Pandemic Parents: Why We Need All The Help We Can Get

Posted: Fri, Oct 23, 2020 10:39 AM

Ah, home-schooling. The horror. The guilt. The chocolate biscuit stress eating. It’s hard to believe that our children were out of formal education for six months, and as we wave them off at the school gates, we hold our breath. Will the number of Covid-19 infections continue to rise? Will the schools be forced to shut down again? 

Most of us are not teachers, so the home-schooling came as quite the challenge. Some of us were juggling working from home. Others were juggling toddlers and their unreasonable demands. Many of us were interrupted during a conference call to our boss with demands for the Xbox. Some were stirring the dinner with one hand while uploading the homework for the teacher with the other. Multi-tasking? Pandemic parenting took that to a whole new level.

Now, some of you were very clever with the bullet-proof timetable and the colour coded charts, weren’t you? Very impressive. Gold stars all round. And some of us were counting down the hours to bedtime. Or to wine O’clock. Or sneaking off to the bedroom to scream into a pillow. You know, we’ve all been there. But one thing we all have in common: we did our best under some pretty difficult circumstances. 

As for foreign language teaching, how did that go? Most of us did well just to get through maths, Irish and English, never mind delving into the past participle of the verb 'manger'. Those school French lessons seem like a lifetime ago, and your Spanish vocabulary might be described as a little on the rusty side. 

Maybe you didn't get abroad this year, but you'd love nothing more than to travel next year as a family. Wouldn't it be amazing if your little one could ask the waiter for an ice-cream in French or Spanish? Now, we can't guarantee that we'll be virus-free this time next year, or that you'll get that Ryanair refund you're chasing, but we can manage to teach your young child that foreign language ice-cream order. ¡No hay problema!

With our kids back at school, now is the perfect time to get the second language going for next year's holiday, and a great opportunity to catch up on the formal education that they've all missed. Lingotot teaches Spanish, French, German, Italian and Mandarin classes to children up to 6th class or age 12 in the community, primary schools, and nurseries.

The award-winning Lingotot classes make use of active, communicative, and interactive teaching methods that come naturally to young learners. Learning is through songs, stories, games, drama, and play. Children have so much fun they don't realise they're learning.

We’re so excited to offer both online classes, and face to face lessons (when we are allowed to) to accommodate as many parents as possible. You can book classes, or call us to find out more. 

One day, our kids will look back on 2020 and think: mum and dad tried their best. 

We’ll handle the parlez vous francais? and the ¿hablas espaῆol? You handle the parenting.