“I told you, my name is Tuesday.”
Not one of my children.
My kids are currently playing a complicated retail-based game which involves many changes of outfit and comedy wigs. One of them is saying, “Hello Georgie Brown,” while the other one has just replied, “I told you, my name is Tuesday.” I know this is coming out on a Tuesday, but it’s Sunday right now. I think so? I’m pretty sure it’s Sunday? The days are blurring together.
The kids are really leaning into this lockdown learning. They’re missing their friends, but they are kind of loving the massive chill factor. That’s because I’ve more or less stopped checking that they’re doing their work. Instead, my strategy is to leave them to their own devices and email the teachers to tell them what a great job they (the teachers, not my kids) are doing. Everyone is a lot happier than they were at the beginning of the lockdown when I was trying to make sure I was doing all my own work and the kids were handing in everything online too.
I’ve managed to justify my hands-off parenting strategy in the same way I justify all my other self-serving and lazy life choices: by reading loads of articles that I can tangentially use to support my decisions. If you’re feeling like a bad parent for insufficient nagging and online school supervision, just google ‘helicopter parenting’ and you’ll be able to read about why being a bit hands-off is doing your children a massive favour.
They’re learning to invent games about people called Tuesday and navigate around the neighbourhood. Are they doing their home schooling, though? Well, they’re doing enough that nobody has emailed me to check if they’re alive, so I’m assuming all is well.
I think they’ll be back at school soon anyway, and all this will be like some kind of distant fever-dream to them in a few years. Like when you’ve been on holiday to some national landmark and a year later all they remember are those particularly delicious jelly snakes they had on the drive home, you know, the pink-and-blue ones? With the sugar all over them? Yes, you must remember Mum!
A year from now I’ll say, “Remember coronavirus?” and they’ll say, “Oh yeah, that time we stayed home for two months and I got a Kit Kat from the supermarket every week. And you made those horrible wraps that were all wet inside and fell apart. Don’t make those again. What’s for dinner tonight?”
It’s a luxury being able to just focus on the day-to-day pleasures. Lucky little Tuesdays.