Parents, Teachers, There Is No Right Way Right Now
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illustration by A., age 3
This past weekend was the fourth my partner and I have spent in social distance. We have been fortunate so far in this pandemic. We have food and household staples and are so far able to work from home. Working remotely has its challenges, but also gives us daily purpose and structure. As last weekend approached, I looked forward to the downtime, just as I do every weekend. But something happened. Both days, I woke up feeling...edgy, unsettled. I dragged myself into my kitchen and fussed over everything I cooked, I couldn’t find a comfortable place to sit or read or watch TV, and I was snappy when asked questions. Everything felt like a waste of time or an unduly taxing chore.
After two days of dragging my feet and heaving big sighs, I turned to my partner and blurted out, “I’m just in a bad mood. I don’t know why though, nothing, like, bad happened today...except..”
Except for the global pandemic.
Except I can’t leave the house for fear of getting or making someone deathly sick.
Except I am clinging daily to my work in the hopes it doesn’t dry up and leave me unemployed in such a vulnerable time.
Except we couldn’t get eggs this week, and it scares me to lose the tenuous hold we had on simple, foundational facets of life.
There’s no need to wallow when the tide of everything comes in all the same. But it is all happening, whether in the background of our days at home or on the new and novel frontlines of the grocery store, the delivery service picket lines, and pop-up hospitals.
We have to remind ourselves that it is more than okay to be restless, tired, and unfulfilled while we are so far at sea. Being gentle with ourselves is the only way to stay afloat.
Life with children is especially full of big feelings, lapses, and looming uncertainties. Many of us, especially parents and teachers, are feeling tremendous pressure to make everything as capital-R right as we possibly can for the children in our lives. Why wouldn’t we? We love and respect the children and childhoods that are entrusted to us. It is literally and figuratively our job to give children consistency, security, and ensure they have everything they need to develop with the best chance of success and well-being.
But what do consistency, security, and development even mean in a life-changing crisis? It’s hard to be sure, and we are a species that craves certainty so much it hurts. (Oftentimes, we make choices that hurt specifically because those are the outcomes we are most certain of.)
So, as this new crisis unfolds, we do what humans often do in times of trouble, fear, and uncertainty. We double down. We read every Facebook share with the words “kids,” “activity,” “learning,” and “schedule” in the title. Teachers attempt to reinvent school at a moment’s notice, trying from afar to soothe parents and children alike. Parents attempt to do the same but from very, very close -- pulling a simultaneous secondary teaching career from the depths of their personal energy stores. We obsess over the time lost in our children’s education and socialization because obsession at least feels like action. We vacillate between wishing to shield children from fear during walks in the neighborhood and having to lean into that fear, even just a little, in order to make sure they touch nothing and no one. It hurts us both ways, but we hope it won’t hurt our children. We hope, but we know this is no way to live for long.
As afraid as we are that every little thing adds up and that we are missing a wide swath of time and experiences that matter, we can rest assured that if every little thing adds up, then little incremental things matter. We can manage this one small thing at a time.
Take the wide view of what you and your children need (maybe happiness, adventure, security, interest, friendship, etc.), then make the daily, hourly, and half-hourly choices that bend the arc of life toward those needs. We aren’t missing life; we are making it up as we go. It’s our responsibility and our reprieve to make it meaningful on our own terms.
We must have reasonable expectations for ourselves and our children. No one can be a teacher, a worker, a parent, a partner, or a family member all at once without making some concessions about what those roles entail. The only thing you can ever be with any permanence is a person. When you can’t be the Teacher, Parent, Family Member, or Professional you once envisioned, you can still be a person who leads with flexibility, optimism, vision, and care.
Can we replicate school? No. Do children even need school replicated for them right now? Honestly, truthfully, emphatically, no. It does little good to expect children to carry on as they always have in the midst of unavoidable, unprecedented change. They, too are living with the existential noise of these terrifying times, yet children have less emotional vocabulary and fewer coping skills for what they are experiencing. It took me two solid days (and 33.5 years on Earth) to recognize the fact that a pandemic was making me feel bad. All of this is too hard for all of us, which means we can find some comfort and empowerment in our shared strain.
They don’t need school at home, but what children do need is the sense of structure, purpose, belonging, and connection that they get from school. These are things we all need - and our needs will intensify as time goes on (as evidenced by my own weekend malaise). The good news is that we can find ways to infuse structure, purpose, belonging, and connection into our new reality, but it’s going to look and feel very, very different than our old school and home paradigms. That’s okay. Lean into the different.
For preschoolers, play is enough, but you can enrich their thinking in a few ways. You just need to think through the overarching goal of raising empathetic critical thinkers and problem-solvers. Watch movies, sure, but then just talk about the movie. Listen to your children’s ideas, ask them follow-up questions, and engage them in a real conversation. Make space for them to explore and experiment with materials, from playdough to those long-empty toilet paper rolls, pens, and paper. Whatever you have, let your child have independent time to tinker with it, get bored, and approach it from a new angle. This article is a great resource for encouraging children to play independently. You don’t have to be their play partner; you just have to be their supporter - sometimes front and center and sometimes from the sidelines.
Just do what works. And know that regressions come with change. Here is another great article for supporting children through the big feelings and anxiety that we can expect from this time. Emotions are healthy indicators of our minds and bodies reacting to our environment, but they aren’t forever. Our job as adults is to hold steady space for our children and model healthy ways of moving through (not tuning out) discomfort. The key is steady tenderness, not perfect words. Remember, there is no magic lecture that will fix anything forever.
Let’s give our children a break by giving ourselves a break. We can’t control the circumstances around us, and that’s fine. Love is about what we share, not what we control. Let’s share our vision for a meaningful life with children. Let’s share our sense of courage, humor, respect, and curiosity with them. When it feels like no place is safe, we have it within us to make each small moment safe instead.