Kate Hawkesby: A shout out to the working-from-home parents

Not everyone is cut out for the role of working from home parent, and surrogate teacher. Photo / Stephen Parker

COMMENT:

Today, hopefully, sees almost the end of a two-and-a-half-week stint of lockdown 2.0 for Aucklanders.

I say hopefully because, although we're supposed to go back to level 2 on Monday, I've learned to take nothing for granted.

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Optimistically, businesses are emailing for re-bookings on appointments as they look to reopen; restaurants are offering bookings for tables; the beauticians, nail bars and hairdressers are dusting off the tools and keeping their fingers crossed.

Cafes are rearranging their premises into tables with bigger gaps between them.

But I wanted to give a special shout out today to parents. Especially working parents.
This has been a juggle and a half hasn't it?

It is no easy task managing all of the demands of kids at school - the homework, the projects, the stress, the extra curriculars and the assignments.

But it's a thousand times harder when they're at home. And even harder than that if you're trying to work from home too.

We've had three laptops crammed around one kitchen table at our place as we all try to work in close proximity of each other.

I know it must be even harder for those households that don't have such organised online learning or the ability to get online due to lack of laptops or Wi-Fi.

My daughter's online learning has been well organised by her school but the workload seems a lot more than usual.

I'm not sure if this is down to schools not wanting to get behind on the curriculum too much, or whether working from home just makes it more intense, but it's been full on.

I'd say she's worked harder at home than she has at school, often working through her breaks and long after the bell would have rung.

I don't doubt the teachers aren't working hard, too, to keep providing all this work and to keep up with marking it.

But the whole dynamic at home changes when everybody's thrust in each others faces, all trying to work and stay on task.

Zoom meetings are a juggle with kids and dogs in the background, getting normal tasks done seems a lot harder when you're managing kids as well.

And don't get me started on when the Wi-Fi goes down. The stress of being offline, which happened to us a few times over this period, was through the roof. We became suddenly acutely aware of how tenuous our link to the outside world was – literally just between us and a modem.

So hats off to all the parents and caregivers who've been trying to hold down jobs from home while also playing school teacher.

And of course enormous gratitude to the teachers, who'll hopefully take back the reins Monday.

Fingers crossed.

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