What to do when your granddaughter cries in crisis

Before the pandemic I traveled, worked and had short visits with my daughter and grand-daughter when I could. The “New Normal” is my granddaughter and my daughter moved in with me while we all started remote work and distance learning. All was well at “granny’s” house for the first three weeks — it was as if it was a long-overdue vacation. Then my granddaughter started losing track of the days because school and the weekend were all in the same place. As we were nearing the holiday season, her mom told her Easter is this weekend and the 6-year-old began to cry. When her mother inquired why, she said, “it’s Easter and I will miss the Easter egg hunt.” Her mother, a former elementary school teacher quickly put plans A and B into effect. Plan A was she had pre-ordered a custom Easter basket, but due to the mail slow down, the priority package never arrived. Plan B she headed to the local Family Dollar store and purchased a backup Easter Basket, eggs for the hunt, and other props needed for the “only child” party. Then on Sunday, all twelve colorful eggs were hidden around the backyard and the Easter tradition was saved at granny’s house! Crisis 1 averted.

Home Schooling with a mom who is working full time remotely is different for both. Much of the day my granddaughter is on her iPad playing games either alone or with her friends virtually. She started spending so much time on the games, her mother used parental controls to limit gaming to 4 hours. This week on-line learning started for 1st graders using Blackboard Collaborate. The first day the system was slow with only elementary students in training sessions. The second day when middle schoolers joined, Blackboard crashed and school was canceled on the system for the rest of the week. Teachers scrambled to engage students on other platforms while both parents and students waited. At the end of the first day of training my granddaughter once again cried. For a brief moment, she saw her teacher and classmates who were missing from her world for over a month … and with the Blackboard system crash, there was no timeline (that she could understand) when they would be back. This led to the iPad gaming restrictions being…