I haven’t written on here in ages. We have just completed week 8 of lockdown and it is still going on. Infections and deaths are going down and yet fear is still rampant across the country and the world.

The biggest question for parents at the moment is whether to send our children back to school. A couple of weeks ago the government announced they wanted a phased re-opening of schools from 1st June. Starting with Foundation, Year 1 and Year 6. They released guidance which to me seemed a little OTT but reasonably sensible to manage with the fear that is dominating the world.

They suggested keeping kids in groups of 15 plus a teacher and that because you can’t expect primary age children to keep 2m away from each other at all times, that they are OK to mix in those groups but that each group should stay 2m away from each other. More cleaning and lots of other protocols and a lot of hard work for schools to navigate but on the whole, I thought, sensible.

Then, driven by fear, the unions and local authorities have, in my opinion, gone mad. Issuing their own guidance saying children and adults should be 2m away from each other at all times. They do this under the umbrella of protecting people. Some councils won’t allow schools to reopen at all and most are insisting they use awful draconian measures when they do.

The message from them is that it is not ‘safe.’ The children are at risk. The teachers are at risk. Honestly I want to tear my hair out.

Nothing in the world, ever, is 100% safe. We take risk with everything we ever do. When we eat we risk choking, allergic reactions and, if all the scientific research over the last few years is anything to go by, risk of cancer, heart disease, early death etc. etc. We risk death when we drive in a car. Heck walking down the street is a risk.

I read somewhere this week that children are more at risk of death on their way to school (car accidents, being runover etc.) than they are of dying from coronavirus.

The science I have read says many things. One being that children are not badly affected by the virus. They may not even be able to transmit it to others. That is contentious, I’ve read there has been 49 studies that found no evidence of Children transmitting the virus and 1 where they found they may.

The science also says that for people under 60,the risk of dying from the virus is incredibly low, lower still for those under 45. Yet teachers unions are still terrified about teachers catching it and dying. Rationality seems to have gone completely out the window. Everyone seems to have forgotten that people die every day. People die of cold and flu and all manner of things.

My daughter is in foundation, she’s 5 years old. Her school have done their best but they are talking about having her sat at a table most of the day with noone next to her, just her bag with all her things in. I don’t blame her school for this, I know they will try and make it a nice atmosphere for the children but they are being hampered by the rules. There will be no working in pairs or group work. Soft toys and most other toys that can’t be cleaned easily have been removed. She will be taught to stay away from the other children. I don’t want that for her. She loved school and we don’t want her to learn to dislike this crazy version of socially distant school.

I was talking to my 8yr old yesterday and my heart broke when he said “even after coronavirus has gone, I’m going to carry on being sensible and stay 2m away from people.” I told him that no he did not have to do that and it would not be sensible to do that, but that is what are children are learning at the moment. To stay away from other people.

We are fortunate in so many ways. We can be flexible with work and much as I would rather be in the office, we can carry on the way we have been and keep home schooling then while I work part time from home. The kids are happy at the moment but they are missing out on so much from not being at school. Their education yes, but a lot of it is the social aspects. Children learn so much from being with other children and they aren’t getting that at the moment.

There are also many far less fortunate children for whom school is a lifeline, a lifeline that has been taken away from them. All for the sake of ‘risk.’

I get that people want to protect their children and noone wants anyone else’s death on their conscience. But then what? Do we all live in hermetically sealed bubbles for the rest of our lives? Never go anywhere, see anyone, do anything? Do we feed ourselves intravenously to prevent the risk of choking? None of that is rational and none of this is rational.

I want to send my children back to school and I AM NOT SCARED OF THE VIRUS. No more than I am scared of my children falling from a climbing frame and banging their heads, or scared of someone crashing their car into us. Life is full of fear but we have to minimise it so we can prioritise living. At the moment we aren’t living because fear has taken over.

I’m not scared of the virus but I am scared of the social distancing and the impact these draconian measures are going to have on our children.

