We are nearly at the end of the weirdest, most challenging year most of us have ever lived through. I tend to get reflective around New Year’s, and this year, probably even more so. Ask I reflect back on the year of COVID, I thought I’d spend my last three posts of 2020 sharing a few thoughts, lessons or perspectives on each of the three main pillars of this blog: Parenting, Productivity and Quarantine.
Going in order, I’ll start today with parenting. And indeed, this year has presented an unprecedented set of obstacles for parents everywhere. Part of any stimulus package should be money paid directly into some kind of trust that our kids can use to get therapy someday.
In just a few weeks, we went from life as we knew it to something totally alien and frightening. Not only did we have to worry about our family’s health, we also had to adjust all our behaviors. We had to adjust to kids home schooling and being separated from friends and family. And as if being trapped inside with our kids for months on end wasn’t stressful enough, it also meant that many of the regular release valves…things like going to indoor playgrounds or restaurants or friends’houses…were suddenly gone.
The pressures of keeping all things running and still keeping our kids sane and healthy was head-spinning. And life didn’t stop. In our case, we got Henry’s autism diagnosis in the midst of this, our AC and furnace died, and tons of other regularly stressful stuff happened. I know other parents out there also faced normal bumps and potholes in the road of life, and they seemed extra heavy this year.
But in many ways, I believe that having to face all of this and get creative has made me a better parent. I think back to my time in film school in the 90s. In our first semester, our film projects all had to be silent. No dialogue or score music. “How the heck do you tell a story without words or music?” We all complained. Well, it’s hard. But being forced to do that makes you think of storytelling in a different way, and it makes you more efficient and sharper when suddenly you do get the luxury of dialogue.
When all of this is over, I think all of us parents will find something similar. Parenting will always be hard, but what we learned how to do under tight constraints may come in very handy later in more normal times.
So with all that preamble, here are three basic things I’ve learned about parenting this year.
- To best take care of your family, you really need to take care of yourself. I know, you’ve heard it a million times. The old, “put your mask on before helping others” analogy has been worn to death. It also happens to be totally right. There have been times on this journey where I thought I was helping by putting my own needs aside and putting everything toward the kids, but all I was doing was making myself a big stressed out mess that was no good to anybody.
So whether it’s carving out a few minutes every day for exercise, mediation, or just screaming curse words into a paper bag, find little ways to look out for yourself where you can. Erin started taking walks with Asta recently, and while I normally liked to take short runs, I’m still nursing this dislocated toe, so I have been doing the walk thing this week, too, and have been loving it. Just yesterday I had a super tranquil walk in freshly fallen snow that made me feel like a million bucks. Chase the little things like that.
- Speak honestly and listen. COVID has been all encompassing, and while we can do our best to shield our kids from the virus itself, we sure can’t shield them from the ways it’s changed our world. We decided early on to speak as plainly and honestly as we could with our kids, and encouraging them to do the same with us. It is scary, there’s no getting around it, but I think being honest about the state of things has helped them better understand when we tell them we can’t go a friends’ house or to the children’s museum. We do our best to talk to them like mature people when it comes to COVID, and it has paid off. Even Henry, who often seems half-attentive or not listening at all when we talk about heavy things, will surprise us later by saying something that shows he understands.
Perhaps even more important is listening and encouraging your kids to talk about how they are feeling. Identifying and communicating emotions is something we’ve worked hard on with both kids since day one, and having that emotional vocabulary is incredibly helpful during times like this. These are strange, confusing and scary times for kids, too, and it’s important that they feel heard and understood. I think knowing that we grown ups understand and also have those feelings really helps.
And also on the topic of listening, I remind myself often that we are in many ways their world right now, because they are so cut off from others. All parents get tired, and it can be hard when your kids get super chatty about a random cartoon or toy. God love her, Amelia can talk up a storm. Yesterday morning, I was my usual groggy morning self and she really wanted to give me a “tour” of the toy ice cream truck she got for Christmas. My first instinct was to say, “later honey,” but I reminded myself how few people she has to talk to right now, put myself in her shoes, and instead told her I’d get a cup of coffee and be happy to take the tour. It was complete, exhaustive, and also adorable and delightful. Listening can be just as good for you as it is for your child.
- Fun and joy come in surprising places, so make a point to find a moment in each day worth celebrating. Again, I know how corny this sounds. And I think sometimes that readers of this blog may think of me as a relentlessly positive person. This is tremendously not true. Way off the mark. I can be an outright pessimist, and have struggled for years with anxiety and depression. But I am also a big believer in the power of gratitude and positive thinking.
If you put good out in the universe, you get good back. And I think the foundation of any of that is gratitude. I try to keep a journal and write down what I’m thankful for each day. It keeps me grounded and focused on the positive rather than the negative. And part of the point of this blog has been to find the moments of joy in what is undeniably a dark time. It may not always feel like it, but I assure you that even on the darkest of days, there is a spark of wonder, fun or laughter hiding somewhere.
Some days, we try to make those things happen. Like yesterday, we had lunch at an outdoor igloo thing and, even though it was freezing cold, we had a fun, special time as a family.
Other times, it might be spontaneous. There a zillion examples of that in this blog. I think back to early posts where Henry invented the game of FenceBat, basically cramming his whiffle bat through lats in our fence. Or, more recently, I think of the spontaneous stairway lightsaber battle where I joined in the fun with an old wrapping paper tube.
Finding those moments and wring them down every day has given me a very different perspective on that last year. Often in the moment, I remember the stress, anxiety and fear. But looking back on those…the time we went camping, the little hikes and adventures we have taken, and all the make believe play we did right in our own little quarantine bubble…when I look at those I smile and recognize how lucky I am.
So those are my humble thoughts on parenting. It’s never easy, but always rewarding. There is no magic bullet, but I would submit that taking care of yourself, listening and being thankful can really help make the ride more pleasant.
