Working from home and at the same time monitoring the homeschooling of your kids can be challenging and tearing on your nerves, and add on to the pandemic stress and routine disruption burdens and uncertainty intolerance.

Here are three ways to handle the stress of homeschooling effectively:

 

1. Relax your standards

          This is not a normal time, it is a crisis time, and holding to high standards can result in frustration.

You have to set up a realistic goal. You can follow theses steps:

• I am not homeschooling, I am doing my best to help my children learn at home during a crisis

• I am not working from home , I am doing my best to work from home in extra-ordinary settings

• I may not be as productive as normal because this time is not normal. I will focus on what can I accomplish in the next 24 hours and let go of what I cannot accomplish

 

2. Establish structure:

              Even that you and family at home, a structure appropriate to the situation has to be established. Having a regular routine and structure gives the sense of control and predictability to everyone and helps reduce the impact of uncertainty.

Don’t try to impose your ideas about the structure and don’t make it rigid. Take everyone else opinion and agree on a final schedule; this will eliminate the resistance you may encounter form kids and partner.

It is ok if your schedule doesn’t go to plan every day, every day can be an opportunity for fine-tuning, while rigidity is a recipe for failure.

Your job as a parent is not to recreate a school environment for your children but to help them learn and obtain necessary knowledge.

Your routine should include family connection, fun, hand-on activities, and exercise

 

This a video on how to build a routine and make emotional checkpoints in a day:

 

3. Attend to children emotional needs:

          

                  Complete or partial lockdown is not only affecting adults, but children too. Isolation has its pull on everyone in the household.

Remember, your child may communicate through behavior when he is having hard time. Experiencing big feelings could show through melting-down, tantrums and frustrations.

 

When the child is overwhelmed with emotions, he will not be able to use his rational and reasoning capabilities, and will not be able to handle his lessons or assignments.

If you notice that your child is becoming emotional, practice empathy. Focus first on calming him down. He might refuse to do an assignment and give any excuse, don’t insist on his compliance with completing his assignment, just empathize with him.

First calm him down. Show support and understanding. And let him express himself.

You may remind yourself of the following:

• My kid is not giving me a hard time, he is having a hard time

• Behavior is communication, and my child is telling me that he needs my support at this point of time

• Teaching my child about behavior expectations should never take place in the hot moment. Priority is to calming him down