Lessons From Home

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Lessons From Home

by Linda Tinney

I, like a lot of working adults, have had to change schedules, rearrange priorities, and learn to be a homeschool teacher during the past few months. COVID-19 has had so many impacts on our world. I never would have thought I would leave my office and our child would leave his classroom in March and not be able to return until months later. During this time, the lessons I have learned have been great and worth noting.

March 2020 was a memorable time in our world. Many changes were occurring, and no one knew how to deal with the rising pandemic. We shifted from having offices at our jobs to having offices at our kitchen tables. We went from having face-to-face conversations to having conference calls while cooking lunch. I am a person who needs structure or I become lazy, a.k.a. sit on the couch and read all day! Therefore, I had a hard time with this new schedule for the first few weeks. Our fifth-grade son was learning through Zearn, Pathblazers, BrainPop, etc., and I would check his work. As he said a few times during the first few weeks, “Dad, I don’t think Mom and I work well together on schoolwork!” I can’t say that he was wrong. I am a slight perfectionist with a type-A personality, while he is slightly different. However, we have learned a lot about each other during this process, and I wouldn’t trade this time together for anything. Let’s move on to something else that’s been on my heart—socialization.

Socialization—some of us need it more than others. I am one who needs people to talk to, people to hug, people to have dinner with, etc. At the beginning, it was hard for me to turn over the grocery store shopping to the Kroger app or to my husband because, after all, I see many people in Kroger who I stop and talk to while shopping—yes, I am that shopper! Nevertheless, I learned to do just that. Second, I am used to having my work friends ask, “What’s for lunch today?” around 10:00 a.m. I suddenly became the one planning lunch for my two at home. Don’t get me wrong: I have loved planning new meals and watching my kitchen creations come to fruition. So I came up with a solution to my problem of needing social time. I called my parents and my father-in-law and asked if we could come sit on the front porch (six feet away from each other) and bring lunch. We had our social time, but it was just a little different. It helped everyone involved and gave us something to look forward to the next time we were “out and about.”

The last few months have been full of quality family time, garden planting, football throwing, boat riding, and

movie nights at home. I have enjoyed seeing how we all have adapted to this “new normal.” My only wish is that when we come out of this pandemic, things will be back to normal, but also that we continue to hold onto the closeness that each of us has had at home with our families. I am looking forward to the time when holidays, birthdays, graduations, and other special occasions will be spent with our extended families in person and not through FaceTime, Zoom, or Google Hangouts. Until then, let’s just enjoy learning the “lessons from home.”

About The Author Linda Tinney is employed as a career transitions specialist at GNTC. She is wife to Neil and mom to Chason, a 5th grader She attends The Church at Rome.

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