-Tara of Four Take Flight

I think older kids definitely need to feel connected. While my kindergartner will be fine without friends I definitely think my older son will miss seeing his friends. In fact, that’s the one thing that makes me want to send him to school. If I could guarantee a play date or two a week I wouldn’t be so concerned about it, but everyone is so busy these days I’m not sure how much of that will be possible once the school year begins. I’m also not sure how he will feel if they talk about school and he’s not there.

A lot of people think that school will end shortly after it begins. It’s so difficult to know what will happen. You are absolutely right that we must make the “Best decision you can make with the information you have at the time.”

I’m the kind of gal who likes all the info before making a decision, so this one is particularly tough for me.

Thank you for your comment.

These decisions are so difficult especially where matters of health are concerned. We have friends with no fear of the virus and no reason to believe they will become ill. They smile and say “send them school.” It’s not so easy if you think you could get horribly sick after being exposed to the virus.

I don’t think there will be any interaction between classes, so if my oldest son’s friends aren’t in his class he won’t be able to interact with them. It’s not clear how much they can play alongside their classmates either.

My husband and I talked tonight about separating time and making sure we both get out of the house for walks, meditation, etc. more often. Having the kids under foot for another year might make me a little batty. I love them dearly, but school was a nice little break that we won’t have if they stay home with us.

On the one hand, working and homeschooling at the same time is simply not sustainable. I get stressed and mean and cranky at not doing anything well. I can’t create enough hours in the day to do both well, even when we share the workload pretty evenly or when PiC takes the bulk of it.

On the other hand, even if kids mostly aren’t hit as hard by the virus, they’re still carriers. And anything JB brings home takes me months to recover from. That’s just for run of the mill stuff! This is not that.

So we’re very conflicted as well. I think we’d both strongly prefer to keep them home with remote learning, five days a week.

The thing about seeing their friends is they still won’t be able to play with them at school, AFAIK, but I also want JB to get to know their cohort at the local school at the same time as the other kids are getting to know each other. So, also conflict there. Sigh. We’ll keep working at what we think makes the most sense for our family but I wish that it were a more feasible option to homeschool without knowing for sure it’s going to make us go quite noisily mad.

A friend of mine is doing the exact same thing. She’s going to keep her son at home and try to figure out how to work around his schedule. She will save a ton of money with this solution too!

I think its the safest option even though it will be extremely hard