This week marks the end of the second period of lockdown. Which just means it will all be reviewed at the end of this week, to see whether or not lockdown carries on. Last week Boris announced we had passed the peak of the virus so there is talk in the media about restrictions being lifted, though which restrictions and how they will be lifted is less clear yet.

There is a lot of talk about schools reopening, and a lot of extremely varying opinions about whether they should reopen and if they do, in what way. Should they be staggered? Can schools operate social distancing? Is it safe?

‘Safe’ is a word I’m really struggling with at the moment. Everyone keeps saying they want to feel safe before they send their kids to school or before they go on holiday or see people. Make sure it is ‘safe’ but I just don’t see how you can ever make anything ‘safe’.

I’m all for minimising risk as much as possible but you will never be completely safe from this virus. It’s a virus! And there is so much fear that getting the virus equals death despite the fact there is huge evidence that for most people it causes a mild illness and the truth is that many people may have already had it without even realising. Some people have it with no symptoms at all. I may have had it, you may have had it and never even known!

There’s so much evidence to suggest children are not badly affected by the virus and the WHO are even saying that they have found no evidence of children spreading the virus to adults. This seems baffling to me but apparently something to do with the way children’s bodies deal with the virus means they aren’t spreading it?

There are theories flying everywhere about why some people are affected by the virus worse than others. People with less vitamin D are affected worse which is why the older generations deal with it worse. It depends on the viral load, the amount of the virus you were infected with at once. So so so many theories.

Businesses want to get back to work and are introducing various measures to make sure people can maintain a 2m distance and can sanitise everything.

Some people say who cares about businesses and the economy, people’s lives are more important so we should keep lockdown. I disagree with that because having a shit economy will mean more poverty and hunger and will kill different people.

The lockdown has no doubt prevented a lot of coronavirus related deaths… But it has also killed people. People have died from suicide, from not being able to cope with the lockdown. Domestic abuse has massively increased. People have died of heart attacks and strokes and even appendicitis because they haven’t wanted to burden the NHS and have waited to long to call for medical help. Thousands of people who would have been referred for cancer treatment have not been referred because so much of the NHS has been shut down ‘in case’ the NHS was overrun. My friend’s dad is incredibly ill and has struggled to get any medical professional to take any notice of him because he doesn’t have coronavirus. They fobbed him off with antibiotics. He may not survive.

Thankfully some aspects of the NHS are being reopened but there will be long term affects we are yet to see for people referred for cancer treatment later than they would have been. Receiving treatment later than they would have been and potentially too late in some cases.

I don’t know what the next few weeks will bring and I don’t know what to believe really. If we lift the lockdown, will there be a second peak? I fear this virus will always be around now so surely we have to live. Noone is safe ever. You can crash in a car, get cancer, have a heart attack. We take risks every time we drive, smoke, even eat and drink because we are always told some food or other increases our risk of premature death. But we live. We love. We go places. We do things. How long can we live locked up like this?

We are in the groove, I know what this life is, and day by day we are fine and happy. What comes next makes me apprehensive and I don’t dare to hope yet that this is a brief interlude to our life. I want to hope we can get back to normal but I fear this pandemic will have changed many things for us, and that there is no going back to the way it was.

I wrote this post a couple of weeks ago but didn’t get round to finishing/publishing it. Things are much better now, we are in a really good rhythm and on the whole happy and coping well. But this was how I felt at that moment in time so I still wanted to publish it.

This isn’t a moan as such. It may come across as one but it’s not really. I’m not unhappy. Its more of a vent about what life is like at the moment, for many of us who are trying to home educate their kids. Bloody exhausting! That’s what it is.

I’m writing this because today alone I’ve messaged or spoken to 4 other mums who are feeling exactly the same as I am. We are working our bums off, quite simply, and are frickin exhausted.

I have 7 (nearly 8) yr old and a 5 year old and I am trying to complete the school work that had been set for each of them. I have to do this at the same time. I can’t do them 1 on 1 because a)it’s just me b) my 5 year old moans like mad when it’s suggested she play or do anything by herself. She can and does play by herself but not when I want her to. c) I work from home in the afternoons so there is not enough time for me to do their school work one at a time. My husband co-runs a company providing Internet so he is still working full time, sometimes from home, sometimes from the office, but he cannot take turns with me. He can help occasionally but not very much.

