The hell of teaching your own children!

Whatever else happens in the next few months, the world will look very different when we finally emerge blinking into the sunlight.

there will be newfound respect for all sorts of people we’ve previously taken for granted — not least supermarket staff, delivery drivers — and, of course, all the other key workers currently keeping the show on the road.

For parents, however, one group will stand out more than most, not so much because of their role in tackling this immediate crisis, but on account of their sudden and unexpected absence: teachers.

as the mother of two teenagers, aged 16 and 15, I was already in awe of the teaching profession. anyone who can corral 30 sullen, hormonal horrors into a classroom and get them to sit still, let alone absorb any information, has my utmost respect.

But it wasn’t until I, like countless other parents, had to do their job that I realised quite how amazing teachers are — and quite how desperately I miss them.

AdmIttedly, these are unusual circumstances. as well as the kids’ truncated education, we’ve also got our jobs, our mortgages, our elderly relatives to worry about, not to mention the question of where the next roll of loo paper is coming from.

home-schooling is not easy, even if you are one of those superparents whose children can speak fluent mandarin. most of us leave all that to the experts. that’s because teaching children is hard; teaching your own children is, I am discovering, nigh on impossible.

take this article. I’ve been trying to write it since lunchtime and it’s now 4pm. this is not because I’ve been procrastinating; it’s because I’ve only just wrestled my laptop back off my son, who commandeered it at 8.45am to log on to something called Google Classroom, the platform his school is using for lessons.

Needless to say, it took about an hour to get online. eventually, after a good deal of shouting and slamming of doors we got there, and I left him copying maths equations into his workbook.

I then turned my attention to my daughter, who is in her first year of a-levels. her school is doing things the old-fashioned way, mainly because many pupils don’t have access to a computer. So she’s not tied to a timetable — which means I had to prise her out of bed via a series of escalating threats.

In desperation, I rang a friend. She, too, was at home with her kids, aged 15 and ten. every time she turned her back, the ten-yearold was clicking off his work and onto youtube.

her other child was in her bedroom, having been caught logging into houseparty [the video-sharing app] with her entire friendship group. like me, my friend had a pressing deadline. I asked whether her husband could help. ‘Oh no,’ she said dryly. ‘his work is far more important than mine.’ I know how she feels. Only in my case, of course, it’s true.

daughter eventually surfaces. I set her up at the kitchen table and go back to my laptop.

approximately 4.3 seconds later a loud howl emanates from the kitchen. She can’t do the work on her own; she is going to fail her alevels and her life will be ruined.

Still, some good may yet come of this. Because when all this is over and the schools re-open it won’t just be grown-ups celebrating — the kids will be, too. another few weeks with their parents and the prospect of double maths will seem like a positive delight.