When COVID-19 began and I took my Kid out of school to family in the bush, and all my focus was on keeping him happy and healthy

And for the most part, he was. He spent the mornings studying and the afternoons outside gardening or bushwalking and the evenings sharing a meal and reading and playing board games.

I tried to find ways to keep him feeling protected and loved and safe. I scheduled phone calls with his friends and teacher. Took him for walks into the forest. Played board games with him for hours on rainy days. Read all kinds of books with him

And yes, I had a fucking terrible time but my Kid was okay. My family was pretty horrid to me tbh

And then I couldn’t take it anymore and we came back to Melbourne and yes, things were weird and restrictive but... school eventually went back. We got a routine going in our little apartment and focused on stuff we could do rather than what we couldn’t

And I didn’t really think at first about how despite school being back, that things aren’t normal. I think I was just so relieved not to be doing childcare 24/7

But as the term has gone on, it’s become really obvious things aren’t ok and it’s not going back to normal. Some kids at his school seem to be quite disturbed by the disruption and it’s spiralling a bit. Acts of senseless mean behaviour that then echos

A friend got bullied. Really bullied, viciously. And then the next day that kid turned around and picked on my Kid. Really pushed his buttons in an obvious way, looking to upset him. It’s not a common experience for my Kid at school

And they don’t seem to be sticking to any kind of curriculum. That’s worried me to the point where I decided to start paying for a maths tutor, not because he’s behind - he’s fine - but because I don’t feel like he’s learning anything at school

And when my Kid is intellectually bored, he’s unhappy

Also a lot of the day seems to be dedicated to hygiene and crowd classroom control. Just calming the kids down. “Mum? At maths time at school today our teacher took us outside and made us throw a ball around.”

And my Kid is annoyed and despite what a tough shell he has ... he’s dismayed. Because he expected school to go back and ... things to go back to normal. And it’s weirding him out that things aren’t.

I daydream sometimes about a world where my Kid could learn in a room with no more than 15 other kids, just a set curriculum. Maybe only half days but... a proper curriculum, with a focus on core subjects

And yeah, he’s doing Khan Academy nightly maths sessions on top of weekly maths tutoring and he reads science books for fun but... I wish he was in a less chaotic environment at school atm

I know that things are likely to continue to be weird for a while to come. I haven’t managed to think up a personal solution beyond “win the lottery, pull the Kid out of school and hire the best tutors in town for him for five hours a days.” And that’s not going to happen

Or “win the lottery, send the Kid to the private school that costs $22k p/annum.” Which is also not going to happen

What worries me is the long-term psychosocial impact. If school is stressful and miserable and he’s getting second-hand trauma via other kids... I dunno. I worry that being back is doing more harm than good. But I also can’t keep him home and get anything done myself

One of the things I told him before he started back at school was to remember that he was the only child I knew from his school who spent those first 2.5 months of COVID-19 away in the country-side

...running around in the bush, eating fresh bread, picking pears in the orchard, weeding, playing in the forest, sitting by a camp fire eating hot cheese jaffles. I still don’t know if he understands how bad things may have been for others in his class

Anyway the class seems to have spent a lot of time this term focused on green capitalism, designing tshirts for http://HUMIFORM.org . Utopia isn’t going to be a achieved with a start-up pitch

At some point, three generations of people are simultaneously going to realise things are not going to work out and ethical entrepreneurship isn’t going to save them

Side-note: a few locked accounts (both parents and teachers) commented on this thread, saying they’re seeing signs of regression in kids

“This thread is the height of privilege, kids in war zones go through all kinds of things and...”

Uuuuhhh eeerrmmm