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When I think back to the rosy first few days and weeks of lockdown, I remember the great intentions I had. I was going to smash home learning with the twiglets, I was going to get fit and healthy, I was going to relish all the lovely family time together… Fast forward to now and it’s fair to say things *may* have slipped just a little. So I thought I’d take a little tongue-in-cheek look at all the ways in which my parenting standards have lowered over lockdown. Enjoy!
1. Home learning
“Ok we’ve done half an hour today, that’ll do…”
Oh we started off so well with the home learning. So full of promise…
On Week 1 I made up a beautiful colour-coded timetable with slots for short fun activities covering different areas of the curriculum. We never stuck to it super rigidly but we followed it roughly. The twiglets were super keen and loved Mummy School. I really enjoyed getting organised and printing off lots of resources for them about whichever fun topic we were looking at that week.
Fast forward to Week 12 or so and we were lucky if we were scraping in an hour each day. Every morning I was frantically scrabbling around trying to print off worksheets last minute. Basically none of us could be A*SED!
All I can say is thank f**k they’re back at school now!
2. Physical activity
‘Ah f**k it, just go run round the garden a few times – that’ll do!’
We had such good intentions at the start of lockdown. Every morning or every other morning we’d be there in our gym clothes ready and waiting for Joe Wicks at 9am – me included! We were making up our own obstacle courses and all sorts!
Joe rarely graces our TV screen anymore. And if he does, there’s invariably a lot of moaning, the twigs will join in for about three minutes then get bored, and, well, my gym kit hasn’t seen the light of day for a while now!
I did actually start running about halfway through lockdown!! Shocker I know. I mean, that is a good indicator of just how DESPERATE I was for a bit of me time!! It’s died a death now though as I’m basically an old woman whose knees are shot to buggery 🙁 Can’t say I’m thaaat devastated tbh…
3. Screen time
“It’s fine that you’ve been on your iPad for 11 hours – it’s educational anyway innit…”
I used to be fairly strict about screen time – not ridiculously so but fairly. I tried to not make it into a big deal. Tried to not use it as a bargaining tool or treat it as a reward. The twigs were allowed a maximum of an hour a day on their tablets, and on plenty of weekdays they wouldn’t really have them at all.
Then lockdown happened. And their daily maximum allowed usage time quickly went up. I justified it as being educational but really I know full well they play all kinds of mindless rubbish on them. All age-appropriate of course – no blood or zombies or anything yet! If anything they favour really irritating squeaky, plinky-plonky games aimed at preschoolers (kill me!)
4. Snacks
“Oh go on then, just have another snack…”
My resistance to the snack whinge is lower than it’s ever been. Hearing it constantly all day every day for the last three or four months has meant my defences are now practically non-existent.
Whenever we go back to something like normal, I’m going to have to somehow try and wean these little snack junkies off their fixes!
5. Cooking
“Yes I KNOW you had fish fingers last night as well…”
The twiglets’ meals have become more and more unimaginative throughout lockdown. As with everything else, I started off with great intentions and was doing quite a bit of batch cooking and making interesting recipes for them.
It’s all gone completely t*ts up now though and if they only have fish fingers once in a week, then that is a GOOD week!
6. Baking
‘Oh dear, we couldn’t get flour again, never mind!’
Ok hands up – who baked banana bread at the start of lockdown?
Yep me too! And at Easter we made an awesome Creme Egg chocolate brownie and rice crispie cakes (not sure they even count as baking but hey!)
This one may not apply to lots of you, but I don’t generally do all that much baking with the twigs. I had visions of that changing during lockdown buuut it’s still as stressful and messy as ever haha! So after baking about twice, the spatulas have remained in the drawer and the baking powder left untouched. I’d like to say it’s been good for my waistline but that would be a lie as I’ve just bought chocolate instead!
7. Alcohol consumption
“Bottle of wine tonight? Yeah I know it’s only Monday…”
Ok so this isn’t really parenting-related. It’s parenting-caused though! And don’t worry, we only have a drink once the twiglets are in bed (erm, usually!)
But let’s just say I reckon we might need to remortgage our house to pay for all the Rioja we’ve bought over lockdown…
So there you go! All the ways in which my parenting standards have lowered over lockdown!
BUT…
Does it matter that my parenting standards have lowered over lockdown?
Are my kids happy? YES.
Are they still fed, watered and healthy? YES.
Have they still been learning? YES. (Debatable but I’m pretty sure they have!)
