“I was scammed by my 5-year-old.”
This isn’t a sentence you would hear most parents say, but for Laura Mazza, a mom of three, the situation called for it.
Tons of families across the country have just been unexpectedly tossed into the world of homeschooling due to the coronavirus lockdowns.
For parents with full time jobs working from home, it can be a struggle to balance your time.
Not to mention figure out how to home school on the fly.
A lot of people are taking it one day at a time and figuring it out as they go because… well, what else are you going to do?
It’s a handful!
Just like many other parents, Laura isn’t a big fan of this new homeschooling lifestyle.
One day she was working from home and teaching at the same time. She left Luca, her 5-year-old boy, working on his own in his room.
“I’d rather not have a sticky-fingered 5-year-old touching things or getting on the Zoom meeting like, “Mom? Who is that OLD lady?” like he has before.”
So she devised a clever plan. She set up an iPad in his room and another at her desk, with video chat set up between them.
If Luca had any questions while he was working, he could ask her.
“Today’s homeschool session was mildly unsupervised.”
Laura would check periodically to make sure he was still working, even though she noticed he was suspiciously quiet.
She wanted to trust him and give him some space so that he would feel trusted too.
But anyone with a 5-year-old, including Laura, knows that isn’t always the best of ideas!
He seemed like he had been working and listening to his lesson diligently, so she told him it was time for a well-deserved break.
But he was still. He had a funny and confused look on his face, and he wasn’t moving. Not even blinking!
She though maybe FaceTime was frozen, or Luca was pretending to be as a joke.
Laura went upstairs to check on him and see for herself what was going on. By this point, she had a funny feeling that something was up.
She found him singing to himself and playing with his toys in his room. Maybe he had heard her say it was time for a break, and he’d gone straight to the toys to make the most if it?
But then she noticed his iPad.
She found an unusual set up, where his iPad was carefully balanced and leaning face to face against his sister’s.
His camera lens was perfectly situated in front of his sister’s screen… which was full of pictures of his face!
The precocious little boy had taken some photos of himself to make it look like he was paying attention to his lesson, while he was actually playing in the background.
He had even taken a few different pictures with different expressions to make it look like he was moving.
Laura called him out and was trying to stay serious about his deception, instead of bursting out laughing.
“Yeah but I didn’t just do one picture, I wanted to show you ALL my listening faces.” – Luca
And now we know where he got his mischevous spirit from… his dad!
He admit that what he had done was wrong, but shrugged and quoted his father saying,
“You gotta admit, it’s pretty clever.”
Laura is certainly going to have to keep an eye on this little guy as he gets older!
For some advice straight from experienced homeschoolers, check out this list of tips on how to make the process easier.
Please SHARE this with your friends and family.
