The Government and the Ministry of Education plus many schools and teachers have been working hard setting up learning from home programmes and resources ready for Term to start today.

Last night Nigel Latta on Seven Sharp undermined a lot of this, saying if kids didn’t want to do any school work they should be allowed to sit and watch TV instead.  Apart from sending the opposite message to kids on the importance of keeping up with studies, this also undermined the battle we have been making here to reduce excessive screen time and get a lazy teenager off the couch for at least part of the day.

Many parents and grandparents and caregivers have already been doing some teaching from home and preparing children for schooling from home when the term starts.

On the eve of term 2 Seven Sharp had an item they are now promoting as  How to cope with kids learning at home during the lockdown

Term two will begin with online classes soon with Nigel Latta providing some tips for stressed parents.

We decided to watch this with a 15 year old grandson who we spent some time with yesterday preparing for the start of the term.

The message from Latta completely undermined this and the work we have been doing over the last three weeks.

Asking “How much home schooling do children really need during the lockdown?” Latta replied:

“Well, the simple answer is none. Need versus want.

“So there’s some kids that will want to do school work and that’s great because teachers have worked really hard and there’s lots of good content for them to do, and if they want to do it, and they enjoy doing it, and it’s easy for the parents to do, and it doesn’t add stress, great, do it.

“If you’re trying to juggle work and a bunch of other things and the kids don’t want to do it and it’s just adding stress, don’t do it, and it will do them no harm at all.”

So kids listening to that who don’t want to do any school work will figure that stressing their parents may get them off.

Hillary Barry:

“That will be so reassuring for so many parents, honestly, because as we go into this third week that seems to be the growing anxiety amongst adults who have children at home, that they’re worried kids are going to fall behind during this period”..

Latta:

“Yeah. They totally will not fall behind and you absolutely shouldn’t worry about this. We’re talking about a few weeks, and honest my boys are older now but if my boys were school age, little kids age and they were at home, and they wanted to do school work, I couldn’t be saying ‘Are you sure? You could just watch tele like’, like literally, honestly that’s what I’d do because it would just be less stressful.

“If kids want to, and they enjoy it, great, do it, and teachers are working really hard to put good resources online, but your kids will not be any worse off…”

“The most important thing is keep your home calm and settled, and that’s the thing that will be of most benefit to your children, and don’t add in fighting and anxiety about school work when you don’t need to”.

The message I get from this is that kids should be able to choose what they do, and if they don’t want to do something and watch tv instead all they need to do is kick up a fuss and cause stress to get their own way. Parents battle against this all the time.

Given the choice most kids will choose not to do school work. A lot of kids would choose not to go to school. But there are good reasons for guiding them with their activities, and not just letting them lie on the couch watching television all day.

Latta:

“Your job, if you’re a parent your most important job has nothing to do with anything else, it has to do with you providing a safe and calm environment for your kids.

“And if that means no school, and more playing and a bit more screen time or maybe just playing games as a family or helping doing some baking or whatever, that’s completely fine.”

Of course that’s all fine, many parents and caregivers have been doing all that for the last three weeks with their kids. But that doesn’t mean letting kids do whatever they want to do, and not doing things they can’t be bothered doing.

“…honest to god, I’d be saying to my boys, ‘there’s tele, we could just watch tele, like there’s no one can see us, it’ll be fine'”.

Many parents already have to fight against too much aitting on the couch, too much tv time, and too much device time. They can be useful pastimes and babysitters at time, but if you give kids free choice it can become a big problem – and in itself stressful.

Up until here it was vague about which age group Latta was referring to. There’s a big difference between the needs and free choice of 5 year olds versus 18 year olds. He was next asked specifically about secondary school kids.

So for secondary school kids it’s a bigger deal and they all feel pressure. One of the things I think parents should be saying to secondary school kids is, what we know from what happened after the Christchurch earthquake there was a lot of concern about how that would impact on kids NCEA results, and in fact the disrupted schools NCEA scores went up, they improved after all the disruption and the shifting around from the earthquakes.

I doubt that’s because the kids were given free choice about whether they did any school work.

“So again their stuff isn’t as fragile as they might think. It’s just about working through with your kids, helping them to kind of calm themselves down and to focus and to do the level of school work they want to do, and again, don’t get into fights with your teenagers about school work either….

“Don’t fight with your teenagers about school work. You should encourage them if they do have NCEA stuff coming up, I’d be doing that if I had teenagers, but I would not be adding stress that I don’t need to add in….

“Your most important job with teenagers is to keep things calm and settled”.

‘Calm and settled’ for many teenagers means doing as they please, which is as little as possible. Stay up as late as they like, stay in bed all morning, spend most of their time on their devices, on the internet and watching TV.

But that can be quite stressful for parents and caregivers, seeing teenagers vegetate and reinforcing laziness and not care about others in the household, and no care about their futures.

Teenagers can use stress, create stress by kicking up a storm, to try to get their own way. Latta has given them a signal that more of this will get them what they want – doing as little as possible.

I’m currently caring for a 15 year old who actually doesn’t mind doing school work when he’s made to, he likes achieving things academically. But he’s bone idle lazy and given a choice would do no school work, wouldn’t help around the house, wouldn’t shower, would live off convenience and junk food, would want to take control of the tv and sit all day on the couch on the internet. After watching Latta he got two more cushions because he was getting a little uncomfortable from lying on the couch.

Latta has undermined what we’re trying to do to instill self responsibility and also joint household responsibility, and to instill a work ethic in a lazy teenager. We’ll work through this and get a school work from home programme organised today, but Latta has made our job a bit harder.

It’s actually less stressful here when teenagers contribute some effort into the household and into their academic futures and don’t complain about being bored and don’t keep asking to use youtube and get more games on their smart phone.