Drew Barrymore Says She Initially “Cried Every Day” Homeschooling Her Kids During Pandemic

No doubt about it, the coronavirus outbreak of 2020 is an emotional rollercoaster for everyone. At a time when people are dying every day, everyone is quarantined at home for the unforeseeable future, and unemployment continues to rise, it’s impossible for anyone to thrive at the moment.

Perhaps one of the most stressful parts of the pandemic has been for parents to have their kids home with them 24/7. It’s not that they don’t love their kids—of course, they’d do anything for them! But if you’re trying to juggle working from home with taking care of your kids and making sure food is on the table, then you’re more than likely have a pretty tough time right now.

Even celebrities are struggling at with this. Drew Barrymore has recently admitted defeat on homeschooling her children when she appeared on the Today Show.

Barrymore, who shares her 7-year-old Olive and 5-year-old Frankie with her ex, Will Kopelman, said that having to teach her kids.

“School started, and it all went out the window,” Barrymore told Savannah Guthrie on the show via video chat. “The minute I thought, ‘Oh, I’m three weeks in, I’ve got this,’ I cried every day, all day long.

The real challenge was trying to homeschool her kids on top of everything else she’s trying to balance. It has not been easy, to say the least. “It was like every church and state,” Barrymore said. “It was the messiest plate I’ve ever held in my life to be the teacher, the parent, the disciplinarian, the caretaker.”

Having to be her own kids’ teacher really made her think about her kids’ actual teachers. They do this on a regular basis! Sure, it was not under the circumstances of a pandemic and having to teach them at their kitchen table, but if she could barely manage two kids, she wondered how teachers managed so many more—especially when some of them are parents themselves!

“I thought, ‘Oh my God, and teachers have children [of their own]. Do they survive it because they get to go away and work with other kids? Have they had their children in their classroom? How did this all work?’” Barrymore questioned on the show.

If there’s one good thing that has come out of this, it’s that teachers are surely getting the praise they deserve. “I didn’t think I needed to respect and appreciate teachers any more than I did,” Barrymore said.

You can hear more from Barrymore about the situation in the video below.

Do you have kids that you’re trying to teach at home while they’re out of school? What kinds of things have you been finding to be the most difficult to balance during the COVID-19 outbreak?