Teach Mom Learn

On March 13, 2020, Massachusetts shut down.  Back then, we thought it was temporary.  I was excited for Tom to be home with Rae and me for a bit, and I still fully expected to go back to work in the traditional sense less than a month later.  We stocked up on basic essentials and prepared for two weeks of baby snuggles while we rode out the pandemic. 

Five days into the pandemic, after listening to the governor’s daily briefings, we started to realize things weren’t changing anytime soon.  We went a little stir crazy, started to get creative with canned foods, and looked into this thing called Instacart.  We subscribed to Disney+, watched Moana on repeat and identified with “Where You Are,” singing, “And no one leaaaves” at random moments throughout the day. We still thought it would be over in a month or two.

Somehow, as of yesterday, it’s been a year.  A year of isolation.  A year of social distancing. A year since we’ve seen most of our family in person.  A year since I’ve hugged a friend.

Looking back, this has been the most challenging year of our lives. It’s been a year of loss, grief, emotional pain, and anxiety coming in like ocean waves, sometimes gently hitting the shore, other times like tsunamis destroying everything in their path.  It’s been a year of fighting over boundaries and what “safe” actually means, because it seems to be different for everyone.

And yet, somehow, there has been joy.  The fact that people are still standing, still smiling, still being kind to one another after everything that happened in the last year is a testament to our resilience.  It gives me immense hope that one day, things will be better and we will look back on this year and recognize the strength it took to make it through.

Parenting in this pandemic has been simultaneously one of the best and most stressful experiences of my life. 

1. Pandemic parents are adaptable. Did you ever imagine you’d be discussing the most comfortable masks with your friends? Or excited to find mask lanyards on sale? Neither did I! And yet, here we are.

If this year has taught us anything, it’s that we can learn to adapt to anything around us.  The “new normal” became our actual normal far more quickly than anyone imagined it would. 

As parents, we’ve had to adapt and teach our children to do the same. And somehow, we actually did it! Toddlers barely realize the difference, and older children have adapted too. I see it at work every day -the kids are so happy to be back that they barely dwell on the year they wish they were having.

Because we were adaptable, our children learned to adapt too. And they will take this lesson with them for the rest of their lives.

2. Pandemic parents are creative. This is one of my favorite lessons of the last year. Birthday parades, social distant cook outs, no contact games, hybrid lessons (I cannot even begin to describe my love of Google Slides), and Zoom family dinners didn’t exist for most of us before this year.

We reconfigured classrooms and stores, we picked up new hobbies and actually got good at them, we learned so much and pushed ourselves to get creative and make our new normal as good as we could. We changed our world in a way that I really think is for the best.

And we kept things fun and interesting for our kids! Pinterest was a godsend, and the fantastic ideas led to so many wonderful experiences. A year that could’ve been nearly constant boredom instead became one full of memories we’re grateful for.

3. Pandemic parents are capable. When we had our children, many of us imagined relying on a support system of family and friends. And then, suddenly, we were on our own. We balanced our jobs and our children, and we somehow managed to do both.

Parenting without a support system was not always easy. We couldn’t take breaks, and we couldn’t really go anywhere for a while. We were on duty 24/7.

We were tired and overwhelmed. We were coping with our own pandemic anxiety. And yet, we still managed to care for our kids. When we just wanted to sleep or hide, we got up and conquered the day. We were pushed to our limits and we realized that we are truly capable of anything.

4. Pandemic parents know it’s okay not to be okay sometimes. This year was hard, and being comfortable living in an ever-escalating state of fear and anxiety was an immense challenge for all of us. But in The Wall Street Journal’s “The Art of the Pandemic Meltdown,” Elizabeth Bernstein details the importance of acknowledging when we aren’t okay and gives strategies to help us work through it.

If you haven’t already, please, please read her work. It is so helpful. We can pretend all we want, but eventually we all hit a breaking point. The best thing we can do in those moments is to lean into it -cry our hearts out, punch a heavy bag, do whatever we need to do to feel better, as long as it’s safe.

Taking the time we needed to care for ourselves made us better parents. For some ideas for self-care, check out these self-care ideas for you and your toddler and easy ways to treat yourself.

