Gold Coast education: Senior reporter Emily Toxward writes about juggling full-time work and taking care of three kids “learning at home”

Senior reporter Emily Toxward doesn't have time to ensure her kids are learning at home, so she does the next best thing, makes them fend for themselves

WEEK one of “learning from home” is done, or as I like to call it, “do what you can without my help and if that fails play Plants vs Zombies 2 on the Xbox”.

Hang on one second I’ve lost my train of thought, my son just walked in to ask if he could have Nutella on more than one of the pancakes his sister made them for lunch. I said yes.

My trio are schooling, feeding and fending for themselves right now, and screen time is earned by doing the dishes, laundry and vacuuming. That is what learning at home looks like at my place.

I can hand-on-my-heart say I have not helped them for more than 10 minutes this entire week. Suffice to say when they tell me they’re done, I don’t look up from my computer to check, I merely say “well done, now go and play outside for 30 minutes and then you can watch a documentary on whales”.

As you can tell learning at home is going ridiculously well. I can’t imagine they’re learning much, but I’m managing to work full-time.

An Anzac Day banner made by my children instead of learning from home. Pictured left to right is Maddison, 12, Oliver, 8 and Hunter, 10. Both Australian and New Zealand flags are represented because they were born in Australia to New Zealand parents.

Sure, my sons have rated my teaching ability a disgraceful 2 out of 10, but it’s a fair call because they are doing it themselves thanks to exceptional resources from their teachers, one of whom sends a daily joke.

Yesterday’s was a cracker: “why did the fish blush? Because it saw the ocean’s bottom.” It had my Year 5 smiling from ear to ear. And that’s the key I believe, not getting worked up or stressed about our new normal.

Despite being a product of the private school system, I’m a proud state school parent who knows the intense pressure our government employees are under, mainly from parents worried their kids will fall behind.

But in the grand scheme of things, it’s only 25 schooling days out of a possible 2160 that they are not being taught in classrooms.

So maybe be a little kinder to yourself and especially to teachers who are arguably the most overworked people right now, well aside from those who make flour.

Like my wise 72-year-old dad says, “everything is a stage, and just remember, it won’t be like this forever”.