If you were firmly in the schools should stay closed camp ...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why everyone is so mad at PP for waking up at 4:30 every day. That's an example of a (pretty hardcore) schedule that worked for them. I've made similar sorts of sacrifices to support at home learning and my kids are okay though it has been a slog. I *have* had to be involved and a general supervisory presence; hands off had not worked, we found that out early on.

It does seem like a lot of the voices you hear complaining about schools not being fully open yet might have more successful children in virtual if the parents who complain over here for 2 hours a day would spend that time with their kids instead.

+ 1 Ya think?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why everyone is so mad at PP for waking up at 4:30 every day. That's an example of a (pretty hardcore) schedule that worked for them. I've made similar sorts of sacrifices to support at home learning and my kids are okay though it has been a slog. I *have* had to be involved and a general supervisory presence; hands off had not worked, we found that out early on.

It does seem like a lot of the voices you hear complaining about schools not being fully open yet might have more successful children in virtual if the parents who complain over here for 2 hours a day would spend that time with their kids instead.

To be clear - my kids are fine. My 3rd and 6th graders did virtual and I sent my kindergarten to private K because I couldn't supervise virtual K while working. I knew it was not not developmentally appropriate from having a kid that age (5) and from being a former teacher. It has nothing to do with me being on DCUM - I was speaking up for those who don't have two parents with post-college graduate degrees and teaching experience to help at home and no able to afford private kindergarten, etc. My 3rd grader did it - but I am a former 3rd grade teacher myself. In his own words - it's a lot easier to pay attention in person now (he has ADHD - and he doesn't even know his diagnosis yet).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why everyone is so mad at PP for waking up at 4:30 every day. That's an example of a (pretty hardcore) schedule that worked for them. I've made similar sorts of sacrifices to support at home learning and my kids are okay though it has been a slog. I *have* had to be involved and a general supervisory presence; hands off had not worked, we found that out early on.

It does seem like a lot of the voices you hear complaining about schools not being fully open yet might have more successful children in virtual if the parents who complain over here for 2 hours a day would spend that time with their kids instead.

+ 1 Ya think?

Seriously. All she did was create a shared room by bunking her kids and wake up early to work some before helping her kids. And gee, what do you know, the same people attacking schools all year for making their lives hell somehow manage to attack her too. She made a plan that sounds pretty doable if you actually were looking to make the best of your year and ensure your kids were successful. If you preferred to use that time yelling here, well, your results were probably as expected.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nope. I think everything has happened how it should have. Was it inconvenient? Yes. Was it ideal? No. I believe it was what we had to do. This was an epic moment in history. I feel grateful that my family is okay, and my heart breaks die those that lost people.

Agreed

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why everyone is so mad at PP for waking up at 4:30 every day. That's an example of a (pretty hardcore) schedule that worked for them. I've made similar sorts of sacrifices to support at home learning and my kids are okay though it has been a slog. I *have* had to be involved and a general supervisory presence; hands off had not worked, we found that out early on.

It does seem like a lot of the voices you hear complaining about schools not being fully open yet might have more successful children in virtual if the parents who complain over here for 2 hours a day would spend that time with their kids instead.

It's not the bolded. It's a combination of being smug, out of touch, and completely unaware of how hostile she actually is, i.e., not "thriving."

As to the italicized, that's the same gaslighting nonsense we've heard from PP and others like her who claim that the success of virtual school is largely about "attitude" and not, you know, children's brain development or the appropriateness of 5+ hours a day of Zoom or parents' ability to have total control over their schedules or any number of things.

Really, the bottom line at this point is that anyone (still!) heavily invested in criticizing people who struggled with DL (1) is not thriving and (2) needs to stuff it. Have some compassion, FFS.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:My house hasn’t caught on fire, but I don’t regret having working smoke detectors. I’ve never been in a serious car accident, but I don’t regret decades of wearing a seatbelt. I’ve never had an unintended pregnancy, but I don’t regret having used birth control. I took precautions to avoid covid. Maybe I wouldn’t have contracted it even if I wasn’t cautious, but that doesn’t make me regret the precautions. I make the best choices I can based on the information I have.

Occasionally buying batteries for a smoke detector or buckling a seatbelt when you’re driving isn’t quite on par with asking a 5 year old to spend a year of learning sitting in front of an iPad and having no socialization with peers.

That wasn’t the choice most people were making.
Doing virtual school didn’t have to mean no socialization.
My 8 year old did virtual school and played outside on hikes and with kids in the neighborhood with masks. We did less in the winter but still did some. I don’t regret the choice - of course now i can see how much better things are but as parents we are also fully vaccinated now so it is different. We made the right choice at the time. We also sent my 5 year old to an in person kindergarten. And she played outside.

Everyone I know chose middle grounds, some a bit different than others. Last year was terrible in many ways but we made choices because we were rational and had to. And many many people did get covid last winter. Had one family been less cautious it wouldn’t have been much different for that family. The reality is though that if every or a large number of families had been less cautious it would have been worse. I am glad the majority of people in my community worked together to be reasonably safe. I am so happy to enjoy the time now with friends given that.

