Homeschooling Hell

“What is it that you want,” I ask Levi in a tight, hushed tone, like I’m negotiating with a terrorist and not my 4-year-old son. “Candy?”

 “And milk,” he demands, knowing he has the upper hand.

This is what happens when I leave my 4-year-old unattended for 30 seconds. Yup, that’s my $30 mascara.

I rifle through the cupboard to find the last scraps of Easter candy, throw it into a plastic bowl, and shove it on the coffee table. I rush to fill his sippy cup with milk, sloshing the viscous liquid all over the front of my yoga clothes. Then I stick him in front of the TV to watch Trolls World Tour for the fiftieth time, a disturbingly psychedelic film that could very well trigger a flashback from that one time you tried acid in college.

I log into Zoom, shove my earbuds in, and set up my mat in the tiny shred of real estate where there aren’t toys scattered everywhere. I don’t care that it’s freezing cold in my house or that I get a bird’s eye view of how badly I need to vacuum under the couch when I lay on my mat. I don’t care if my pugs molest me the entire time or that Levi thinks it’s fun to jump on top of me while I’m pretzeled into a painful pose as the lethal weapons that are his limbs flail around and threaten to leave me with a black eye.

 I’m going to do my yoga class, god damnit.  

Six weeks later, our schedule consists of loafing around the house in our pajamas until around 2 p.m.

It’s almost laughable now to think about that first week when the stay-at-home order was issued. I had big plans for Mommy & Levi Adventure School. I even busted out the white board and wrote out a daily schedule in pink and black marker, and to make matters worse, took a picture of it and posted it on Instagram. I announced to anyone who would listen, “I think a schedule is super important for him, but it will be good for me, too.” I could teach him things. I could do arts and crafts projects. I know my way around Pinterest.

I did alright the first week. We did hikes, painted rocks, baked Challah bread (though it turned out like a brick and was totally inedible), practiced writing his name and sang the ABCs while we jumped on the trampoline. I got a little cocky, even. I thought, not only am I going to slay this stay-at-home order, I’m going to teach my kid things he could never learn in school. My kid is 4. How hard could it be?

Six weeks later, our schedule consists of loafing around the house in our pajamas until around 2 p.m. Because he refuses to nap, this is also the meltdown hour, which makes it almost impossible for me to get him dressed and out of the house before we both lose our shit/go insane/start breaking stuff. There is a reason, I now understand, why his preschool feeds him at regular two-hour intervals and has a mandatory nap time. Kids this age can turn from adorable creatures into total monsters before you can say, “stop screaming this fucking instant,” no longer caring if you swear, therefore giving them at least one lesson that day in how to behave very badly.

I also work from home and quickly discovered that sitting in front of my computer in short bursts for the amount of time you can neglect your child without worrying about getting a visit from child protective services (at least the one in your conscience) is impossible. As the days turned into weeks, my work began to suffer. After bursting into tears one weekend, my husband arranged to come home early twice a week—giving me all of 6 hours to tackle my workload. Desperate and overwhelmed, I run out the door the second he gets home to get some exercise and much-needed time alone. I’m calling it “the quarantine 15” and for lack of a better description, I feel like shit.

Here’s the thing: our kids know we’re not their real teachers. They know we’re going to be a lot more tolerant of their whiny, shitty behavior than their friends are. I think they also know we’re the ones who have had our privileges taken away, not them. They’re going to be kids, and no matter what the current situation requires, we are still going to be their parents.

Here’s the other thing: kids are a lot more resilient and adaptable than we are. All these kids are in the same boat. These few months are a blip in their school careers. They will get eventually get caught up—and they may even return to school with a new appreciation for their teachers and for the structure of their daily routines they never had before they experienced the alternative of home school.

 It’s us adults we need to worry about.

And as the weeks turn into months, life has taken on a surreal quality, like that place between dreaming and waking where you’re just trying to get your bearings and remember where you are. As soon as something familiar helps to right the ship of your subconscious mind and you’re able to regain some equilibrium, you remember this bizarre and seemingly endless reality we’re living in. The comfort of normalcy has been gradually stripped away and replaced with something uncertain, like an airplane that keeps circling with no explanation from the cockpit about what’s going on.

I am not a parenting expert. I have always relied on my instincts. One thing I truly believe is we have to take good care of ourselves to be able to take good care of our children. And if that means doing yoga in the middle of the living room while your kid watches TV, so be it.

Let’s not be so hard on ourselves. These are unprecedented times and we are all circling around in this together, not sure where and when we’ll land. What we do have control over is our ability to accept that we’re not in control and to surrender. Let’s worry about you for now. The kids are alright.

Counting the days until I can have my roots done,