Dear Matzav,
I only have a few minutes to write because I have to get back to coordinating my kids’ numerous school teleconferences and printing out all their school sheets, which has become a full-time job.
I want to first thank all the amazing rabbeim and teachers who are so devoted during this shutdown. What they are doing is mamish amazing. These people are angels.
But we, parents, are not.
We are at our breaking point.
If you are lucky to have 5 children, the current system means five teleconferences every morning, plus some additional ones now that they started doing English, too.
Each day, I get multiple emails for each child – Hebrew and English – and I’m printing huge booklets and sheets upon sheets. I don’t own a printhouse. I’ve gone through one toner cartridge already and hundreds of papers.
As for the teleconferences, I only have my house phone and my cell phone. My husband is not home, as he works, so he needs his phone. How am I to do 5 teleconferences with 2 phones? Then the kids end up bickering about who gets the phone and it’s World War 3.
I understand that we want to keep chinuch going, and the rabbeim and teachers should be lauded. But we, the parents, are losing our minds. And it’s not just me. I spoke to ten mothers who feel the same way.
I am working from home, besides the fact that I have to do all household work, because there are no cleaning ladies working, and I also need to hold down the fort here while things are chaotic.
Also, some of my kids’ rabbeim and teachers are giving real homework and real schoolwork that I have to now sit and do with my kids. In many cases, the 30-minute teleconference doesn’t accomplish the teaching of the material and I have to now sit and decipher it. It’s ridiculous. Please stop being so structured and rigid. And please stop giving us parents work to do. It’s destroying us parents and creating crazy tension in our homes.
I know the schools have been cashing my tuition checks and that’s fine. You don’t have to have all this work and all these conferences to justify it. Cash the checks gezunterheit. But give the kids and us a break.
Please! Help!
A Mother Who is Collapsing