The reality of online learning and the inner child!
We popped to the beach first thing this morning for a swim at Saints because I felt that I needed the energy of the sea and the sun, and some grounding as the beginning of online learning loomed ahead.
Back home and we used Face-time to connect with my Dad who has very kindly volunteered to help with Elijah’s online learning, and bless him, spent 2 hours yesterday trying to navigate the online portal so we might be prepared for the beginning of Elijah’s official online learning.
Admittedly this probably wasn’t the best time for E to go off shopping but he figured the queues might be easier than usual, so he left me at home with both boys, as will become the norm when he returns to work soon (hopefully for him as a sole trading gardener). The idea was that my Dad would oversee Elijah’s work and I might manage my wild child, who needs lots of attention, especially at the moment as he’s still angry that he can’t see my parents or play with his friends at pre-school.
However, it quickly became apparent that I needed to be involved for the majority of the session with Elijah too. Not least because we needed to use my laptop to access all the online links that were provided through the online learning website, but also because Elijah is only 6 years old and isn’t yet able to write or read without some assistance - and certainly wouldn't have accessed the links on his own or read what he needed to do.
Five minutes in and by then Eben had dressed himself as a fireman and was whacking the walls with his sword. I suggested we might do a jigsaw at the table, and sent him off to retrieve one, but he returned with Pop-up Pirates and as anticipated, this game lasted all of about 2 minutes before he started attacking the pirate with his sword. He wandered off and I turned back to Elijah who needed the next video accessed.
Distracted by assisting Elijah, I just about heard the front door open maybe 5 minutes later, and wondered if it might be the postman, but a minute or so later when I realised it wasn’t the postman and Eben hadn’t re-appeared, I realised it must have been Eben who had gone out the front door unaided. Minor panic ensued as I rushed outside and through the gate to our parking area but couldn’t see him. I ran back in the house and there he was in the back garden, he must have walked around to the back of the cottage all on his own. That was a first. And a last!
My stress levels were now rapidly rising. I retrieved Eben from the back garden and wondered what on earth I might do with him, painting didn't seem the best option, so Dad suggested he join us to watch the Gruffalo on my laptop, Elijah’s next task. So he sat on me for all of a minute, more interested in tapping the keys on my laptop, than watching the video, which always panics me as I wonder if he might find the one button to press that may mean I can never work my laptop again!
So off he went, still wearing his shoes (we’re a shoe-free house and he’d sensibly put these on before letting himself out the front door), to try to find something else to do. Fortunately E arrived home soon after then although I suspect he wished he hadn’t, because the noise of him unpacking the shopping and boiling the kettle, and the noise of Eben firing his pretend gun at us was all too much for Elijah who was constantly distracted, which caused my Dad to suggest that perhaps we should give-up on the rest of the online learning for today. “No!”, I virtually shrieked, “we have to submit work!”.
At this point E found Eben attempting to comb the cat’s fur with his comb, so he proposed that he might take Eben outside and entertain him, while we carried on with the online-learning. So with such relief from me, off they went and I set about trying to sort the account for Elijah on the Class dojo system, but because I was having to use both my phone and my laptop, the WIFI struggled and we lost connection with my Dad! Blinking WIFI!
Fortunately I did manage to get the dojo to work, which is just as well because if not I might literally have hit my head against the table or used Eben’s pretend gun to shoot myself with the despair of it all! Elijah’s long suffering teacher will no doubt be as delighted as me, bless her, she tried to send me a number of links in the hope that one of them might work, and thankfully one of them did, so thank you Karen because I bet you were inundated with other parents unable to work this and that link too!
With WIFI working again and the connection with my Dad re-established, I was finally able to make a cup of tea as Elijah read to him, before I took over with the writing. Once that was done - and it took some effort I can tell you, Elijah is not really interested in this home-learning malarkey, he’d rather be playing (don’t blame him) - I managed to photograph his work and upload it to the class dojo. If I hadn’t have decided that 2020 would be a good year to give sobriety a try, I might have poured myself a very large glass of wine and been done with the day then and there!
Instead, I prepared lunch and tried to catch up on the emails that had come in this morning, including one about increasing my public liability insurance so I might be able to teach yoga at Sausmarez Park this summer. I add that in, to give hope to the fact we might, at some point, before the end of August, join together outside for some yoga without a single device in sight (no mobiles allowed!).
Lunch prepared and E and Eben now back in the cottage, I escaped upstairs and to my mat, where I promptly burst into tears with the stress of it all- and this, I know, ironic given that I’m a yoga teacher! But in that moment I felt like the most useless mother in the world, not least because I’m forcing Elijah to do something he doesn’t want to do and has no interest in doing, but because I’m basically having to ignore my 3-year old to the extent that he leaves the house and wanders off on his own, because I am distracted trying to do the requested online learning set by the powers that be. Nonsense.
