Making work from home work for the entire family
With school and office plans in a state of limbo, parents are rethinking options so adults and children can both thrive
When state and local officials issued stay-athome orders to help control the coronavirus pandemic, kids and adults alike scrambled to set up work and study spaces and to upgrade electronics and connectivity.
With COVID-19 still raging, a new school year looms with some kids attending school in person and others returning with online instruction from home. Families have spent the summer considering how to get this semester off to a better start than the last one ended.
Without even considering students will learn, parents have to address where everyone will sit or stand, how noise levels will be monitored and how to keep everyone healthy and productive.
Before becoming a stay-at-home mom, Shannon Ackal was a neuropsychologist who evaluated children for learning disabilities. Understanding classroom issues and study habits wasn’t exactly foreign to her, but it was still a struggle to adapt quickly when her husband — Mitch, an attorney at Gray Reed — and three children, 13-year-old Parker, 11-yearold Finley and 8-year-old Annalise, found themselves living, working and studying together under he same roof all day, every day.
“We were not very prepared. All these open floor plans work great until you have five people in the same room on (their own electronic) devices all at once,” Shannon Ackal said. “The first couple of weeks, everyone came down with their books at the big kitchen island. It didn’t take long to figure out that wouldn’t work — there were too many meetings going on at once.”
A similar scenario played out in a different part of the city when Nina and Karun Magon went through the same thing with their two children, a son now headed into sixth grade and a daughter headed into fourth. They picked up laptops and iPads and instructions from their kids’ school and felt like they were off to a good start.
“One child was in the dining room on Zoom, the other was in the breakfast room talking to her teacher, and I was in my home office working, listening to chaos,” said Nina Magon, who owns Contour Interior Design. “It was a very different experience; we’ve never done anything like this.”
Now, Ackal is happy that her oldest two kids can do schoolwork in their rooms. Parker and Finley already had desks in their rooms, and now Annalise has asked for one, too. There were storage issues, since Ackal didn’t realize how many books — each child had 13 — and other things they had in their lockers at school.
The Magons have bought a desk for their 11-year-old son now that they know he prefers a quieter environment. They bought a different chair for the desk in their daughter’s room, but their 9-year-old — who prefers acting classes over regular schoolwork — needs more supervision to get things done. Both will start school virtually next week.
The lessons that parents of school-aged children learned last spring point out what educators already know: Adults and children thrive in different environments.
“Everyone has their own learning modality, and that does not change as we become adults. If you’re tactile as a child, you have that same process as an adult. For children who need a tactile environment, give them an opportunity outside of Zoom or virtual learning so they can touch and feel and move and manipulate,” said Delilah DavisGonzales, director of field experience in Texas Southern University’s College of Education. “It’s important that we parents don’t lump children together and say, ‘If your brother can learn in this space, you should, too.’ ”
Some people work or study best in a quiet environment while others thrive with white noise or even music, Davis-Gonzales said.
“When I go in schools to observe teachers, many will have white noise. Especially with this generation of students, they like white noise because they multitask so well,” she said. “We have to recognize it’s a generational thing, and a different learning modality is needed.”
So if your son or daughter wants to work in complete silence, that’s OK. But it’s also just fine if they work best with TV noise in the background or using earbuds with music playing.
“It’s important to know your child and recognize when they’re doing their best work,” Davis-Gonzales said. “If you have a child who likes semiprivate, you may allow that child to stay in their room with the door open. They aren’t completely isolated but have a sense of privacy. You might have a child who likes being in the middle of everything. They can work at the kitchen or dining room table while you’re in your home office.”
Anyone who’s a parent or grandparent today likely didn’t attend school in an environment where you could sit on the floor, use a bouncy ball or work at a stand-up desk before you graduated high school. Today’s classrooms are very different. So if your child can’t sit still when learning or doing homework at the kitchen table, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
“We should give our children a voice to say, ‘This is what feels good to me’ or ‘I learn best when I’m in this environment,’ ” Davis-Gonzales said. We want our children to be critical thinkers. Knowing who they are helps build critical thinking skills.”
Our work-from-home, learnfrom-home world may not be ideal, but Davis-Gonzales said that when it’s all over, we may have a better understanding of ourselves and those around us.
“This is a good place and time in education. We have a lot of challenges dealing with children being at home with parents and doing school virtually,” DavisGonzales said. “We have to look at it as a glass half full — this is a learning opportunity for parents.”