Category Archives: Commentary

Microscopic picure of coronavirus

School at home? Not!!

Personally…I’m not going to do school-at-home…I’m not going to turn myself into my child’s teacher…Let’s face up to what this really means – nothing will continue as normal, including the delivery of the school curriculum.

We find ourselves living in interesting times. Here in Australia we are more or less at the point of school closures, with parents being asked to keep their children home if at all possible. It’s probably just a matter of time before the restrictions on social gatherings are even more extreme. In many countries, physical distancing in response to the Corona Virus pandemic has meant that the schools are completely closed, and our children are at home. We are all being encouraged to stay home and limit our contact with others.

Many parents I have spoken to are optimistic about this chance to spend some extra time with their children. They are also anxious…if getting out kids to do homework is a hassle, what is getting them to do routine schoolwork going to be like, day in day out? Continue reading

When Bad Things Happen in the World

Quote from Martin Luther King "Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hatred, only love can do that."

Image thanks to Good Housekeeping

 

“Together” is the watchword for dealing with news of violence or death. “What can we do together, as a family, to remember those who died, and offer our caring?” is a healing question.

Patty Wipfler, Hand in Hand Parenting

 

 

I don’t tend to listen to or watch the news, but sometime on Saturday a couple of weeks ago it filtered through that something dreadful had happened somewhere in the world.

On Sunday, I woke knowing that it was serious, and that I would need some time to talk about how it makes me feel – how lucky am I, how easily it could happen in the city where I live, that my sense of safety in the world is dented.  The horror of imagining what it must be like to have been caught in the middle of it, the senseless waste and carnage, the anguish, shock.

I deliberately did not allow myself to listen to details about the event:  I’m pretty sure that I do not need to know.  I get the gist.  Things in the world are not good.

However, my mind was pulled to it all day.  In the evening, I met with a group of people and we took a short time, in pairs, just to listen in turn to one another about these events.  We cried about how shocking it was, we talked through the details of what we had seen on the news, we feared for our safety, we worried for our children.  Then, we went on with what we had planned to meet for.

It would have made no sense to keep going over the top of the feelings. And taking time to pay attention to, and feel, the feelings does not mean that there is not thinking to be done, and work, to fix things.  But the flood of feelings that comes up at a time like this can easily overwhelm us, drag us down and away from the thing we planned to do, and the things we could do to make the world a better place.

Continue reading