Alex Gladwin Blog

What a whirlwind the last few weeks since Christmas have been! As expected cases of coronavirus increased by a lot and it left us feeling very worried about the boys returning to school, especially so as our area had been moved into a tier 4 area and the schools just across the border from us had all been ordered to close. The boys school was due to open despite being on the border and Adam and I were just not at all comfortable with it. Don't get me wrong - the idea of home schooling again didn't particularly appeal to us as we're not teachers and home is not their usual school environment and juggling working from home, with teaching and running a home and parenting is not at all easy. BUT it just didn't feel like the right and safe option, especially so as, because we work from home, we have the opportunity to have the boys at home with us. 

And so we made the decision to contact the boys head teacher and ask if we could keep the boys home. It was one of the strangest emails I've ever sent to ask the head teacher of a school if we could keep our children home to keep them safe, but it just felt like the right thing to do. Fortunately she replied to us and was very understanding in her response saying that whilst she couldn't authorise their absences, we wouldn't be fined for keeping them off. And that was our decision made, until, the government decided a day later that there would be another national lockdown meaning that all the schools across the country would close again.