The kids and I were full of good intentions. My daughter had started on her Year 7 geography of her own accord, which was great. My son and I sat down to create a schedule – I know there are arguments against this, but there needed to be some structure to his day.
I thought he could create it in Google Calendar, that way he could eventually join my wife and I in our shared calendar. He took to this idea quite well and set up a basic schedule running from 9am to 3pm. We agreed it’s not a strict schedule and there are some fun things in there like A WHOLE HOUR for lunch, quiet time and a little bit of time for planning the following day together. And we progressed with the day…
He’d already completed BBC Bitesize maths and was up for some artwork. I figured drawing from observation would be easy, so I grabbed the nearest toy, a plastic tank, from a nearby box of toy soldiers. I used to love drawing tanks, but in reality, I used to love making up my own tanks rather than drawing what I saw. The boy is a chip off my own block and I could sense resistance to that idea.
I pushed a little further and he told me that the tank was too difficult. Ok then, a jeep with a rocket on the back (is that even a thing?). He accepted this and proceeded to disappoint himself by drawing a jeep which didn’t look like the jeep in front of him. “This is too hard”, he said. “You’re telling me”, I thought.
I gave him some guidance on how he could draw a more realistic picture of the jeep, but the damage was done. He was in a STROP.
After some unsuccessful encouragement, I called in Mrs Furlough to assist. Five minutes later and art was abandoned and he was now the leader in our family band and we were to perform a concert later in the day. We needed a band name (Apple Maoams), a logo and some songs. Enthusiasm restored, he was back in the game (minus the jeep).
Our band was a roaring success. We had a keyboard, guitar, some made-up percussion and a lead vocalist. I stuck with the guitar, which I can’t really play, but managed to find the notes for Baby Shark, some of Happy Birthday and some of that Bad Lip Reading song where Yoda sings about seagulls. I think it saved the day.