So 1 person assisting 2 kids in their learning when they are at completely different stages is bloody hard. I compared it earlier to being in a pinball machine being constantly flicked between fractions, and simple sums, between coming up with similes and rhymes for a poem, and sounding out digraphs and memorising tricky words. “Mummy can you…” “mummy what’s…” you think you’ve got one set up doing a task so you go to the other, only to be called back to the first child, then called by the second again… And repeat indefinitely until it’s ‘break’ and they watch Tom and Jerry while you go through emails and print worksheets for the next subject.

All the time I am thinking about what today’s topic is for later, do I have separate age appropriate tasks for each or can they both do the same thing? Where did the teacher say the video was for that? Was it in an email or on an app? What am I cooking them for lunch? Which of their clubs are doing virtual classes today? What exercise shall I try and get them to do in the garden? You get the gist.

I’m also trying to think about whether the laundry has finished in the machine. I’m having to think ahead about food in a way I don’t normally need to. I can’t just pop out whenever I need to get 1 thing. For a start I’m not supposed to take the kids shopping and some of our local shops have even banned kids. So then I can only go when my husband can be with the kids, and even then there is no ‘popping’ anywhere. I queued for 45 mins the other day to get into wilko to buy bin liners and Antibac wipes and a couple of other things I couldn’t find anywhere else. Because they are still restricting the amounts of things I can at least buy them, but not enough so I will have to go back and queue another day to buy more.

Sorry rambled off subject there. I guess my point is that my brain is working so hard in a way that it never has before.

It is not made easier by the fact that my kids are, well, kids and they don’t always want to do the learning their teacher has sent them. My daughter and I clash at the best of times, she normally does homework with Daddy because she will do more for him than for me. It’s a personality thing, I can generally get more work out of Leo than daddy can, so I help him with his homework. We don’t have the luxury of sharing this out though. This is day in, day out, just me and them. I’m lucky, I just have 2. One friend with almost identical aged kids also has a 1 year old to throw into the mix. Chaos!

I know some mums would read this and say why bother? Why push yourself so hard? Why push your kids? My kids are bright and inquisitive kids. They like to be busy. Yes of course I leave them to be bored sometimes but I guess I like to be busy too. It keeps us all going, even though its hard. And I don’t push too hard when they really don’t want to do something. Liberty’s task from school this afternoon was to listen to a cbeebies radio programme for 10 minutes…. She was having none of it and lay on the floor screaming at the prospect. Considering we had done maths and English and art and some PE, I looked at her, though F*** that, got out her box of dolls and started playing with them so she joined me. Leo meanwhile finished his geography then aced his spellings bless him and was dead happy to do so.

Every day is different but this has been today and yesterday, getting back into schooling from home. I’m hoping it gets easier.

There’s no denying that these are strange and difficult times we are living in. But it’s too easy to focus on the negatives, when actually there is a lot that is positive. Sarah over at Run Jump Scrap blogged about some of her positives during lockdown, and it inspired me because I don’t want this section of the blog to only be me writing when I am feeling down and needing to vent.

I feel like there are 2 sides of me at the moment, a huge part of me, the resilient adaptable side is just getting on with things and finding a new happy. The other part of me rebels against the obvious negatives and though I’ve talked predominantly from that view point on here, actually the happy side wins most of the time.

So some of our positives:

The kids are getting on really well.

In general our kids always get on OK but they really have gotten closer during the last few weeks. They still bicker and annoy each other but they are also playing with each other a lot more. I guess because there is noone else they are allowed to see and play with, but they don’t seem to be missing their friends as much at the moment. Part of me is sad about that, but it’s a sign of their resilience too and I’m so grateful that they have each other.

