I’m scared of failing my son as a single mum
I have been feeling increasingly anxious about homeschooling. As a mum of a new preppy, I’ve been disappointed that my boy’s introduction to education has been so disrupted.
I will admit I’ve been avoiding until now thinking through in detail how I’ll educate him from home. I felt daunted and when I thought about it, all I could hear in my head was “how the hell am I supposed to do this, especially as a single mum?”
One of the things I have learnt over the past few years, though, is that if you are avoiding something, it’s because you feel unsafe. What was making me scared?
"How will I get him to work?"
The list of answers quickly followed suit: my five-year-old won’t even listen to me when I ask him to tidy his room, let alone commit to sitting down and doing hours of school work in his home environment. How would I get him to concentrate? What if he doesn’t? It’s not like I can send him to the principal’s office!
He loves his teacher and his new friends and although the holidays have been fun, the thought of us being isolated together homeschooling for days on end made me feel like sticking a fork in my eye.
How would I get all my work and life admin done, connect with my neighbours, family, and friends, look after myself, AND homeschool my son indefinitely?
What if he misses out on important content, and how will I know? What long-term effects could or would this have on his academic abilities?
There was too much pressure
I have the same worries as everyone about my parenting: like my lack of imagination around lunchboxes (Vegemite and cheese sandwiches every day for lunch for 12 years is fine isn’t it??!!) and what constitutes unhealthy amounts of screen time... but the pressure of being in charge of his learning made me feel me tight in the chest.
As any single parent knows, we rely heavily on outside support, whether that’s from family and friends, neighbours or the school community, and I’ll be honest when I say I’ve been feeling alone and somewhat scared.
But, after I rattled off all my worries to a friend and dug a little deeper, I realised that what I was really scared about was failing my son.
After my little meltdown, I took a deep breath and gave myself a gentle talking to. Firstly, I realised I am definitely not the only one thinking this way. Instead of worrying about how this was all going to work, and what I’m not able to do, I started thinking about what was important and what is actually possible.
It’s evident that our kids are not going to have the ‘normal’ school year we had hoped and will miss out on various parts of the school curriculum no matter what stage of learning they’re at. (I really feel for the kids doing Year 12. The stakes are very high for them.)
When I calmed down and thought it through, I realised that what I want my son to learn more than ever is how to thrive in a crisis. I may not have a degree in primary school maths, but I have bags of experience and wisdom to share about managing big life challenges.
What our kids need now is to feel empowered
They need to have a safe and harmonious home life. I realised that if I’m climbing the walls with worry, my boy certainly won’t feel calm and grounded… let alone be able to learn properly.
How I am will have a direct influence on how he is. So I’m going to make a conscious effort to reduce my stress in what is an uncertain and anxiety-ridden time and focus instead on making home fun and happy, even without the usual support around us.
Instead of worrying about the logistics and the disruption, I realised that what matters most is resilience: mine and my son’s. That’s what we can really teach our kids right now. Yes, there will be arguments, tantrums even, energy to burn off, and tears, but this won’t be forever. Like all challenging things, it will pass. Who knows what silver linings might emerge?
Here are the ideas I came up with to make this time more bearable and successful - for me AND my boy:
When I feel anxious, I seek to understand what’s bothering me. For me, a lack of certainty really gets to me. I know I’m triggered by this, so when it happens I try to stop avoiding it and tackle it with a problem-solving approach, rather than taking a victim mentality.
Talk it through with a friend. I realised I needed help working through the details and getting the right software for online learning, so I asked a friend who’s good with computers to walk it through with me step by step. This made a HUGE difference.
I’ve accepted that for the time being, I might get behind on the washing or the house might not be as tidy as normal. My boy will appreciate spending time at home with me more than a perfectly clean house (even if we do have to turn our undies inside out from time to time!).
Good is better than perfect. Take the pressure off yourself: we are in a global pandemic! Now is not the time for unreachable standards.
Include your kids in the activities you do for yourself to relax (not including the adults’ only ones of course!). I’ve been doing the ‘kids’ meditations on the free Insight Timer App with my five-year-old when things start to get all too much.
Explore ways for others to help you. Could grandparents log in to support online learning via FaceTime or other means? Could your kids chat about what they’ve learnt with a family friend?
Think creatively about how you could help other people in this situation, as well as how you can seek help. The sister of a friend of mine is a trainee teacher who’s now out of work. She’ll be giving me some tips and help with keeping my boy occupied. This is win-win-win for her, me and my son.
This article was first published in Kidspot.