I mean - you had the option to send your 5 year old to in person K. that makes you very lucky compared to many of us! and also on the less cautious side. hopefully you can see that your family had many many more advantages than those of us stuck with only online learning and without all the social opportunities your kids had.

DP. Many of us made lemonade from lemons. Sounds like you didn't. What you see as lack of opportunities the rest of us saw as challenges to overcome. This past year was tough, don't get me wrong, but it was also one of the most relaxing years our kids have had. It was scary because of Covid and we had to totally revamp our lifestyle to adjust to online learning but our kids thrived because of the choices we, their parents, made so that they could thrive. For most of the people complaining, I saw that we had the same lack of options and the same lack of opportunities but we got our acts together and made it work. It was hard but we did it. I am tired of listening to all the moaners and complainers bellyaching about this and that. The only way to change your output is to change your input. You make your opportunities.

Dude. That PP **SENT HER CHILD TO SCHOOL**. Many of us did not have that option. Many of us did not have the option to get our kids extensive other opportunities for socialization. The point is that school is an entitlement; not something that we should just throw our hands up and say "oh well, everyone needs to "change their input."" I mean really, you're horrifically tone deaf.

Dude, we didn't have that option either but yet we MADE IT WORK. That isn't tone deaf. It is calling you out and telling you that you are more of the problem than anything else. The rest of us got with the program and made it work. You didn't. Your problem, not mine.

right, we were the only family struggling with DL. sure, sure, sure.

The only families like yours who we saw struggling were, frankly, the families who always struggle. They're the families always running around like their hair is on fire. They're the families always in a state of disruption and eruption. They're the families where something is always forgotten, they're always late or they completely miss the date, and they're the families where they always have problems.

From our vantage point DL didn't make any substantive changes to the negative quality of their lives because they were already there living in negative land. It is their permanent home.

The same with the RTS. It isn't going to make any change. The kids will still be disheveled, the parents will still be frantic, their lives will still be massively disarrayed. Next year the complaints will continue only they'll be focused on the elements of RTS - they'll complain about the teachers, they'll complain about the schools, they'll complain about "learning loss" like it is someone's fault other than their own. In essence, nothing will change except where they used to blame DL now it will be these other things.

At this point I just can't find it in me to care anymore. Their problems (YOUR problems) are not mine to solve and I am not going to listen to the constant litany of complaints. Either get your act together or shut up about your inability to parent your kids and manage your family adequately.

New poster here. Unless parents who claim they "made it work" give specific examples, I find it hard to take them seriously. You "made it work" because you bought your child a desk to do DL, or you "made it work" by hiring a nanny, hiring tutors, paying for private school, paying for extracurriculars so your child could socialize, moving to a beach house for the school year, just accepted the reality of DL and didn't let your kids hear you complain about it, made Mac and Cheese or spaghetti every night to make space to help your kids more with school? Frankly, OP sounds more than a little privileged if he/she the way she writes about families who are always in a state of disruption, like she can't fathom why that might be the case...

I have posted here repeatedly about how we made it work and I have been lambasted for it. Wah wah wah.

This is what we did in a nutshell: we kicked one kid out of his bedroom and made him bunk up with a sibling so that we could turn the room into a schoolroom. We set up the schoolroom with 3 kid desks, each kid with a gaming headset (to hear & speak on Zoom), a printer in the schoolroom (completely unnecessary as it turns out but we didn't know that in April of last year), an adult's desk in the schoolroom, a whiteboard and a chalkboard (both we know now were completely unnecessary but they did add some fun for drawing), 2 bookcases, extra powerstrips. We painted and decorated. At some point we added an aquarium because it was fun.

My husband and I completely changed our schedules. We rise at 4:30 am. We begin work at 5 am and work until 7 am. At that point we begin a 2 hour ON and 2 hour OFF schedule with the kids. The ON person is responsible entirely for the activities of the children for the 2 hours while the OFF person continues working. The ON person sits in the school room and supervises while the OFF person works in the office. The ON person makes breakfast or lunch or snacks for everyone. We switch back and forth all day until the school day ends. At which point I have satisfied my obligations to my employer and my husband keeps working until dinner.

We did not move, we did not go live at the beach, we did not hire tutors. Our schedule, honestly, is a lot like the schedules of OTHER PARENTS LIKE US WHO MADE IT WORK!!! It would take me at least three hands to count the number of families who have made similar shifts and whose kids are thriving.

When you have walked in our shoes then you can cast shade. Until then I will judge you for complaining and not making it work, and my judgement is that you have failed. Sure there are some people with extenuating circumstances but mostly ... not.

Most people have fairly regular jobs with fairly regular demands. Those are the people who I think are on here whining and complaining all the time.

