Remote Learning

When remote learning first started last March, the school just gave Rusty their work and let them submit it.  There were no mandatory video conferences, although there was optional time to be in a meeting with teachers.  Rusty was able to breeze through all the work in a few hours.  By midday, we would be playing outside already.

We would eat lunch out by our driveway when we can.  We would play tennis, throw the football, catch the baseball, and of course, street hockey.  My wife has back to back meetings everything, so it was usually just me, Rusty and my then four year old Dusty out there.  Sometimes I would bring my laptop and work while they played.  Mainly I would only go inside when I had a meeting and needed a quiet room.

We don't have TV.  When we first moved here, we didn't have the service up for a few days and the boys were all right.  They played with their toys and with each other, and the older one always found time to read.  So I decided not to get TV.  And I only got internet because I would need it for work.  Even then, I didn't get the fastest speed.

But when the stay at home, work from home, remote learning quarantine shutdown thing happened, eventually my wife allowed the boys to watch Netflix on her tablet.  We let them watch PBS Kids, and they got into "Nature Cat".  Once in a while I would hear the audio cut out and then them laughing hysterically.  Their new thing was hitting the space bar and laughing at the weird faces of the characters while they were paused.  They also figured out that the left arrow skipped it back a few seconds, so every time something funny happened, they would watch it over and over.  And over and over and over.

I was working upstairs at a small computer desk in the corner of our bedroom.  To get Dusty off my wife's back, I would take him up with me and give him work to do.  I gave him activities from Pre-K and Kindergarten workbooks and started him with reading and writing words.  But the little guy is lazy.  Sometimes during a meeting, I would turn around and find him sleeping on the bed with his notebook open and a pencil in his hand.  Sometimes he would just sleep on the floor.  Sometimes when I wanted to give myself a break, I would put him in the bath and he would just entertain himself for hours.

As for Rusty, since he didn't have any Zoom meetings with his classmates, I wanted to give him a break and let him play Roblox.  The deal was he could only play if his friends were on.  There were a couple of friends he would call regularly, and we would hear them on speaker.  My wife and I would just listen to their conversations while playing the game.  It was nice.  And once in a while, we would say hello and ask how they were doing and stuff.  And they were very polite.  And then they would get into the game, and well, they would get into the game.

Eventually, though, things got a little bit out of hand.  He started finding out other friends' accounts, and so he pretty much had someone to play with all the time.  Sometimes he would play in the morning while eating breakfast because one of his friends was on.  I couldn't verify it, of course, because their usernames are all different and you want to be able to trust your kid.  

I wake up early in the morning to run, and one time around 5am or so, I found him sitting at the dining table playing on the laptop.  He said he woke up early and couldn't get back to sleep so he decided to play.  I told him I didn't care if his friends were on at that time and that it was too early.  So he went back up to his room and I went out for my run.

A few days later, I get woken up in the middle of the night because I hear a conversation downstairs.  I am a light sleeper, and usually I just try to get back to sleep.  But I found it odd that my wife would be in the dining room with Rusty at around one or two in the morning.  So I got up to check it out.  

It turns out he had come down to play video games on the computer.  And then I remembered that every time I would tell him it was time to come out to do some hockey training, he would always ask if he could take a nap.  I knew teenagers needed naps, so I thought maybe he is going through that nap taking phase already, even though he was only eleven.  Once I saw him down there at that hour, I realized why he was always tired in the middle of the day.  We learned that he had been doing it a few times.  

So I threw some of his books away.  The entire Harry Potter series.  This was around the time when the author was pissing me off with some of her tweets, so that was the first thing to come to mind.  I asked Rusty to get all of them and come into the kitchen.  I pulled out the garbage can and told him to put them in.  I wrapped that garbage bag, handed it to him, and made him go out to throw it away.

No more computer after that except for school.

Does that seem extreme to you?  Well, I don't care.  Haha.  A lot of people have lived with a lot less.  And he never did it again, and he still has a ton of books to read.  And we were outside more.

Sometimes I hear other parents complain that their kids play too much video games.  Their school work is suffering or they never go out or they are out of shape or their eyes are going bad.  I don't really know what to say to them or how to say it, because if it were me, I would just take it all away.  Tough noogies.