d ever do, that is having my own children.
This last year has taught me how much we go through our lives, doing what we have to do. We send our children to nursery or school because we have to (school is a legal requirement after all). We hold our little babies in our arms and know that at 4 they will go to school, at 11 secondary school and so on. Society sets that path, the path all children have to take and we kind of just go along with it. We want our children to be educated and let’s be honest that’s what school is about.
It’s not what it’s all about though, is it? It’s not just about education at all and I, like so many others have never given it any real thought because we didn’t need to. We didn’t ever think our children would be without school.
School for my children is no longer just a place they go to be educated. School is now one of the most precious commodities our children have. School has become the only and closest thing to normal they have in their lives and I ask myself what is more important? That my children learn to write, read or count ? Or that they learn to socialise and find their place to shine in a community that their parents have very little influence on. One where we aren’t there, being helicopter, lawnmower or whatever kind of parenting style may describe us. In school, they play and make friends with their peers and they share a little world with others that actually we, as parents know very little about, which is the way it should be, it’s the way our children become independent, comfortable and confident in their own minds. They are learning to be social and trust others, they are learning what they do and don’t like, they are learning about their own beliefs and things they feel passionate about. They are faced with a complex variety of different people and can really truly appreciate and respect what it is to be individual and function well in a group and be accepting that differences add the spice and variety to a fulfilled life. They even learn about the things they don’t like and that’s ok, as long as they are kind and respectful. They learn that not everything will always be sunshine and rainbows but sometimes there is conflict that can always be resolved with the support of some amazing adults other than their parents.
I never, ever thought that I would be thinking about the words mental health and young children in the same sentence. Maybe that’s incredibly naive of me? Perhaps I’ve been a bit deluded but it shocks me that as a parent right now I am having to worry about the mental health of my 5 year old and 3 year old. I never thought I’d be thinking that we’ve taken our freedom for granted. I never thought the words ‘mummy, watch out, those might be coronavirus people’ would come out of the mouth of my 3 year old. I never thought my children would cry because they just don’t understand why they can’t go to soft play with their friends. I never thought my 5 year old would come face to face with a friend (at two meters distance of course) and say ‘air hugs’ simultaneously because they’ve learned that human contact is potentially dangerous.
Two years ago I was reading that too much screen time is detrimental to my children’s development and now, without school, screen time is really the only social contact available to them. I even wrote a blog about my laise faire approach to screen time a couple of years ago. It seems almost irrelevant now.
I’ve never valued school for my children so much and am concerned what the lack of it will mean for our future generation.
A friend of mine said to me ‘we are all in the same storm in different boats’ and I say it over and over again to myself. Never has that saying meant more. We are all faced with different challenges, different decisions, different lives but one thing anyone with children has in common is that school is suddenly much more valuable to all of us. Whether you are homeschooling your children, whether you have your children in school or you have young children in early years provision, never have we been made to look at something that we ‘just did because we have to’ before and see it as something that offers so much to the well-being and development of our children.
I really hope schools are able to reopen soon. I really hope that all the ‘key tests’ are met so it is possible and I really hope that after reopening we will not be in a position again where we are faced with our Prime Minister addressing the nation to tell us it’s being taken away for most children again. Above all I hope that this time next year I will look back on this like a distant memory and am able to think ‘thank goodness thats over’.
To everyone reading this - I see you in the distance in your little boat, riding the horrendous waves and fighting the storm. I’m riding them too, the only way I can, doing the best I can for my children and we will get through this. Brighter days are ahead.
Comments