Family bike rides

We are lucky to have a beautiful country park and easily accessible countryside right on our doorstep. Hubs and I both grew up round here so we know the area well and there are loads of places on the ‘one day we’ll go on a bike ride with the kids there’ list. But with Liberty only being 5 we didn’t think she was ready for some of them and just never got round to going on them. With needing to stay local for our daily exercise though it has made us give them a go. We figured we could turn back if it was too much for her, but so far she’s surpassed our expectations and has done amazingly well. We are all really enjoying our family adventures at the weekend.

Being Quieter

In general we like to be busy and going out and about, visiting new places and seeing friends. I miss not being able to do that but there is something very restful about the quiter weekends at the moment. We can’t go anywhere (other than our exercise) so there’s less pressure to feel like you should be doing something with your time. Sometimes I feel a bit restless but at the end of the day I actually feel quite rested, if that makes sense!

More time to spend with the children

Spending almost all my time with the children isn’t always easy and I do feel a bit trapped at times, but overall I am enjoying the time spent with them. I’m not a teacher but there is something rewarding about seeing my kids learn when we’ve done an activity, and I’m learning more about them too. It’s challenging trying to teach them as well as parent them but I am learning about what works best for them and how to get the best out of them.

There are also tonnes of activities I’d thought about doing with the children, but never really had time to do before this. We’ve been doing some coding and junk modelling, and we’ve even got my old Nintendo Wii out the loft and had great fun playing mariokart with the kids! So it has been great using the time to do some fun things together.

Really valuing human contact

When you don’t see people very often it really does make you appreciate it more when you do. I’ll be honest I’m not always the most sociable person so actually in some ways I’m enjoying not having to have some of the awkward daily nonsense conversations on the school run etc.

But I’m also really enjoying random human interaction more when it does happen. A chat with someone in the local shop has been the highlight of my day recently. A couple of times on a walk I’ve bumped into (well from a distance) a mum from school. It can be a mum I barely know but we are both so happy to have some adult interaction you’d think we were lifelong friends who’ve not seen each other in a while! It’s amazing how much more important that interaction seems. I know that’s a contradiction but that’s how I feel.

I’m also enjoying the opportunity to have video chats with friends and speaking to each other, even if only by messenger. Every human interaction feels more precious I guess, even just saying good morning to strangers we walk past when out doing exercise.

Enjoying music

Being at home more has made me appreciate music more. Sometimes when the kids are bickering or driving me a bit mad whining about something I’ve asked them to do, putting some music on in the background can really change the mood for us all.

I’ve been trying to rediscover some bands and artists that I’ve not listened to in years and it’s really nice remembering why I used to like them so much. It’s also really fun introducing the kids to some brilliant music.

Appreciating what we have.

I guess that on the whole, a lot of the positives I’ve mentioned can be boiled down to this. Not having the freedoms we are used to has made me appreciate the things that we do have.

I appreciate having a lovely home in a lovely area.

I appreciate having my husband and children and to all be living together.

I appreciate our family and friends even if we can’t see them as much as we would like to.

I appreciate the fact we are all healthy and are able to live comfortably.

So I know a lot of the things I write are quite negative lately, but I really really do appreciate all that we have and how lucky we are in so many ways.

What are your positives from the lockdown?

Three. More. Weeks…. At least.

Honestly we all knew it was coming, right? They’ve been teasing it for days. I’m not shocked or even mildly surprised…. So why do I feel quite this gutted by the confirmation?

Why do I feel like crying?

Honestly we are coping OK with lockdown at the moment. Our routine is working for us. The kids are doing well with their learning, we’ve tried some new things, either online classes or methods suggested by others and we are doing good.

The house is a tip but semi keeping on top of it so we aren’t in a complete state of filth.

I think I just miss everyone. Amusingly a few days ago I was feeling like I had this down. I’d bumped into one of my closest friends while out doing exercise and we had a really good, socially distant conversation and think it did me the world of good. More than I actually realised at the time.

