***
Here I am, back in my favourite spot in my favourite coffee shop (an industrial-looking place with the best coffee and freshly made sourdough and Ukrainian rye on sale daily) after the first school drop-off of the new academic year. And I don’t feel good about it.
I don’t feel good about waking my 6 year old from REM sleep to get up and dressed and out the door with something for breakfast in hand. His natural rise time is around 9 AM, no matter what time he goes to bed. But we have to be at school by then, so sleep is secondary. He’s not a kid who’ll be up at 6. Never has been. Leisurely mornings eating breakfast and watching cartoons before school aren’t a thing for us. I let my son sleep until the last possible minute.
But we had a pretty good start today. Not much whining. It all went quite smoothly, except we forgot his backpack. And then the bus terminated just a few stops down from where we got on. Meaning we had to walk. In the rain. Because roadworks meant several bus stop closures. Sigh. The intention was to arrive nice and early so that he could mingle with the other kids before class, and despite having left the house with plenty of time we were ten minutes late. Great start.
This did mean that I was given a glimpse into the classroom though. All those little kids sitting cross-legged on the carpet in front of the glowing smart board, teacher standing by it, teaching by PowerPoint presentation. That screen that is perpetually on. I wondered if the kids would be kept indoors again today during break times because of the rain. If so, that means they would be sitting on the carpet in front of the smart board, with PowerPoint presentations replaced with YouTube or Disney+ for the 30 minutes of play time that they’re granted. My son says they can also draw or read books if they like, but most kids just watch. Of course they would. And in doing so they lose the time to engage with each other, to learn from each other, to play (the state in which the most fundamental learning takes place), and to activate the Default Mode Network of their brains – the structures that ‘switch on’ when you have nothing else to think about, allowing your mind to wander. To come up with thoughts and ideas, to reflect, to make connections. Essential, fundamental processes for facilitating creativity.
Every other part of the school day requires that children’s attention is directed towards that which is decided by an adult. When it rains, they don’t even get that precious 30 minutes to choose where their attention goes. They’re pacified in front of the screen. “We put it on to calm them down”, a teaching assistant once told me. You know what else calms kids down? Time outdoors. Time in nature. Time to pursue their own interests. Time connecting with others. You’re not calming kids down by directing their attention towards a screen, you’re delaying the behaviour that you don’t want to deal with. Behaviour that is a result of dysregulation because these kids are not given the time they need to do the things they need.
I’ve seen this “disruptive” behaviour first-hand when I’ve volunteered to assist on school trips or accepted invitations for parent-child morning reading in class. Various kids crying. Teachers exasperated with it. Kids kicking each other and stamping on one another’s feet. Bullying. Outright defiance towards teachers’ reasonable requests. Other kids (like mine) completely glazed over. And then there’s the god-awful behaviour that we, the parents, have to deal with after school. ‘After-school restraint collapse’ is the term. I gather the problem must be sufficiently widespread to warrant there being a term for it.
My son will probably have a good day. That is, he’ll probably greet me happily enough at pick up and say he had a good day. Maybe there won’t be any restraint collapse today. Maybe not even tomorrow. But after a few weeks I expect it to start again. Let’s watch this space. Let’s just see how it goes. Maybe it will be better this year. Maybe.
Current mood: 🫤 uneasy