As a home school mom for over 23 years and a professional academic & career advisor, I would like to share my personal and professional advice for parents with kids at home temporarily from school:
- Keep to a new weekday schedule: Have set times for waking & sleeping, have regular meal times. This will help your family stay grounded and feel in control of the day.
- Spend time outside, everyday. Take walks, go for a picnic or plant a new garden.
- Enjoy your weekends as usual, even though you are spending most time at home. Have fun weekend plans, whether it’s having a family pizza & game night on Friday evenings or a Saturday evening popcorn & movie night.
- For students who have school work to complete, it’s best to schedule work to be done on weekday mornings and early afternoons.
Now is a great time for students to learn how to:
-Prepare meals and follow recipes
-Do laundry and other tasks to care for themselves and others
-Complete small household projects & repairs
-Help people in need
-Research future careers
-Research colleges
It is also a great time to have fun with your kids and teach them resilience. It’s a time where old and new hobbies can be explored and some competitive board games can begin. Movies and video games can be enjoyed as a family and just maybe we can all learn something new across generations. So take out the old sewing machine and teach your kids how it works, pull out pictures when you were young and share old stories. This is the time to come together, as families, as neighbors and as communities. Let’s show our kids how grateful we are for them and all that we can enjoy together. This is a time to change to a new normal and to appreciate what we have at this moment. It will be a temporary situation, let’s make the best of it!
Most importantly, our kids need to learn to be aware of the situation and still not live in fear.The best we can do is to be prepared to care for ourselves and one another while still enjoying each and every moment.
As parents, we are seeing things we may have not seen before and our kids are learning from us as we go through this new process. What do you want to teach them about you? How about teaching them that we can’t let this rattle us, that we will be resilient together, and perhaps we can make the world a better place in the process.
Susan Shomali
Owner/Academic & Career Advisor
