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Adults balance roles as parents, teachers while working from home
SIKESTON — More than two weeks since the close of schools due to the coronavirus, many adults are now having to balance their roles as parents and teachers while many are still trying to work from home as well.
“It’s been tough,” said Michelle Reynolds who stays home with her two sons, ages 8 and 4. “The days are long. But I’m blessed and grateful to have the opportunity to keep my children isolated as much as possible.”
Reynolds said the hardest part is adapting to a new routine.
“Clearly they are in a different environment and have ‘Mrs. Mommy’ as a teacher, not just mom,” Reynolds said. “I’m having to discipline them and keep them focused, while also ‘learning’ to be a teacher and balancing my work duties and the regular household duties. It’s like three jobs. They are also frustrated by not being around their friends.”
Nikki Carr is working from home with her 10-year-old son and 11-year-old stepdaughter and said it has been challenging to keep a regular schedule of sleep, meals, walks, school work and chores while having the option of staying in bed most of the day.
“So far we have been able to keep ourselves busy every day due to having nice weather and getting to be outside,” Carr said. “If I don’t keep my kids busy they will want to stay on their phones playing games all day so I have been trying to keep them as busy as possible.”
Josh Mills and his wife Brittney already worked from home but now they are trying to balance work with their three sons, ages 13, 11 and 4, and 6-year-old daughter.
“It’s been a challenge because we both do a lot of phone calls or Zoom video conference calls, and keeping things as quiet as we can is sometimes a joy,” Mills laughed. “I usually give a pre-cursor to my meetings that I’m hosting or joining – ‘Just a heads up, I have four kids and a dog. The dog will probably bark at our neighbor’s dog, and my kids will come sit on my lap and ask for something, and stare at all of you.’ Generally, that’s 100% correct – for every meeting.”
Tara Hunter has been working from home with her 7-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter and said it has been more challenging than expected.
“Our son has school work to complete each week day and I have office hours to keep each weekday and still have regular project calls and deadlines to meet,” Hunter said. “The biggest challenges have been getting all of us to stay on any kind of schedule, and to keep them from eating junk and watching TV all day.”
She said she and her sons have been incorporating fun activities into their days, making volcanoes, puffy sidewalk paint, salt dough Easter eggs while also taking advantage of online activities such as story time with the Sikeston Public Library, the web events being offered by the St. Louis Aquarium, and even the fire truck tour that the Cape Girardeau Fire Department did.
“My husband and I are trying to help reinforce their school learned with life lessons also - for instance, my oldest is learning to measure ingredients when we cook,” Reynolds said.
Carr said her kids have enjoyed making forts and taking walks while even befriending some animals in the neighborhood while the kids have been making their own fun at home too.
“The kids have especially became in love with a couple dogs and a couple horses,” Carr said. “Now that the animals know us so well as soon as they see us coming down the road they run to the fence to get love and attention from the kids. One morning we walked through the house to discover a donkey and cow had somehow gotten into our backyard. They had spent hours back there playing and eating all our grass until their owners finally found them.”
Hunter said she plans a few activities every day for her children and then tells them what is planned for the next day to give them something to look forward to. She said they watch Mass online on Sunday mornings, spend a lot of time outdoors and just try to stay active.
“They miss their grandparents and cousins and friends, but we’ve been doing a lot of FaceTime,” Hunter said. “We’ve been staying busy, and they’ve really handled it better than I thought they would so far.”
Along with trying to teach and work, parents are being faced with trying to help their children cope with a situation, that in many cases, they don’t fully understand.
“We’ve talked a lot lately with our oldest two boys about trying to just be patient with us and patient with their younger siblings,” Mills said. “I tell myself often that they’re all young and don’t understand all of this going on – because frankly at 36, I don’t either. It’s a whole new adventure for all of us – but we’re trying to navigate it in real time, with real emotions, while being considerate of one another.”
Hunter said she and her husband try to keep things as normal as possible and don’t talk about the news or their concerns in front of their children.
“We try to answer any questions they have as honestly as we can, and reassure them that this is not forever,” Hunter said. “We don’t want them to be anxious or worried.”
Carr said her children are old enough to understand why they should be staying home but that are somewhat anxious of the unknown and what will happen with school.
“With some reassurance and ideas on what the schools might do and being honest about the possibility that they might not go back to school seem to ease their mind,” Carr said. “I feel like families with small children, who are too young to understand what is really going on and why we have to stay at home are probably having a harder time coping.”
Reynolds said a lot of times her children are doing fine adjusting to the changes but that it can also be difficult for them at times.
“I often see/sense their frustration, especially with my 4 year old, primarily from the change in routine and lack of structure,” Reynolds said. “We try to get all of our school done in the mornings, and then the afternoons are more relaxing, but I try to sneak in fun learning such as episodes of Magic School Bus or online resources like ABC Mouse that are fun but educational for the kids.”
While helping their children cope, parents are also trying to cope themselves with the pandemic and the stressful time that has been created.
Hunter said she tries to stay off social media and not read the news obsessively while trying to cope with everything that is going on.
“There are days that I feel good about things and then there are really hard days,” Hunter said. “We are giving each other a lot of grace. Our daughter tells us every day that she isn’t tired of staying home yet.”
Mills said that he has told his family that this situation may just be God helping people get their priorities back in check as a nation and world.
“We now have an opportunity to lead our families each week in being intentional about how we share the Gospel and how we grow in our walk with Christ,” Mills said. “It’s actually quite the opportunity if we take it and use it.”
“I’m trying to remind myself that this is a season of life and that in the grand scheme of things, I’m really fortunate to be able to stay home with the kids while also doing my job,” Reynolds said. “I’m hopeful that years down the road, they will look back at this time and have some great memories.”
And while Mills would normally be making memories by coaching his sons’ baseball teams, they are now making memories in other ways, flying kites, cooking together and even teaching his older boys to grill, things they normally wouldn’t make time for.
He said he has even thought about documenting his family and some of the things that have happened while in the quarantine.
“Sometimes we wonder if we’ve officially ‘lost it,’ like I’m sure other parents do as well,” Mills laughed. “Our 4-year old decided to moon the folks driving down the road from our bay window, I flew a kite into the tree right after telling my daughter how not to do just that same thing, we broke a ride-toy four blocks over and I rode it halfway home much to my wife’s displeasure.
“But man, I miss baseball. My kids. The Cardinals. All of it.”