The third topic is about the benefits that families experience during lockdown. Can you
tell me about some of the positives your child and you as a family took from lockdown including
some of the aspects of home education? We did more as a family a lot of baking
a lot of watching TV and cooking shows and that sort of inspired us to sort of look a lot more
together as a family which which was really really nice. It made us I think see more about what was
important suddenly there were lots of things that we used to do that we were no longer doing and
I was like it's really clearly not an important thing it's not something we need to be doing. It's
really nice to have that time just to have fun to do fun things that normally I would have gone no
I haven't got time to set but I haven't got time to do that and to be able to go yeah you know what
crack on. My garden is covered in chalk and paint and all sorts of things because I just
sort of went you know what it's fine you being happy is more important than that wall staying
white. I have said to people that in many ways families like ours are quite socially isolated
so um the idea of having to to be away from people and socially distant from people is in some ways
not that difficult for us. Apart from walking to the shops
that was my main physical activity so I was getting more rest and more sleep so
the drop in physical demand on me plus time to reflect on where my life was going in general
there were two very positive things. Being able to take a lot more time so we weren't
rushing and my daughter really hates feeling rushed and the morning routine to get ready to go
to school was was really stressful for everybody and for her especially so not having that sort
of rushing feeling of rushing on to the next thing was really good that we could do things in
her own time at her pace so she actually produced quite a lot of when she was feeling motivated she
produced quite a lot of writing that normally is something that she really struggles with in school
but at home she knew she could leave it and come back to it and if it took
her the whole day to write something that was okay. When he goes to uh senior school
how am I going to support him what can I best do. So it was a good primer having the time to work
with him to see where he was academically so that that it was good from that point of view . The
confidence in her going in the state park she was trying foods that she never would have
tried before but I think just being so settled in herself it just made everything a little
a little calmer almost a little more you know maybe we can try it maybe we can push that a
little bit more and see where that goes and she's being quite receptive to it and I don't know if
it is just a massive break from school that she had maybe six weeks isn't enough maybe she just
needed a longer break of time to sort of reset almost and take a little step back. The positive
would be the my middle son's mental health and the positive change I've seen in him I saw in him
and I've seen the deterioration since he's gone back to school so I'm seriously considering do I
just pull him out for 12 months and he can work at home and actually not having to deal with
school was hugely beneficial for him. I realised that my son can do it once we broke it down
and we changed some of the language he was more than capable of participating
once we removed some of the writing this was a lot of writing and we video recorded his answer
instead and uploaded that onto the the platform he's absolutely fine. So he just demonstrated to
me that he's more than capable however the system doesn't allow him to show what he can do you.