Are they bored? Well, most probably.
But I don’t actually see that as a bad thing! In fact, as a result, the twigs have been playing way more imaginative games together than they ever have before. Even H, who had never attempted any role play type games in his life! This article explains lots of reasons why being bored is actually really good for kids.
Be kind to yourself!
So really, even though my parenting may have slipped a bit (ok a lot) over lockdown, does it actually matter? As everyone keeps saying, we’ve been through (and are still going through) an unprecedented time.
(As an aside, if I never hear the word ‘unprecedented’ again in my life, I will be a happy woman!)
My point is, if your parenting standards have lowered over lockdown too, DON’T BE TOO HARD ON YOURSELF! Parenting is not meant to be done in isolation, with no support or chance for a break. We’re all doing our best and we’re doing a great job 🙂
Thanks for reading! Let me know in the comments if you can relate!
Til next time,
Hannah xx
PS Please do share this post if you found it useful/helpful/amusing – or even if it was a load of crap tbf 🙂
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Check out some of my other posts about parenting:
- Annoying things about parenting during lockdown
- Funny parenting milestones
- The best parenting blogs to follow
- A completely pointless comparison between teaching and parenting
- Starting my own parenting blog
23 Comments
Haha! I did giggle at this. I can relate to every single one (especially no 7). x
Haha glad it gave you a chuckle 🙂 🙂 xx
I can totally relate to this!! Although my son is only 2 and I’ve not had to do school work it’s still been really hard. He’s watched hours and hours of Bing, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and anything else that I can get him to watch so I can just have a bit of time to myself. Snacks are never ending, quick oven food is a godsend and so are my ear pods to drown out his constant chatter. We’ve done some fun stuff as well and his speech has come on so much but I agree that as long as they are happy, fed and well loved it’s a parenting win! Looking forward to when we get back to some sort of normality!
Oh yes all of this! 🙂 It’s been pretty relentless hasn’t it – think it’s ok to admit that isn’t it! 🙂 x
I can relate to so many of these! I often wonder how many people are still doing Joe Wicks :o)
#MMBC
Hahaha I know right! 🙂
Definitely had it easier as mine are all teens. If anything I think I’ve got fitter running round the house checking they’re doing their work. I can definitely relate to number 5. Bolognaise sauce two nights in a row. After that I got them cooking meals once a week. A win for sure. #MMBC
Haha oh wow that is definitely a win, getting them cooking! 🙂 xx
This really made me smile! Your two look so adorably happy. I think we’ve been pretty strict with home schooling – especially as we are working so there’s little room for maneuver to ditch the school and do something else. But – once we got flour, we’ve pretty much baked every week. Definitely agree with not being too hard on parenting standards. These are peculiar times. Thank you for stopping by the #DreamTeamLinky xxx
Sounds like you’ve done amazingly – must have been tough homeschooling and working at the same time!!
Our efforts for home learning and foing family projects together has completely vanished! I never imagined that lockdown would last this long… Thanks for linking up with #dreamteamlinky
It’s hard to keep up motivation for so long isn’t it! x
My thing with this, is you are in lockdown too. Your mental health and emotional stability also has to be a priority…so while we ran around making everything perfect for everyone else, so they would be as happy as they could be, we also needed to make sure we didn’t collapse under the weight of the load. Soooo, where you needed to cut corners, that was also ok. Maybe it was just a ‘day off’ or maybe it was chucking a routine out the window that was too hard. Our only real job in lockdown was to come out of it with everyone alive and relatively happy. And that was quite a task in itself…#KCACOLS
This is such a good point, and really important 🙂 xx
substitute scotch for wine and I’m right there with you #KCACOLS
Hahaha 🙂
Oh my god, I relate to ALL of this! Apart from I was definitely drinking before the kids went to bed – usually as I was ‘cooking’ their chicken nuggets or fish fingers. This has made me laugh and feel much better, thank you! And thanks so much for linking up at #KCACOLS. Hope you come back again next time
Haha I just find it so hard to motivate myself to do bedtime if I’ve had a drink ;P Glad you enjoyed 🙂 xx
Yep I can totally relate to this, so thankful it’s the holidays and I feel a little less guilt for our lazy days in the garden. #KCACOLS
Lazy days in the garden are the best 🙂 As long as there’s sunshine haha! Hope the hols are going well for you so far x
Love this! And yes I relate and I refuse to feel the mum guilt x x #KCACOLS
Ah good, teehee 🙂 xx
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