This year is too much for one person to process. Thankfully, everyone around the world can relate. Thinking of grown ups preparing to start this school year conjures up images of a car sliding across ice. We’re bracing for something, wondering what we should do while we watch it happen.
So today let me do my best as an educator, mom, and crisis planner to provide a few ideas. Let’s talk about talking about going back to THIS school year, without stirring up anxiety in the minds of kids and creating germaphobes, know-it-alls, or worry warts.
We need to verbalize hard things, and so do kids. While we can be their safe processing place, they usually aren’t ours. Without having a plan and some bumpers (see yesterday’s post) in place, we’re bound to fly off the handle while talking back to our favorite podcast, co-worker, or spouse. You may’ve seen this viral rant of an Israeli mom venting about her 4 kids at home for school. Thankfully, they weren’t there when she made it, but I wonder if they’ve seen their famous mom’s fit by now? The Today Show said it was “funny.” COVID-19 is an opportunity for kids to learn to navigate times of crisis and disappointment. Drama doesn’t help much in life. Kids take their cues from us.
Talking about how we’ll go Back to School this year is a big question. If our talk is only filled with words like “masks, distance, sanitizer, ration, frequency, delivery method, guidance, opposition, feedback, access, requirements, infection rates, and risk assessment,” we’ve missed a golden opportunity for a life lesson brought to us by Talking to Kids about Returning to School. Here are 3 Tips and 3 Bumpers to Help.
3 Tips for Processing this Back to School
- Process these big things together. You need a place and person to leave your load, make decisions, absorb the losses. That’s not your child. This is with other grown ups. Friend, relative, spouse, mentor? But as you choose a sounding board, be careful who you listen to. Not all wisdom is worth your ear or helpful to your heart or your family. Think about this. Whatever your schooling format, plan for and faithfully take advantage of personal windows of opportunity to process with other grown ups and alone (Journaling, exercising, walking, humming :)) so the pressure doesn’t build and erupt on your kiddos. Emotionally charged venting sounds like “fear” and “trouble” to a child or youngster and may result in
- Process these big things spiritually. This school year IS too big for us. God wants us to turn to Him for wisdom, guidance, and reassurance. And when we need to defuse drama, He can take it without being weighed down by it. (Psalm 55:22) In times when information is politicized, written for ratings, and hard to confirm, His Word clears our thinking. It reminds us of what is reasonable and important. It teaches us how to discern good counsel and how to make decisions. Most of all, living WITH God sustains us through the trials (Isaiah 43:2).
- Process these big things humbly. We haven’t done this before, and each person in each role is doing their best. You haven’t figured out the best plan; you’ve just figured out the best plan for you for today. If your situation seems less impacted (Already homeschooling or homeschooling with co-op? Already have enough computers? Already got an extra room at home? Already work at home? Already have great wi-fi?) or less impacted than someone similar to you, ask God to instruct you to have compassionate understanding of their challenges. Resist letting pride creep in that you’ve outwitted Corona. In our isolation, pride may trickle over to our little listeners who will be glad they got into the family that always knew how to do school, has lots of tech, or has a big house. As we talk about THIS Back to School more than ever, may humility be the melody our children hear from our hearts.
A bumper is a guardrail for beginning bowlers. We’re all beginners when it comes to living in a Pandemic. We need some reminders to “cover the gutters” where a stray, but powerful ball of wayward words can rob us of a victory that comes with practice and precision.
3 Bumpers for THIS Year’s Back to School Talk
- Mind your FACTS – Consider what amount of information about schooling plans is necessary or helpful based on your child’s development and temperament. Things are fluid, so they may not need to know all of the unfold saga, the backstory, the opposition, or the hurdles. In addition to the amount of facts, keep it actually factual. Leave out the stew of opinions, options, and emotions. Those may take root and create tentacles of worry that strangle childhood and learning. Too much info my inspire a child with the need to be an expert or with an emergency response that leads to life as a germaphobe. Refuse to share outrageous or fake hearsay digestable for a discerning adult, but not for a concerned teen or confused youngster.
- Mind your FAITH – God ‘s truth helps keep our imagination in check, helping us avoid transferring our worst nightmares to our listening learners. Children take their cues from our non-verbal intensity, as well as our spoken words. Grown up emotional rants or meltdowns do not fade without leaving a lesson imprinted in a child’s mind. Wearing a mask and speaking well of church leaders’ decisions have become spiritual life applications played out in conversations before little learners. We may feel “more than done” with the lesson of being calm in a global Pandemic, but maintaining a peaceful presence speaks volumes to the listener in the room (or car or porch or yard). The Holy Spirit is just as active now in bringing out that fruit of peace as before, maybe more! (Galatians 5:22) Read this from my friend Mary about how to trust God in the unknown.
- Mind your FAMILY LIFE – During everyday life at home, we integrate faith talk about what we believe and why an unexpected, unsettled school year doesn’t consume us with anxiety or worry (Deuteronomy 6:7). Now everyday family life includes washing our hands more, putting on masks if your family follows that guidance, Zoom classes or meetings, being home more together, trying to work at home. If we wanted little kids with big faith, this is our chance! Everyone just got moved up to the A Team, and it’s our opportunity to join our kids in training. We may enter this unfamiliar school year as worry warts, but we can press through it online, at home, in a hybrid, or in Barbados (just kidding – I checked and there’s a limit to how many people they’re taking) and learn lifelong skills in the school of faith. Enjoy talking about the normal, healthy things of family life, without allowing ‘Rona to rob you and your child’s childhood of all the good that talk brings.
No one knows what this school year looks like. Not the school boards, the principals, the President, the kids, or the moms thanking Jesus they’ve already got their curriculum. No one. No one will be fully prepared. But we are hopeful. For ourselves and our learners, we are hopeful. It’s not unlike a moment in the Bible when a King knew an army was coming. (2 Chronicles 20) They stood waiting with their “little ones, their children, and their wives”. Families. And so the King spoke to God with the words our kids need to hear out of our mouths and see in our behavior day after day, lesson after lesson, in the year ahead. “We don’t know what to do, but our eyes are upon You.”
5 Resources for Returning to School
- School Decision-Making Tool for Parents, Caregivers, and Guardians (CDC) – With worksheets
- Supporting Your Child’s Mental Health as they Return to School (Unicef)
- Age-Based Tips to Help Juggle Parenting and Working From Home in COVID (AAP)
- Talking to Very Young Children about Wearing Masks (Zero to Three)
- Parenting in a Pandemic: Tips to Keep Things Calm at Home (AAP)
Stay tuned for upcoming news about a partner resource to The ABCs of Praying for Students. It will be a bonus of 5 devotions for Back to School in COVID, and I pray it will be a help as we begin a new season of learning lessons we never learned before. (The ABCs of Praying for Students is now available HERE on Amazon.)