5. Pandemic parents are resilient. This has been a year of false starts and struggles. Every time things felt like they were getting better, something else would happen that would throw us for a loop.

The news was consistently devastating and terrifying. The states closed and opened and closed again. Numbers skyrocketed and plummeted. One day was full of hope, the next was full of fear.

It was incredibly hard to feel stable surrounded by so much uncertainty. But we really didn’t have a choice. There were (and still are) children relying on us. And so we kept bouncing back every single time something pushed us down.

6. Pandemic parents find the joy. Despite all the uncertainty and stress of this year, there has been a lot of joy. We’ve gained so much time with our families and in our homes, more than we ever expected to. We’ve finally had the time to focus on things we’ve always wanted to do.

We’ve explored new parks and beaches, and tried every ice cream shop in our region. Having our own unique hobbies that we love and look forward to, as well as our shared ones, helped us to be happier people, which then made us better parents and better partners to our significant others.

Scrolling back through the photos from this year, I don’t see the tears and anxiety. I see Rae’s smiles, beautiful landscapes, my very fluffy cat (who was thrilled to have us home), and lots of socially distant visits with friends and family. There are literally thousands of happy memories. I would give anything to have avoided this pandemic, but I wouldn’t trade a second of my extra time with Rae.

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7. Pandemic parents stick to their boundaries. This was a hard one for all of us, partially because we started lockdown knowing so little about this virus. As information evolved, we began to relax a bit.

However, “safe” was a largely subjective term. Even now, it’s hard to know where to draw the line. In the beginning, every study proved a different point. Now there’s far more consistency, but everyone has a different comfort level.

Some are uncomfortable with indoor dining, others think it’s crazy to bring groceries into the home without wiping them down, and still others won’t even walk in the a store or public place of any kind. And none of us have the right to judge anyone else’s comfort level because we are all doing our best.

Ultimately, the key is to live the way you’re comfortable, even if those around you feel differently. Stick to your boundaries, ease up when you’re ready, and know that one day, things will be normal again.

8. Pandemic parents practice self-care. We celebrate Take-Out Tuesday because we need a break from cooking dinner. We let the clean laundry sit on the couch a little longer than usual.

We let screen time happen more than we normally would (especially in the winter). We dance it out with our kids and belt out Disney songs. I’m telling myself that Rae is learning life lessons from the Sesame Street songs she loves so much.

We know that life is not normal, so the strict rules we would normally adhere to are not as relevant. We know it’s okay to be flexible sometimes, to control what we can, and to focus our energy on the things that make us happy.

9. Pandemic parents are able to laugh. One of the many benefits of spending so much quality time with our kids this year is that we got to see how funny they actually are.

I bet every pandemic parent has hundreds of moments from the last year where their children surprised them with their ever-evolving sense of humor. Rae may be young, but she plays little jokes on us all the time, and no matter how bad the day has been, she gives us reason to laugh.

And after our kids go to bed, we need to laugh even more. So take my advice, watch The Office, Parks & Rec, Schitt’s Creek, or whatever else you like to watch to zone out and laugh even on the darkest days.

My brother and I nearly cried laughing over the mumps episode of Brooklyn 99 over the summer (we tried to time our Hulu exactly so that we’d see the same moments at the same time, which is far more difficult than one would imagine). Tom and I lost it watching Schmidt impersonate a Romney on New Girl the other day.

Laughter is cathartic and necessary, and pandemic parents need it more often than most.

10. Pandemic parents focus on the small victories. There is no doubt in my mind that someday soon, things will be better. Rae will be able to play with other kids, I will hug my family and friends again, school will be back to normal, and we will be in crowded places without crushing fear.

A lot has happened in the last year, and I’m choosing to focus on what has gone well this year, like being able to work from home so I didn’t have to leave Rae for more than a few hours until she was 9 months old, spending so much time outdoors, having time to make great memories, and feeling like I can breathe again. I bet each and every one of you has similar memories.

If we make it a point to celebrate what goes right, no matter how small, we will be far happier people. And that includes every tiny step as we transition back to normalcy. We’ve been through so much this year, we deserve to acknowledge our progress!

What are you most proud of from this year? What lessons did you learn? How did you far exceed your own expectations? Please share in the comments below!