First Day of School

The first day of school went about as I expected. Some tears, but mostly frustration and boredom.

I've been up since 6am because of anxiety. I sat around my room until a little before 7am then went downstairs to wake the 10yo and clean up the kitchen (like I normally do), but I forgot I never put all of the groceries away yesterday so spent all morning doing that and forgot to take the first day of school photos outside (always with the mom regret). The only pictures I have of him were from right before 8am when he was crying about the Zoom meeting.

He had a panic attack because the feed kept lagging then skipping ahead so he was missing chunks of what was going on. Every time the teacher would try to explain something, the stream would pause and he'd miss what was said. Class technically hadn't even started yet, and he was in full blown tears, wanting to quit school.

It was heartbreaking and frustrating for both of us.

I managed to calm him down by figuring out what he was supposed to be doing (something about changing his name for the zoom meeting). I reminded him that his audio and video were off so no one could see or hear him. He was just a silent observer. Once class continued on, he tried to keep up as best he could with the lag. It nearly brought him to tears a few more times because he was confused. I just told him that it wasn't his fault--there's just hundreds of kids all over town suddenly live-streaming. Probably everyone was laggy.

Sure enough, he discovered the chat box where a bunch of the kids (many of them in our neighborhood) were complaining about the lag. He's much more comfortable with chat boxes so started making comments there which was very familiar as he plays Roblox games all day, chatting with his online friends.

Anyway, he survived the two hours of classes. I tried to have him jot down whenever he missed something he thought was important, but he got bored not knowing what was going on. He missed when they switched to math class because the stream stopped then started back up again several seconds later after they were told to take out their math notebook. He had no idea what was going on.

I was just bored. And tired. I'm usually not sleepy in the morning anymore but just couldn't concentrate even after a pot of coffee. I didn't get anything done really then when class ended at 10am, I had to make sure he did his other assignments. There were 3 small ones that required him to write some stuff down and answer some questions. Of course, he wanted to blow through it which messed up the one assignment. I told him to do it over which made him mad so he was in tears again.

In the end, he finished it all by 11:20am which happened to be when lunch was ready. I figured I'd make him something with it being the first day of school so we had tacos. Then when I was taking some up to my sick daughter, I felt my left knee pop. I've spent the rest of the day in pain. Going up and down the stairs is the worst.

I also ended up trying to take a nap around noon. It was either that or another pot of coffee, and I'm not supposed to be having caffeine at all. Of course, I didn't actually fall asleep and just wasted two hours of the day lying there and felt no better when I got up.

Hopefully tomorrow goes better for everyone.