Locked down. Again. The new normal. Except it isn’t new. Just plain old regular normal normal. Crappy, entirely precedented normality.

OK, so one thing is slightly different for me this time around: I’m homeschooling the boy. Last time it fell upon my other half to fill that educational void, but due to the fluctuating workloads of a double-freelance household, this time I’m taking on some of the strain.

Most of it happens on-screen, the whole class connecting on a big video chat with the teacher. It’s wonderful to see him in school mode. Those few hours each day are a usually a complete mystery for both of us. (Oh sure, he tells us what he’s done, but eight year-olds don’t make the most reliable narrators. Destined for a career in the creative industries, he’s exceedingly adept at peppering reality with convincing fantasy. I once lost an hour of my life being really excited about the existence of “shadow penguins”.) And it’s nice for him to see what I do during the day too. I think. Or maybe it’s incredibly boring? Best not to ask.

I have to spin plates and juggle clients a bit more than usual, but most of the time I can be getting on with stuff. I’m on the sidelines, a guiding hand to help out with the exercises and assignments that the teacher doles out. Which sounds like it should be easy.

Maths – you know, the immutable constant governing the order of the universe – has been replaced by a whole new system, confusingly also called Maths

Nope. No no no. Not easy. It would be had education not mutated beyond all recognition since Back In My Day. The curriculum I’m familiar with, and assumed had been set in stone for the rest of time, consisted mostly of colour wheels, oxbow lakes, clocks, cross-hatching and the art of drawing phalluses in dog-eared Tricolores (apologies to the resident of La Rochelle). Apparently things have moved on.

Maths – you know, the immutable constant governing the order of the universe – has been replaced by a whole new system, confusingly also called Maths. Simple acts of arithmetic now involve bizarre methods of stacking, arraying and splaying numbers across a page. Is this how we did it? I recognise nothing. That part of my brain has been permanently warped by years of thinking in page sizes and points. I thought dealing with American clients and their stubborn adherence to imperial measurements was hard; I now have to keep up with the modern methods of this beautiful mind I somehow created.

As for English, that’s changed beyond all recognition. Somewhat flustered, I have to pretend to know what fronted adverbials are and nod sagely whenever subordinating conjunctions are mentioned. Not a clue. Given that I’m being paid to write this very sentence, shouldn’t I know these things? Probably for the best that my day job rarely involves grammar or sentences of any kind – for me, language has been reduced to title, author, blurb.

Somewhat flustered, I have to pretend to know what fronted adverbials are and nod sagely whenever subordinating conjunctions are mentioned

Working alongside him is humbling. Seeing his education first-hand, I see his mind expanding while mine becomes irrevocably more blinkered. I’m starting to understand why some parents push their spawn to follow in their footsteps – just stay in your area of expertise and perpetuate the façade of worldly wisdom. I spent years and years learning all manner of valuable life skills at school, but they’ve wilted and all I can teach the boy is how to pleasingly move words and pictures about within a rectangle.

It’s inspiring watching him, but does put everything into a horrifying perspective. He has looked up to me as a font of knowledge all these years, but soon he’ll realise I only have a knowledge of fonts. He has a world of opportunity in front of him; I have Creative Cloud. Old, normal.

Daniel Benneworth-Gray is a freelance designer based in York. See danielgray.com and @gray; Image by Daniel Benneworth-Gray