As for the first responders we know, they already had plans in place. The first responders we know already had a game plan and they barely batted an eye when Covid hit. Their problems weren't so much the school day as some of them needed coverage after school and in the evenings when they were working at the hospital. We, and others we know, helped out and that made it work.

So stop whining and complaining. Your kids are back in school. I don't care what you think about hybrid or concurrent, I don't care what you think about this past year, I don't care about what you think about next year because I don't care about your opinion. You've proven that you're not cut out to do the job you elected to take, parenting, and I leave you to the hot mess you've created.

But this all takes EFFORT and it's ever so much easier to whine. /s

[Anonymous]

There are some kids for whom it really, really didn't work. I have a kid with anxiety who struggles mightily with authority. In school she'll do what the other kids do. She gets along fine in the classroom. If you put her on a screen she tenses up and can't function. No work gets done. If you try to teach her 1:1 she resist every request and it's nothing but fight after fight. It's been awful. Really, really bad. Lots of tears and so much frustration. No amount of rearranging furniture or bunk beds would fix this problem. She's a kid who really just needs to be in school.

And yes, we'll keep working with her on her issues, but she's 7. Maturity and adaptability isn't her strong suit yet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why everyone is so mad at PP for waking up at 4:30 every day. That's an example of a (pretty hardcore) schedule that worked for them. I've made similar sorts of sacrifices to support at home learning and my kids are okay though it has been a slog. I *have* had to be involved and a general supervisory presence; hands off had not worked, we found that out early on.

It does seem like a lot of the voices you hear complaining about schools not being fully open yet might have more successful children in virtual if the parents who complain over here for 2 hours a day would spend that time with their kids instead.

They're mad because people who outline the sacrifices they made to make it work show up their hysterical claims that OMG TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR MY OWN CHILDREN IN DL IS IMPOSSIBLE! SOMEONE ELSE COME FIX IT FOR ME!!!!"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nope. I think everything has happened how it should have. Was it inconvenient? Yes. Was it ideal? No. I believe it was what we had to do. This was an epic moment in history. I feel grateful that my family is okay, and my heart breaks die those that lost people.

Agreed

This incredibly dismissive to those of us with kids who imploded this year. Inconvenient doesn't even come close. Try apocalyptic. Mental health matters too.

[Anonymous]

I wanted to add that we are basically a family that is always running around like our hair is on fire (turning forms in on time, getting camps line up, getting report cards signed, cleaning the house, remembering what time the bus comes, getting dinner ready on time) but in a way this year was easier for us. There were fewer deadlines and less scrambling around. My kid has anxiety and seemed to have less of that because he was at school less and with the things that make him anxious less. We worked our schedules around his.

Just standing up for the hair on fire families. I appreciate PP's schedule and what she could do with it, that's good planning. We made similar adjustments on the back end instead of the front end and things seemed to work out except I might get dementia because sometime I only slept 4 hours a night. But my kid's grades are fine and he actually reported increased confidence in class as a result of this year, not all due to the covid school-from-home situation, but some. So, yay?

HAIR ON FIRE FAMILIES, REPRESENT!

[Anonymous]

I feel seen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nope. I think everything has happened how it should have. Was it inconvenient? Yes. Was it ideal? No. I believe it was what we had to do. This was an epic moment in history. I feel grateful that my family is okay, and my heart breaks die those that lost people.

Agreed

This incredibly dismissive to those of us with kids who imploded this year. Inconvenient doesn't even come close. Try apocalyptic. Mental health matters too.

Well ma’am, 600k people in this country died and 10 million worldwide. Nobody said it didn’t suck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are some kids for whom it really, really didn't work. I have a kid with anxiety who struggles mightily with authority. In school she'll do what the other kids do. She gets along fine in the classroom. If you put her on a screen she tenses up and can't function. No work gets done. If you try to teach her 1:1 she resist every request and it's nothing but fight after fight. It's been awful. Really, really bad. Lots of tears and so much frustration. No amount of rearranging furniture or bunk beds would fix this problem. She's a kid who really just needs to be in school.

And yes, we'll keep working with her on her issues, but she's 7. Maturity and adaptability isn't her strong suit yet.

Apply for a spot in Fish Tank Mom's school upthread. It's thriving.

[Anonymous]

I guess we'll have the same conversation in different threads until September.

DCUM definitely does represent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nope. I think everything has happened how it should have. Was it inconvenient? Yes. Was it ideal? No. I believe it was what we had to do. This was an epic moment in history. I feel grateful that my family is okay, and my heart breaks die those that lost people.

Agreed

This incredibly dismissive to those of us with kids who imploded this year. Inconvenient doesn't even come close. Try apocalyptic. Mental health matters too.

Well ma’am, 600k people in this country died and 10 million worldwide. Nobody said it didn’t suck.

It only sucked for some. Bars, restaurants, and gyms remained open. Seniors are now vaxxed and out partying. Meanwhile, kids are getting the short end of the stick. K-2, if not all of elementary, should have been back much of the year.