Learning Online

Answer to all questions regarding online learning for kids 8 and under.

It’s a developmentally grossly inappropriate expectation.

If a child is happy to sit there for 39 minutes... accept that and let it go.

If a child isn’t happy at all, remove them from the program.

If you can find another way to facilitate their learning (lots of posts on this topics already), good. Otherwise, children shouldn’t be punished by the awful thing that online learning is.

Even if you can do NOTHING, you will observe that they’re still learning. They were born to learn.

Even if they do no formal schooling until age 7, at that age (if we left them alone), they will pick up everything in one month that they couldn’t for years because... brain development.

Yes, the school system sucks everywhere. Not just in Pakistan. Most countries. This still doesn’t mean kids should have to pay the price.

My own kids (8, 6, 4 and 4) have been home since March. I refused to enroll them in online learning (minus the twins attending one 30 minute session with their teachers once a week because they loved it). I also burnt out about two three months ago so since then, there’s been minimal parent-led learning and they’ve STILL been learning a lot. And even before that, I was more "unschooling" than homeschooling. There was no curriculum or anything. Just a bunch of supplies and whatever we wanted to do with them together.

Maybe they will struggle to integrate back into school. I don’t know. I also don’t care. I trust. I trust their learning abilities. I trust myself. I trust the process of learning. I will make it work somehow. Maybe we will struggle badly for a few months. But something tells me that 10 years down the road, this one year break from traditional studies won’t even matter. But it will have saved our mental health and joy of learning.

Please please have mercy on yourself and your children and let it go. Beware of your conditioning that says formal studying is the one and only evidence of you being a good parent. Beware of the inner voices that will tell you you're a failure because your child isn't wanting to sit in front of a computer for hours to "study".

Picture: Reading a book because kid was super excited to. Messy home because pandemic and kids and mental health.