The Covid-19 pandemic forced UK schools to close their doors to most children in March. Like many parents across the country, Jesmond resident Nichola Parody home-schooled her three children. However, Nichola’s daughter Heidi is diagnosed as having dyslexia and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

JesmondLocal asked Nichola how she handled that particular challenge.

Hi Nichola, how have you found home schooling during the pandemic? 

The biggest challenge has been keeping everything as normal as possible. When everything first shut down, it was quite scary and my top priority was to make home feel happy and safe. The home-schooling was the second priority. 

How has home-schooling worked in the Parody household? 

My husband has been working, so I’ve taken the lead with home-schooling. We decided to make Fridays a no-school day, because five days a week was very tiring and didn’t work well for us. 

When you found out school was closing, were you offered extra help with home schooling Heidi? 

We’ve heard from her teacher, the acting deputy head and Heidi’s SENCO on a regular basis. Nothing has been specific to Heidi’s needs, but I think what they’ve provided has been sufficient. 

How have you kept Heidi engaged with school work at home? 

I have to pitch work to Heidi that I know she can do. The school has done a lot of good work with her, so we wanted to revisit that. Heidi loses attention quickly, particularly with things she finds boring. Heidi has needed one-to-one support at home, because there are a lot of distractions. We aren’t teachers and we don’t know all of the proper techniques and teaching approaches. Having other children, it can often feel like an impossible task. Some days go really well and other days seem awful. 

What learning materials did you use? 

School provided lots of material. I also used BBC Bitesize and the Maths Factor to access learning material. We also took a less traditional approach sometimes. For example, we collected flowers, learned about pollination and later pressed them to make art. One day my son wanted to learn about space, so we had a day dedicated to that specific subject. Heidi asked to learn about Henry VIII and we did a history day. Letting the children lead their learning has been really effective and they’ve covered so many topics. 

Have you found home schooling to be stressful at all? 

I haven’t been anxious or worried as such. I have been concerned with keeping up with school work, but I just wanted to concentrate on keeping things on an even keel at home. I’ve been lucky that Heidi has wanted to engage, but some days are incredibly hard. You see people putting incredible things on Facebook that they’ve been up to. I know other ADHD parents have felt a lot of pressure from that, but we’re in a crisis. Don’t put undue pressure on yourself and your children. 

Have there been any other challenges and how did you cope with them? 

Entertaining three children at the same time meant that I couldn’t have quality time with each child. We brought in “fun day with mum day”. They pick a time and get an hour with me one-to-one and we do whatever they want. Sometimes we play boardgames, or Heidi likes to play with Barbies. It worked really well, so we duplicated a while ago with my husband. You just have to find inventive ways of keeping everyone happy and entertained. 

To find out more about Nichola, Heidi and neurodiversity, visit their blog.