With just days away from the start of the school year, psychologists are helping families navigate remote learning.
NBC 6 anchor Sheli Muñiz spoke to family psychologist Dr. Julia Harper.
SHELI: Students are beginning the school year at home. What kind of strain can this continue to put on families?
DR. HARPER: Well, as someone who is dealing with it myself, it does put on a strain on families simply because it's not the norm. It's part of us all again being outside of the norm in this crazy Covid world that we're in. I think the bigger strain that's happening right now is that we all kind of had that expectation after spring and summer we'll get through this and we would get our lives back to some degree and we're not.
SHELI: A Bankrate.com survey says more than half (61%) of parents say remote learning will negatively impact their finances.
DR. HARPER: Absolutely. As an owner of a company, I have 65 employees and we're all looking at the fact of that. We're all trying to negotiate work -- how am I going to be productive? How do I get that assignment done and do my own Skype meeting? How do I balance, making sure that I do things well? Because the reality of it is we're facing the most important things of our lives, which is our children along with another important part, which is our professional lives, and that creates such internal conflict within ourselves. And then of course, when we're in an internal conflict, that's going to turn into a conflict between people in the marriage.
SHELI: So, what are you telling every family that has this concern?
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DR. HARPER: I say to people, "Focus on what you know, focus on what you can do. Drop what you don't know." One of the biggest forms of stress and conflict right now is paying attention to, when is this going to be over? I mean we're all in the car like the kids going to Disney World, 'Are we there yet? Are we there yet?' So, we're all in our grown version of 'are we there yet?' Most importantly, remember, you're not a teacher. Your goal is to support your child to use the curriculum that's already set.
