#3 - Staying connected through play, even when your friends are far away
It was about 1:30 PM yesterday when a friend called me, frustrated with an online class that she had just observed. The teacher’s video showed just a whiteboard, the children had their video and audio off to save bandwidth. Only the students who had to speak were un-muted. A modern form of behavior management, if you may. Eventually, the classroom got a bit chaotic and the teacher stormed off the call. How stressful for everybody involved!
And what hit me the most was, we’re obsessing over learning outcomes when we should instead just focus on allowing kids to be themselves and stay connected to their friends. If having kids at home all the time is stressful, imagine the amount of confusion the child is feeling from having their social lives abruptly cut off and having to see and hear scary stories about the virus constantly.
Today, I urge you to just schedule unstructured play calls between your children and their friends. Let them go online on a video call and just share their ideas, thoughts, feelings, and play. No assignments, worksheets, homework, or achievements. Just joy.
It’s okay if they’re not going online to learn a specific hobby or a skill. Schedule a video call with your child and a few of their friends and see how it goes! While you as a caregiver may be tempted to step in and guide the call, force yourself to stand back and just observe. Ask your child and their friends to decide what they want to do online! Resist the urge to intervene and be a passive observer.
If you do wish to have some ideas to share with your child on what they could do with this unstructured online playtime, here are some resources.
If the playdate fails the first time (whatever you consider a failure), it’s not a failure. It’s an opportunity to discuss with your child, why it didn’t go well.
Have a great, playful weekend!
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