Week 6 of Lockdown – How much longer?

Last Updated on 26 June 2020 by Colette

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Six whole weeks of lockdown. Six weeks of being stuck in the house safe at home, and we are very much reaching the stage of “How much longer do we have to do this for?” Of course the answer is, “For as long as we have to” because the health and safety of our family, friends and community is of the utmost importance, but it’s really getting hard now. Chloe must ask us on a near daily basis, “When will Coronavirus be over?“. She is so desperate to be able to visit family, to play with her friends and to get back to school. (You can read Chloe’s own Week 6 diary here!)

I said in our week five update that lockdown was getting hard – I can’t say that week 6 was any better. I guess overall the kids were more in the swing of completing their school work again – though Amy’s motivation and concentration seems to get worse by the day. Essentially she will now only get anything done if I sit next to her dragging her through the tasks – she’s going to get such a shock when she hits Year 2 in September and is expected to complete the majority of her work independently!

We started the week on a real go slow, nobody wanted to do any work on Monday morning and the universe answered our moans and groans with a text from school saying that their online systems weren’t working properly for the juniors and so no work had been uploaded! Instead, after me announcing that they wouldn’t be allowed any screens until their rooms were spotless, they spent most of the day cleaning and tidying each other’s rooms! Once they were just about done, Amy and I baked Eccles cakes (which she kept calling “Heckles cakes”) but they were a bit of a disaster as for some reason they ended up being bite sized and lacking in filling! Think I’ll bake those on own next time!

On Tuesday, Dave was out at work all day. Amy and Erin had an “Afternoon Tea Swap” planned so Amy & I made treats together in the morning before dropping them off on Erin’s doorstep in time for lunch, collecting goodies for Amy while we were there. When we got home, they sat and ate their lunch together over Skype with fancy glasses full of fizzy pop and chatted for about 45 mins. Having something to focus on made video calling so much easier for them as previously they’ve really struggled to have a conversation. Next week we’re going to try a craft activity. If you’ve got younger kids who are finding chatting to their friends and family via screen difficult then I definitely recommend trying something similar.

Despite a fairly relaxed working day on Tuesday, Amy was still totally lacking in motivation to get anything done on Wednesday so I promised her that once she’d got all her work done and caught up (including what she’d missed the day before), I’d dye her hair pink! In the end, I had to sit next to her and guide her through each task to keep her concentrating – but the carrot of having pink hair was enough and by tea time she had a lovely, if slightly uneven, pastel hue atop her head! (She also had drippy pink streaks all down her body but the less said about that the better!) Wednesday tea time was packed with tantrums and sulks so that by the time Aunty M rang for Amy’s weekly bedtime story, she absolutely wasn’t in the mood to read so Uncle Mike read to her instead.

Thursday was much the same with Dave out at work, the big two cracking on and just getting done what they needed to do and me coaxing, cajoling, poking and prodding Amy to get her work done and uploaded for feedback. She had another Beavers Zoom meeting on Thursday night which she seemed to enjoy.

Chloe had Zoom quiz with her class on Friday morning – it was a bit flipping noisy, I think she needs to wear headphones next time! Her teacher had set the quiz up using Kahoot so she needed to watch for the question on the laptop screen and then tap the right answer or write it down on her tablet. Chloe struggled a bit with the set up and got frustrated when she knew the right answer but accidentally spelled it wrong or tapped the wrong box by mistake meaning rather than it being lovely for her to see all her friends, she just ended up in tears saying she didn’t want to do it again next week. I’m hoping I can convince her to change her mind as the quiz itself isn’t really the point is it!

I had a good old chat with Kirst on Friday lunchtime – I don’t think we’d actually spoken for quite a while, it could have been as much as two weeks – but that’s pretty normal in “real life” anyway! It was so nice to see her and chat but it actually just left me feeling really sad and I had a right old sob when I got off the phone. I don’t want to video call her, I want to see her in real life! I felt pretty rubbish for the rest of the day – battling the kids all week and then being super sad about missing my friends meant that actually when it came to our group Zoom quiz night on Friday night, I just couldn’t be bothered. I didn’t have the motivation or the mental capacity so whilst Dave joined in without me, I lay on the sofa and listened to a couple of podcasts for the first time since lockdown began.

Usually I really look forward to weekends during lockdown as the lack of school work and more relaxed days lead to easier moods all round and of course Dave is free to be with us (or more often get stuff done in the garden). This Saturday started off so badly, I was tempted to send everyone back to bed to start again! Chlo absolutely got out of the wrong side of bed with foot stamping and anger giving way to tears and frustration. It was all over minor things like being given a crossiant for breakfast instead of a pain au chocolat ( I know right!) but she said she’s just so bored of being in the house and misses everyone. I think we’re all feeling that right now.

Amy had a huge tantrum over what to wear – her sleeves were uncomfortable apparently – and then I found a knot in her hair which just broke my heart. (I have written a full update on Amy’s hair & habits to publish next week but after the last 7 days, it needs some editing – I will link it in here when it’s live. I’ve also written about a book I’ve used to help Amy talk about her worries which I absolutely recommend)

Dave is generally pretty easy going but this weekend saw him really scraping the bottom of the barrel for patience. We both had to dig deep for the kids and strain was starting to show. He was grumpy with the kids and we had a stupid argument about Poppy – amazingly we’ve rubbed along pretty well this last 6 weeks and actually I’m just loving having Dave around more but Saturday morning was just too much for all of us.

In an attempt to shake off the Saturday morning strops, we took a very short drive (literally 5 minutes purely because it was too far for Poppy to walk there) to escape the residential streets we’ve spent the last 6 weeks traipsing and, as we walked onto the field the kids whooped, “Freeeedom” and ran off to climb a tree. We didn’t walk far as Pops can only still do short walks but she was so excited to explore somewhere different!

Dave spent Saturday afternoon working in the garden – but he was limited by supplies so couldn’t finish the job he had started which just added to the general feeling of frustration. We took the kids out to the park instead so that Amy could have another go at learning to ride her bike and . . . success! By the end of her “lesson” she was able to cycle the length of the park by herself!

We ended the day with a huge Indian takeaway and ice cream – both feeling that we rather deserved the treat!

I took Poppy out for a walk on my own on Sunday morning – Chloe was desperate to come with me but I really needed to just get out by myself! I’ve promised her that we’ll go out just the two of us during the coming week!

We took the kids to the park again in the afternoon so Amy could practice riding her bike after yesterday’s success – she needed to work on setting off by herself and turning corners – she made great progress with both, she really persevered with setting off and the satisfaction on her face when she managed it was amazing!

However, while we were there, we bumped into her best friend. And oh they were so excited to see each other in real life I could have cried for them – they were so good at keeping their distance – but when it was time to go, Amy was utterly heartbroken. She sobbed and sobbed. I can’t tell you how long it took me to calm her down and settle her. In the end, we put The Wombats  from TRNSMT festival last year on the telly and danced together in the living room, pretending we were at a festival!

Frankly it’s been a really bloody hard and emotional week – we’ve come so far in the last six weeks but I just can’t bring myself to imagine how much longer we might have to do this for. I’m crossing my fingers tightly that sometime soon we see a relaxing of the lockdown enough that we can go visit family or perhaps hang out with a limited number of friends.

Catch up on our lockdown diaries here:

Lockdown Week 1

Lockdown Week 2

Lockdown Week 3

Lockdown Week 4

Lockdown Week 5