Close to that. He turned 5 in September, so he’s just at the very start of his school journey and has only been there a (very) few weeks (due to the class having to isolate, various absences and now the school shutdown).
I’m not (personally) worried about his learning. He enjoys learning and he has always been the driving force at learning new things, because he seems to have a great enjoyment of learning a new concept, and then likes to share that with his daddy, or Nana over FaceTime. The dinosaur table was just because he’d made a drawn-up table of weights and measurements of various dinosaurs from some fact cards we’d printed, and I know that working on the laptop is still a ‘treat’ to him. As Russell works from home on his, Darwin sees it as very grown up, so to him it is pure play.
That’s my only sadness. Being an only child right now is tough in that there’s no play between peers. He can’t even see another child.
In all other ways I’m not worried about his time at home. I am happy for Darwin to play all day, but I think having some tasks and activities to do (and if we call that ‘work’, so be it), really helps break up the day when there is parent work, and meetings, and trying to carry on with life still happening all around. It is exhausting, though. I ask to put a movie on for an hour each afternoon before I start tea, just to sit still a while.
I’m not finding friends comparing workloads, etc helpful at all. I like seeing people share their successes, and understand when people share their difficult days, too. We have both, like everyone else. I don’t think people having digs at others for how much they’ve achieved is helpful at all, because nobody is finding this easy. We all wish our kids were at school, and safe, and that we weren’t in this situation. I think digs at people that ‘try too hard’ or ‘achieve too much’ are likely as damaging as digs at people for not doing enough. We have high achievement days, and low achievement days... except we don’t. Low achievement days are playing with Lego, doing baking, sometimes *shock* D being asked to play on his own for a bit (I was really unwell last Friday, for example), and really, none of those days are low achievement, unless you are measuring them in ‘number of worksheets’, which is stupid. If we had a safe outdoor space I’d totally be out there for as much time as we could be.
Anyway, good luck to everyone today. I hope it is one that is low on stress and big on support from partners, friends, teachers, kids, etc.