Learner Dad: There seems to more focus on GAA matches than a six-year-old meeting up with his friends
'I hate that he’s cut off from his buddies – I used to love the way they all looked out for each other in the park after school on a Friday.'
I’m múinteoir Pat for 2 of the 5 days in the school week in our place and it isn’t all bad. I actually enjoy it after a good night’s sleep, and when my morning coffee gives me a lift rather than a lull ( it can happen sometimes, caffeine is weird that way.) It’s easier now than back in January when we were all getting used to logging into Seesaw and how-to-do-your-maths videos that played on one device but weren’t supported on another. (That screaming noise was from our house, in case my neighbours are wondering. It doesn’t take much to trigger me these days.)
Anyway, it’s running smoothly now and some mornings it’s just a matter of getting the kids to the kitchen table and off they go, so I can catch up on watching kittens on a Zoom meeting. And then the mid-term break comes along. I usually like the mid-term and Easter breaks, because it gives us a few days off the morning rush, with lunch- making and ‘did anyone see my other shoe?’ . But we don’t have that now anyway. All we have to do is make sure they put on a different pyjama top for the morning Zoom call, in case word gets out that they’ve been in the same clothes for 14 days (like their parents.)
In other words, mid-term is a pain. I was s tarting to enjoy the morning school work, it’s nice the way they learn how to write their names in Chinese and teach me the Irish word for squirrel. A week off means days without structure and a deadly game of Weather Bingo because it’s February, so if the rain doesn’t force your indoors , that wind from Siberia probably will. I can see them becoming world-class at Minecraft.
Our eight-year-old does her tables as part of schoolwork every day. I say 12 + 4, she pauses, gives a little giggle as she figures it out, and says 16. I turn into Jeremy Clarkson. Or at least the way I imagine Clarkson is with his kids, giving them the old ‘it wasn’t like this in my day’ lecture four times a day.
I thought the whole point of tables was that you learned them off. And then I turn my back on primary school for 45 years, only to find that everything has changed and kids these days seem to figure things out in their heads. This is an outrage, I don’t say to my eight-year-old, because I don’t want her to think I’m daft. To be honest, I’m not sure if they’re supposed to know their tables off or not. We have computers for that kind of stuff now, to free up growing brains for problem-solving and creative work. Learning stuff off seems like a waste of valuable growing-up time, so I’m happy to let her figure it out for herself. But the whole episode made me feel very old.
I don’t know what the government plans to do in terms of lifting restrictions. There seems to more focus on inter-county GAA matches than a six-year-old meeting up with his friends. Ou r little guy has two things that he loves to talk about – Minecraft and his friends in school.
He’s down to one talking point these days, which makes me feel sad, and not just because I get to hear a lot about The Wither. (It’s a Minecraft thing.) I hate that he’s cut off from his buddies – I used to love the way they all looked out for each other in the park after school on a Friday.
My eight-year-old is more self-contained, but she can thrive in a crowd as well, particularly if it’s a gang of boys re-enacting a fight from WWE. They’re missing all of this, and it doesn’t last forever. My six-year-old has a birthday in late March. I’ve seen the Hold Firm signs on the motorway and all that, but if there is any way we can stretch the rules, he’ll have a friend or two in our back garden on his big day. There’s only so much of this people can take.
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