Like most parents I know, I started our family’s mandatory hiatus from school due to the COVID-19 outbreak with the best-laid plans. By which I mean the best plans I could come up with in two days – a pretty color-coded homeschooling schedule that I downloaded from a Facebook parenting group. I was going to do everything I could to ensure that my five kids (ages 3-14) had the best educational experience possible during this weird time. I mean, I am a creative, college-educated, relatively-fun person. I could do this. It was going to be OK.
Narrator: it would not be OK.
Flash forward three weeks (or four, I’m really not sure anymore), and I can pretty much throw the remnants of that plan straight out the window. I want to quit, and not in the polite, give a 2-week notice and get a glowing reference from my boss kind of way. I want to swear, weep, slam doors, and scream, “I quit,” like a mom who is absolutely not cut out for homeschooling, especially not homeschooling five very different kids – each with different needs and abilities, and often requiring time and assistance beyond my capacity to give.
