Episode 21 - Samantha O'Neill

Home Learning in Coronavirus Isolation

One of the many changes parents have had to adapt to in this era of rapid change is having kids home from school 24/7 and having to ensure that their education continues in some form. You probably didn’t sign up for home-schooling and may be breathing a sigh of relief at the thought of the Easter holidays, even if they’ll be holidays like you’ve never had before. But even when term resumes the children will still be at home so it’s as well to get our heads around this educating at home thing.

Home-schooling is a considered decision that parents make after much thought. They will have planned for it and set up the home environment and the support structures necessary for it. They will have got in resources to work with at home and will have set up classes or activities outside the home as well. That is not what we are doing right now.

At the time of recording in the UK schools are closed except for children of key workers. So parents are home with their kids, many of them trying to work from home as well and keep their children occupied and continue their education.

Many of us are not feeling equal to the task.

So we’ve invited Sam O’Neill to be our guest on The Parent Practice podcast to help sort out some issues around this. Sam is a parenting coach, one of The Parent Practice’s licensees, and the founder of Assured Parenting. Her background is in teaching with 20 years of experience in classroom teaching and in pastoral care. She is also a mum of 2 young children.

Listen to this episode with Sam O’Neill if you want to learn:

How this is an opportunity to engage children with learning again in a different way and to re-enthuse them where they may have lost a bit of spark for learning
How to utilise your specialist knowledge of your child and their interests and enthusiasms to tailor their learning, especially doing project work
How to create a bonding experience out of this time
How to encourage them to work independently, instead of hovering over them and nagging!
How to encourage kids to improve–using targets or wishes rather than criticism
What our role is as parents (especially around reviewing work) and how this is different from the teacher’s role
About the essential role of praise and the ratio of positive feedback to developmental feedback
About the importance of routine and structure and mental stimulation
How to moderate your expectations of yourself and your child, including what are reasonable stretches of time in which to work
How you can build life-long skills and a love of learning in your children by taking emphasis off content
Skills for encouraging kids to problem-solve and develop strategies for getting themselves back on task or engaged
Some strategies for motivating children about their learning tasks
Why schedules matter
How chat throughs can help to set up for success (see the Setting up for Success module on our positive parenting courses) with different tasks
How descriptive praise (see the Descriptive Praise module on our positive parenting courses) and acknowledging feelings (see the Emotion Coaching module on our positive parenting courses) and contributing to household chores can really help with motivation self-esteem
And finally how to get kids to do chores (or ‘family contributions’) with you and feel connected to you at the same time, leaving them ready to play independently