Welcome to remote learning

 This morning I got up, hobbled out of bed and walked into my sons rooms and game him a kiss on the cheek, and told him time to get up, it’s the first day of 4rth grade... I went over to the kitchen and pressed the on button on my prepared coffee machine, and started boiling water for my oatmeal, and prepared my sons lunch to place in the fridge for later... I wanted to do this, to get back into the habit of just having his lunch already ready. Same with the coffee... there will be no more mornings of figuring it out, I have to just be ready to go...

I’ve got my son situated with breakfast, I am feeling great, and I am determined that no matter what happens, I can do this, and I will stay positive and patient and not lose it... of course however at a few minutes till 8 am, roughly 8:50, I log into my sons online platform for school and nothing is working... Ah probs just a typo, I do it again, nope... nothing nada... I do it again... now I am sweating a little as the minutes of going by, I decide to shoot the teacher a quick message... ok ok I am not he only one dealing with this, so she had a plan... emergency zoom session, so I quickly download Zoom on my sons school issued device... the Zoom App I was told not to bother downloading cause everything would be formatted on this online platform... 

Then I have to get online on my sons device, get into my personal e-mail... then I have to authorize it, cause it’s a device I never use for my personal e-mail and THEN... I am able to get to the e-mail and click the zoom link... 

OK... hard part over... not really... so we have all the kids muted to avoid overflow of sound, makes sense, except some kid, we’ll call her Kid C for future reference, as I am SURE she’ll come up another time in my life... keeps freaking unmuting herself and talking like she’s the only kid in the class, and of course is not talking about anything SCHOOL related... I can see the persistence of the teacher, kindly reminding her that this isn’t a social time, and we need to stay muted unless we have a question, this goes on probably like 3 times... apparently their parents didn’t get the memo that THIS year would not be like LAST year with all the chitty chatty... talking about their dogs and crap that other people can’t afford... 

Ben is struggling paying attention I can tell, but seems to really like the dry erase board the school has provided and while totally NOT listening is drawing all over it, and rubbing off the dried red ink with his fingers.. I am trying to give him other fidget tools, and he finally takes to a fidget spinner, and NOW i know why THOSE are banned at school! Good LAWD those things are flipping loud! I am just barely catching what the teachers are saying and prompting Ben to chill out with the spinner and try to listen to the teachers and his classmates as everyone introduces themselves..

Something I have learned about kids.. they LOVE to talk about themselves... MY goodness we have a narcissistic little future ahead of us... Ben however could not only care less about talking too much to the class, but also could care less listening as the sound of his spinner radiates through the front dining room that has recently been transformed into his classroom, until further notice... 

Meanwhile I am having personal problems in my head.. and getting really frustrated trying to look at some probably online job ideas, and it’s time for break... I am honestly just fed up at this point in my life, I am almost 40 and trying to figure out exactly what I could do long term to provide and help keep our home, and much more going... Without my income we cannot afford what we finally worked so hard to have basically... So I am dealing with that, last week, and now this week... feeling very lowly and semi dramatic..

But we get through the day... we do it, with the hopes and dreams of iPad time dangling over Bens head, and my hoping ill get at least a 15 minutes work out in today... We get off the zoom classes at 12 ish, and go straight to eating some food... after that I give Ben a 10 minute break outdoors and we proceed with the assignments he needs to complete during “independent time” which has to happen now, cause he’s got an ABA session from 2-4, which usually ends a little early, but we have those 2 hours set aside in the event Ben has any problems that persist and run the session longer... Last Monday was so good, and I am glad he had some issues, so she could see the problems right off the bat, and come up with some good strategies, today we started putting those into place... which I was also trying to incorporate over the weekend... All good stuff... Marcus Autism Center is amazing, they are amazing and they really help ME be a better mom all around... 

After therapy, which I am glad Ben actually enjoys on some level, I went back to the school platform and worked on some of the confusion I had had getting him into a recording portion for school presentations. The one he did today was the Brown Bag Activity. 

This is a classic activity I think he does each year, it took me a while to explain the project though, most years he just picks crap from his room and talks about it, this year he had to represent himself and use some items from around the home to explain who he is... this concept became increasingly frustrating for him, as he was just picking stuff from his room, that was just junk, he clearly doesn’t connect with a glowing ball that’s been sitting under his bed for about a month... ha ha ha... So I have a chat with him, explain, you should get a Minecraft toy, Minecraft is your favorite thing ever, and birds, you should get your bird book and talk about all the species of birds we have spotted that you love... It took a while, but he started getting a little bit of what I was putting down. But said he didn’t want to share the bird book cause he think birds are only something girls like... sigh... but was able to help him pick out better items, and he did pick out his St. Simons lighthouse figure that he got a few years ago... I told him how special that was, because we have walked to the top now three times... so it’s a very special memory, which he did talk about in his three minute speech. 

It was sweet watching him record himself a couple times, and clearly trying harder on the second go around, and looking to me for approval. I told him it was great! 

All in all it wasn’t an easy day, but after looking over the platform, I saw where I went wrong a few times in navigating it, and hopefully tomorrow will be smoother...

It’s wild to think so many moms and dads, working and not working, are figuring this out... how some people have had to walk away from jobs just to be there for their kids, and others are having to juggle work and school, and some lucky parents were already stay at home moms or dads to begin with... whatever your situation, none of this is easy, and this has hands down been the strangest first day of school my child will probably ever experience in his life... And so many others... this is a moment kids will remember... It’s interesting that our school chose remote schooling but I still see parents who had the choice to do in school...