A MILLENNIAL'S POV

Online learning while working from home – worry, guilt, laughter and love

By Kimberly Elliot

Kimberly Elliot is an associate with a Toronto-based marketing agency.

I can be a fretful mother. I hide it really well, but I fret over everything to do with my kids. I fret about their futures, their health, or when they climb to places I can’t reach. I fret when my husband feeds them Kraft Dinner (any food that glows like that has got to be toxic). Worrying is, on some level, molecular in mothers. From the time you learn you are pregnant until, I anticipate, the day you die; it is only a matter of learning to compartmentalize the worry and hide it from your children.

Some days my son blows me away with his fully completed school work, others he shows me that he spent 15 minutes during math class drawing a self-portrait of himself as a teenager with braces.

It’s not my kids’ job to worry, it’s mine. I bottle it all up and let my kids be free. But this past year and learning to live alongside a global pandemic while raising my two young boys – who love people, neighbours, friends, family and their company above all else – has been a constant exercise in coping with worry. So when I was faced with the supremely tough decision of whether or not to send my first-grader to in-person learning in September, my natural reaction was to worry.

WOULD SCHOOL BE SAFE?

If we chose to send him to school, I worried about what school looked like with masked teachers and peers. I worried that if he fell and hurt himself, people might back away instead of lending a hand to help him up. I worried about him catching the virus and getting sick, or struggling to concentrate in class in the midst of constant mask adjustments or discomfort. I worried about the lack of stability that school closures and lockdowns could bring.

Learning at home served a heap of other worries – about how isolation from the school community would affect him mentally, socially and emotionally. I worried that he wouldn’t be engaged in learning through a computer and that he might “fall behind” (whatever that means) and that eventually a reintroduction to in-person school might present challenges that otherwise may not have existed.

A TOUGH DECISION

The decision compounded the entire year’s worries and there was no way to make everyone, or even anyone, happy. Ultimately, it was about choosing the avenue that would provide the most stability and consistency for best coping with the worry.

We chose online learning for our six-year old and opted not to send our three-year old back to daycare.

There is a second state of feeling that is inherent in motherhood – guilt. If life before this decision was consumed by worry, life after would be consumed by guilt. For obvious reasons, I feel guilty that my boys have missed out on a year of finding belonging in places and with people outside of their home.

SCHOOL COMES HOME

Online learning is, for lack of a better word, interesting. Each day brings new surprises. Some days we make it to class right on time and others, we are upwards of 15 minutes late. Some days my son blows me away with his fully completed school work, others he shows me that he spent 15 minutes during math class drawing a self-portrait of himself as a teenager with braces. There are wonderful days when our breaks are spent outside playing basketball or, through the winter months, skating on our backyard rink. Other days, we argue about what’s for snack.

We enjoy our fair share of technical difficulties, meltdowns when breaks are over too soon, and the constant distraction of a rather adorable three-yearold that we are obsessed with. I try to focus on work while I listen to the banter of first-graders returning from lunch with such games as “guess what’s in my hand” and “guess what song I’m thinking about,” I take calls amid gym class when the jumping and rolling in my living room sounds as though the roof is about to cave in.

CHASING A HALF-NAKED TODDLER

I clean up forts made in the den that were part of the social science project of the day. I chase after a half-naked toddler who has raced to join in on the “GoNoodle” dance breaks his brother’s class partakes in. And I take many a break to snuggle both my boys whether they’re happy or sad, read a book whenever they ask, eat some lunch, play “Avengers” or help with a school journal entry.

There is a second state of feeling that is inherent in motherhood – guilt. If life before this decision was consumed by worry, life after would be consumed by guilt.

And I get a day’s work in while I’m at it. It’s a beautiful mess that is equal parts stressful and rewarding – a common theme I’m finding in parenthood. Some days I pat myself on the back and others I hang my head for raising my voice too often and being too quick to turn on the TV to get alone time. But I do all this because I am extremely privileged to even have the choice of whether to send my son to school, or keep him home with me. I have a choice in how I manage my worries about the world around us. And that is something to be incredibly and eternally grateful for.

KIDS WILL BE ALL RIGHT

I wonder if I will look back on these days and laugh about the chaos; forgetting the acuteness of the stress and the worry. I wonder if I’m in the midst of traumatizing both my kids. (Wonder? No, I worry.) I wouldn’t go back and change my decision, though. Despite a year without peers and community, my sons are thriving. They are finding all the love and sense of belonging they need in each other. We are soaking up the time together and getting to know one another in brand new ways. I have gained an entire window into my son’s learning that I wouldn’t have had otherwise; and in doing so learned that he is just all-ways-round an incredible and resilient person.

The experience has been a gift. If I could go back and tell 2020-me anything; as I prepared for the school year ahead, anticipating technical difficulties, exhausting days, stress and guilt over everything my boys might be missing out on; I’d tell myself not to worry at all. The kids will be all right.