[Lifestyle] 'You and your friends are making history': Mom post about the struggles of remote learning goes viral

[SliCeR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all of us differently. Between the great toilet paper hoarding disaster of 2020, local businesses shutting down, forgetting how to socialize, working from home (or not working at all), and canceled travel plans; life as we knew it came to a screeching halt with seemingly no sign of normality on the horizon. Among those that have been deeply impacted by this global disaster are children. Not only have they been robbed of a fundamental year of their lives, but they've been asked to start learning outside the classroom — something many have struggled with. Parents and kids alike have been forced to adapt during these trying times, which is what inspired mom and writer, Christine Derengowski, to take to Facebook to flesh out her concerns over remote learning. She began by explaining that her seven-year-old son, who's been enrolled in online schooling, had been feeling the pressure of completing assignments under such unconventional learning conditions. "I’ve lost a year with my kids battling over school and I’m done," Derengowski wrote. "My seven-year-old and I were in the midst of our usual asynchronous day battle. I had his writing homework in my hand from school. He’d written several full, well-thought-out sentences. But he won’t do the same for me, at least not without a fight. "I told him he didn’t have to write about his best day like his teacher asked, he could write about his worst. He could write about whatever he wanted as long as he wrote a few sentences," she continued. "He said he’d get in trouble. He said he was doing a bad job in first grade. He was on the brink of tears but didn’t know why. And it hit me. Instead of getting frustrated and pushing the assignment, I sat down with him at his desk in his superhero bedroom."