I suddenly realised, I as I attempted to move my body and focus on my breath that this whole online-learning debacle has massively triggered inner child stuff, much like the IT issues I have had over the weekend. Just as I would have felt in childhood at some point, both the online learning and IT have brought up a very old pattern of feeling unsafe, powerless and useless. It was a relief to recognise this pattern and to see it for what it is. To know that at some point in the past when those feelings came up I would have reacted by getting stressed, angry and emotional, anything to avoid the uncomfortableness of the initial feelings.
Here we are again…those old feelings of loss of safety (overwhelm), powerfulness and useless have been triggered and I end up getting stressed and angry and emotional. That pattern hasn’t been triggered for a long time, not really, at least not with this intensity. Which is what got me thinking that this is part of a bigger picture, this inner child stuff. I’ve felt it the last few days and it now makes sense to me, and I can’t help thinking that the new moon on Thursday has something to do with this.
The intensity of the combination of lock-down, online learning, Coronavirus, being at home 22 out of 24 hours a day, temperamental WIFI and attempting to teach online, is definitely going to trigger something! And because I’m being triggered, and I’m part of the collective, i suspect that everyone is being triggered in their own way and is experiencing some inner child stuff coming up for them right now.
You’ll know it, because it’ll be a pattern, a certain way that you behave, a certain feeling or feelings that come up when you are feeling really tested and totally out of your comfort zone, when you are feeling vulnerable as you would have done as a child, when it felt as if your world was changing and you had no control over it. You would have reacted a certain way and since then, every time those same emotions of vulnerability and being out of control are triggered, you’ll react in this same way that is rarely helpful, because it is unconscious, it happens without you noticing the role you play in it.
This is the inner child, the part of ourselves that we stashed away because it was too painful to feel the feelings that the child in us was feeling at that time. Yet those feelings are still there and from time to time they will be triggered and we will have the opportunity to see them for what they are, to recognise that it is just our inner child crying out to be held and loved, before we react in a way that we learned to do back then and have been doing ever since, but that just harms us and separates us even more from the inner child, perpetuating the cycle.
Catching myself as I did, and seeing the truth of the situation, I decided then and there that I was done. It is time now - as it is for all of us - to hold my little inner child in my hands as if she is as precious as my own children, and look after her with tolerance, compassion, forgiveness and love. No more will I give her a hard time and respond to her with anger and frustration at that which I can not control. No more will I try and fit Elijah and I into a system that doesn’t work for us, in which we don’t fit right now.
Enough. We will do what we can, Elijah, Dad and I, accessing the online resource when it works for us, but we’re not going to lose sleep over it, or get upset about it, or force Elijah to do stuff that he doesn’t want to do for the sake of his ‘education’. The whole education system needs a shake-up anyhow, but not this way, and not now. I will no longer put Elijah’s ‘education’ above the needs of Eben either. That too is nonsense.
This whole period of my boys life is tricky as it is, cut off from their beloved grandparents and their friends and the wider community, their routine is out the window and they’re missing playing at the park and going swimming, all the usual things that children loved doing. It’s not fair for them having to endure stressed parents who are trying to do their best, but are finding it a bit tricky to manage all that is expected of them by the Education Department, while trying to hold down jobs, go shopping while social distancing, and maintain sanity!
So this afternoon we did the other thing that the inner child needs and that is have fun. We borrowed a dog and we took her to L’Eree where we threw the ball for her and we walked and we laughed and we played. The boys removed their clothes and ran up and down the beach nude, we collected litter and crab shells, we chatted at distance with some friends who happened to be walking past, and we had a jolly good time as a family together.
This is what my children need right now. They need me playing and having fun. They need to be out in nature where they can connect with the elements. They need to be free to explore their world and learn from it. They need to be held as gently as I am now holding my own inner child, showered with compassion and love, not ignored in the quest for education, or forced ‘to do learning’ in a way that is alien to them.
We even popped into the fairy cave, because I longed to feel that ancient energy and to call upon the guardians for strength and protection, to usher more of their wisdom into this world, because if ever we needed it then now is that time. It is extremely calming in the cave, and was definitely a tonic for the soul, and for the inner child, ahead of the new moon.
It’s been a tricky moon cycle that’s for sure, but I’m grateful for the insight that today brought with it, to notice the triggers and the underlying feeling, and to rise above it and find another way to be with it that is not angry or frustrated or negative but is loving and kind and gentle. We are all doing our best. We must remember this. And when something isn’t working, rather than battle against it, it’s a sign to turn the devices off, to get outside and to have fun together, changing the memory into something positive and worth remembering.
Happy new moon you lovely people.
Sending you a huge energy ball filled with Reiki, love and compassion.
Love Emma xx
