Lockdown Diaries • Week one: school closures

Let us introduce you to Marie. Marie was once a participant in our BeeZee Ladies programme, and then joined BeeZee Families with her 9 year old son Keane. Now she works for us – many of you may have spoken to her on the phon, as she’s our Admin & First Impressions! She answers the phone and takes care of handling referrals.

Like all of us at BeeZee Bodies, and probably like many of you – Marie is working from home at the moment, trying to juggle being a mum, a teacher and a worker all at once! She’ll be writing her ‘Lockdown Diaries’ each week to share her experiences with other parents in her position!

Sunday night I thought; “yep, I’ve got this home schooling and working from home thing. We can do this – bring it on!” 

Boy was I wrong.  

Fast forward to Monday at 9.30am and I needed a paracetamol – which I couldn’t take as we’re in short supply! 

My 9 year old had different ideas on how this home schooling thing was going to work. I’m no teacher, and he’s not used to me teaching him either. So after all the screaming had been done, we sat down over a brew and squash and came to a compromise (using the conflict management training we learnt at BeeZee Families a few years before).  

Together, we set out a timetable for each day – including time for each subject, breaks, lunch, exercise and finish time. We agreed to make our usual packed lunched every morning and leave them in the fridge, and that his usual school day snack would remain the same.  

Then we managed to get some work done. I sat with him doing my work, and helped when he needed. We even managed to get out to the park to exercise ourselves and the dog too – sussed this! 

Monday evening, we heard the Prime Minister announce that the UK would go into full lockdown – and for a very good reason.  

But we’ve still managed to get out every day to exercise. Instead of using the park climbing frames we have taken a ball to the park, rode our bikes or walked the dog; keeping a good distance from others of course. We’re also lucky to have a reasonable sized garden so that we can play in our own outside space. 

So far, so good – but we’ve only got through just one week of who knows how many. I’m going to have to rely on social media to keep the momentum going. I’ve already seen some fantastic ideas online (we’ve joined the BeeZee Families Facebook community group which is for anyone who has completed or is signed up for a BeeZee Families programme!). We just need to remember not to put too much pressure on our kids, or ourselves. Doing something is better than nothing – keep it fun and keep them active!