Since then, my younger brother’s wife who I get on really well with, sent me a picture of her growing bump. She’s 17 1/2 weeks pregnant. I’m so excited about being an auntie and I just really feel like we are missing out. The kids aren’t able to see her or her bump. It’s an exciting time that we can’t really be part of. I sorted a few of the nice baby things we had kept and hubs delivered them today along with the nursing chair we had saved for them.
I never expected to go with him to deliver them and he dropped it all at a safe distance blah blah but I feel a lot sadder than I thought I would about… I guess just about not seeing them. I don’t know, I’m rambling really.

I also feel a bit pathetic admitting this but it’s my birthday next week and, well, I guess I like birthdays. I like the excuse to get together with friends and loved ones and have nice times together. And that can’t happen this year, not in the way I’d like. I know there are millions of people having birthdays during this crazy time. I’m not special or any different from anyone else so I know I have to suck it up and make the best of it. I’m just feeling a bit down about it.

I’ll perk up and be alright. Will keep on carrying on, but I’m having a low day, well afternoon really. I know we are so lucky. I have my husband and kids with me. We are healthy and have a lovely home and garden. I just miss the people I love that I can’t see at the moment.

We are not pros at video calls. At all. But with life being altered so substantially thanks to the pesky coronavirus, we are embracing video calls wholeheartedly as a way of staying in touch with our loved ones.

As unexperienced as we may be at video calls, the kids take this to a whole new level. They don’t understand how to stay in camera shot so frequently disappear off screen. They constantly talk over each other, or over the person speaking to them in the call and jist don’t listen. Hmm, kids not listening, who’d have thought?

My husband has been finding video calls to family members with the kids also present, particularly stressful. We have made some improvements over the past few weeks though so I thought I’d share some of the ways we have found for making the most out of video calls with the kids.

1. Give yourselves space

On our first video calls we had the laptop set up at the dining room table with us all trying to sit in front of it. I’m not sure why but it felt like the right place to be. It wasn’t Trying to cram 2 adults and 2 children basically onto 2 chairs wasn’t great. The kids fidget all the blimmin time so there was elbows in face, we got headbutted, they constantly wanted to move so were clambering over us. It wasn’t fun.

We tried a few combinations of this before I came up with the crazy idea of putting the laptop on the coffee table in the living room. Sooo much better. Yes it means we are a bit smaller on the screen for people to see, but really, do we need to play count the pores anyway? Removes one element of discomfort and stress at least!

2. Make it fun

Kids don’t really get the whole conversation element of video calls, or ours certainly. The shout at the screen, both talking at once, disappear off to do something else and it can be generally hard to keep them engaged. So we’ve tried a few things to help them have fun and interact with the family members they are missing out on seeing at the moment.

We played a fave board game in our house, Cheese Bandit (we got this from Father Christmas a couple of years ago and it is a great game for kids, just FYI) with my parents and it was so fun. But when we tried to play it with my brother and his wife, the kids weren’t feeling it, so you have to try different things and see what works I guess.

We’ve also played Guess Who, my parents have the game and so do we so at least we have a board each and that worked quite well.

The best thing so far though has been playing Pictionary as all you need are pen and paper. To start with I just wrote the names of some films that the kids know and their relatives would also know. I held up the name in front of the camera for the relatives to draw so the kids could guess, then on our turn we held our picture up for them to guess. It was really funny and kept the kids really occupied!

The list of films only lasted so long but to be honest it doesn’t need to be films, we’ve moved on to just drawing things, and honestly getting a 5 yr old to draw something like a banana can lead to some fun too!

Not sure what we will try next but trying to keep it fun and interesting to help the kids stay engaged

5. Have something for them to do

This obviously relates to the above as they are kept busy by playing the games. But even when you aren’t playing games I’ve found it helps if they have something to keep them occupied. Leo was playing Lego the other day while we were chatting to my folks, and he would chip in now and then but was generally happy playing. Liberty didn’t have anything to do so whined most of the time haha

This also helps if on a video call with their friends. Again with young kids not being the best conversationalists, having a few toys with them that they can show their friends/family can help them think of something to talk about. Liberty on a call to her friend was showing her some of her Disney princess dolls for a while. The conversation then moved on to the point where they were showing each other their feet, but you know, they are 5 haha.

When Leo was on a call with a couple of his friends he was shooting bits of Minecraft Lego at the screen which got them started talking and eventually they were blowing raspberries and talking about bottoms, again usual 7/8 yr old behaviour.

4. Be realistic

They are kids, at the end of the day. Even in normal times they shout and scream and talk when other people are talking and make it difficult to hear your relatives speak. There’s a certain amount of accepting that it won’t always be plain sailing, I think.

We try to have some video calls in the evenings so it can just be us and grown ups to talk about things a bit more, or after a game we let the kids go and watch TV or something so we can have a grown up chat.

Who knows, by the end of this we may all be pros at video calls! Of course I am looking forward to being able to see our loved ones in person again as soon as we can…. but I am grateful that we have the technology to see them virtually in the meantime.

How have you been getting on with video calls with kids? Any tips?

So it’s a Wednesday, but I’m not having a wobble! Realised it was a week since my last post though so thought I’d get some thoughts down. I’m using this more of a diary to have a record I suppose.

We are still in lockdown. 2 ½ of weeks of being at home full time with the kids. Still lots of highs and lows associated with that. It’s technically the Easter holidays so we aren’t getting any work from school. We are keeping a loose routine going still, a bit less work than the previous couple of weeks and a few more Easter themed activities.

Yesterday in ‘art’ we made some Easter cards, some with coloured in eggs and others with some cute handprint bunnies I had seen shared by someone on facebook or somewhere, they were cute and fun to do. Then today in ‘handwriting’ we wrote the cards to some of the kids friends and some family members. We will post them during our exercise tomorrow. Other than that we’ve done some maths and actually had a fun ‘geography’ session yesterday afternoon talking about a few different countries, mainly Australia as Liberty is obsessed by it and the animals that live there.

Today was sort of supposed to be history this afternoon but we made some Easter nests instead!

More to eat! Honestly struggling to stop eating, I have a tendency to eat my feelings, and eat when I’m bored soooo there’s a lot of that happening right now.

It’s a strange old time. In so many ways we are so lucky. I see lots of social media posts from doctors and nurses who are isolating from their children so they don’t give them the virus. I see posts from doctors and nurses whose children are scared their mum and/or dad will catch it and work and die. I know of people who are now jobless or have had their wages cut by 40%.

Nic and I are still working. We are all healthy. We aren’t putting ourselves at any great risk (no more than anyone who risks catching the virus at the shops anyway). We have a lovely home with outside space. We live near beautiful places we can go while we are allowed to exercise outside. We are not trapped at home with an abusive partner.

We have so many reasons to be grateful, and I am. I try and focus so much on the positives.

But that doesn’t mean this is easy. Losing your freedom isn’t easy. Being kept away from loved ones isn’t easy. Sometimes that gets to me, sometimes it gets to all of us. I feel guilty for even saying I find it hard though, when so many people have it so much worse.

It’s really difficult to know what to believe too. Obviously this virus is horrible and easy to catch and causing a lot of deaths. But a lot of people only have minor symptoms and they still believe there are huge numbers of people who show no symptoms, so a lot of people could have had it without even knowing! The media is negative negative negative and focusing only on the worst.

I get that we need to stay home to slow the spread and I get that maybe the media wants to scare us into doing so, but I’d love to see more positivity about the people who survive it or something. I don’t know really.

Shopping is still a very odd experience. I don’t get out much beyond a walk every day with the kids and am mainly dependent on Nic for going to the shops, as I can’t really take the kids. But at the weekend I did go out and it is so strange to queue 2 meters apart from each other and sometimes you don’t know where to go inside the shop as there are people 2m in either direction! But at least shops are fairly well stocked now and there’s not as many empty spaces on the shelves as there was at one time.

I think that’s enough of a ramble for now. Hope anyone reading this is coping ok with everything xx