Parenting In a Pandemic: A Guide, Fall Edition

Sep 16

When I wrote the first Parenting in A Pandemic guide back in March, 2020, I was still telling our kids that we would probably still be going to Disney World as planned in July (July 2020, in case my naivete wasn’t clear). When my September-born son asked about his birthday – always the forefront of his concerns – my husband and I laughed that of course his birthday would be safe and sound for non-pandemic fun. SIGH. We recently had two masked kids over to play in our backyard with chairs spaced an appropriate distance to enjoy single-serving snacks and birthday cupcakes.

Some highly prescient doomsday-ers saw this coming, but I think most of us truly did not. I would like to speak on behalf of us intelligent, reasonable, informed parents that didn’t see this in the crystal ball: I truly believe it’s not even good for our human psyches to see such gloom ahead. We need hope for survival. We need to take the dark forest path one lighted step at a time so we actually make it to the end.

As a psychologist, a parent, and a human being, my biggest concern is what this experience is doing to our psychological well-being. I’m seeing relatively stable people of all ages with their carefully sewn seams coming right apart. I’m seeing psychologically precarious people plain bursting under the weight and pressure of all that has changed in our daily lives. The list of “what I can’t control” in the reality of COVID19 unfurls in what feels like a never-ending scroll. This is not good for stress and anxiety. We need to get a handle on whatever microscopic bits we can control, and hang on tight for the rest, with ourselves, our children, and our families intact.

Recent surveys indicating a mental health crisis due to the pandemic unfortunately support my observations and concerns, and prompted me to write a guide that offers a condensed version of what we know helps psychological health and coping.

This guide does not include false promises for easy fixes. You wouldn’t believe me anyways. This guide’s purpose is to provide strategies, perspective, reassurance, and resources to boost us through these next few months of what has become a very, very long haul.

WHY This Is So Hard

This has not been a brief blip. Not a short-lived nightmare we all woke up from. This is going on and on, with no known endpoint or even clearly marked path for how to get to that endpoint. When I worked as part of pain management teams in children’s hospitals, acute versus chronic pain required different approaches because they are distinctly different types of pain. The same is true for psychological experiences – a chronic trauma is conceptualized and treated differently from an acute trauma. We have transitioned from COVID19 as an acute experience to a decidedly chronic one.

“One of the coolest parts of working with children is seeing their brain plasticity in process. The stress of the current moment may indeed be affecting their brain chemistry and neuron connections, but they have the neurobiology of youth on their side. ”

Obviously, this exacts more of a toll on our well-being. I am precise with my usage of the over-used word trauma since it has quite specific meaning for mental health. However, there are certainly aspects of pandemic life that are traumatic – more for some people than others, dependent on circumstances. It is an existential threat. It is a physical threat. It has made the world feel threatening to many, including our children. A significant predictor of whether someone exposed to trauma develops traumatic symptoms is the degree of mastery they felt over the situation. People who were able to take action in some way, or even perceive that they made a difference in the moment, are less likely to develop PTSD. In this moment of existential threat and potential trauma, many of us feel quite helpless, which adds to the psychological toll.

If only the universe allowed us to press pause on all other stressful things happening in life while we get through this “unprecedented” one (I had to fit in the “u” word). Alas. Loved ones are dying for other reasons. Divorces are happening. Aging parents need our care. Families are making big moves. We have health crises unrelated to COVID. Life and all its stress points continue, but under that extra big shadow following us everywhere that is the COVID umbrella. What would feel stressful under ordinary circumstances, may feel like it’s going to break us now. Not to mention apocalyptic wildfires, a nation’s reckoning with 400 years of racial injustice, and an election season far from ho-hum. I mean, it’s a lot.

Alright, I feel like I’m writing to you from the Pit of Despair in Princess Bride, hissing through Billy Crystal teeth. Moving on to the Guide part: what can we DO to help ourselves, our children, and our families to get through these few months? Wherever we can find action, control, and mastery, the better.

How to Help Ourselves

Screen Time Limits, Parent Version

You know those screen time limits you desperately want to make sure your kids have? Give them to yourself. Stop the “doomscrolling.” Limit the Facebook message thread rabbit holes. Don’t fall for the Instagram sheen of other people’s lives. I hear over and over from my patients how they know how bad it is to open Twitter at bedtime, and realize an hour and a half has vanished before attempting sleep. I think we all know by now that these cell phones and their apps are designed to addict us. I know it, and those little red notifications still sidetrack me all the time. For most of us, a hard stop is not realistic, but “harm reduction” is. This idea often used in addiction treatment actually refers to the goal of decreasing rather than eliminating an addictive behavior.

You can start with external limits like setting timers or removing apps from the phone, but the goal is to move toward more internal regulation. For example, when you feel the anxiety creeping into your chest, instead of ignoring it to read on about the end of the world until you are in a full-blown panic, close the app or article. Just stop. You will feel better, and I promise you won’t miss anything because it will all still be there the next time you look.

Back to the 60s: Self-Love

If there were ever a time to give ourselves some love, it is now. It’s like we are all walking around with open wounds, trying to get through the days and weeks while bleeding sores go un-bandaged. We need to stop and take time to care for those wounds, so they have a chance to heal. How, you ask? Of the many possible answers, I break it down into two that have big psychological punch: self-compassion and radical acceptance.

Self-compassion is a simple concept that can be difficult to enact, depending on our various personal demons. The idea is that when we are suffering or feeling like a failure, we treat ourselves with kindness. We are gentle and compassionate, not self-critical. We talk to ourselves as we would a close friend, and we recognize the common experience of suffering and failing, which should be easy to do right now as I can’t imagine who is not feeling inadequate at parenting, work, or more likely, both, right now. The biggest trick to self-compassion is to strike a balance of allowing ourselves to feel the tough feelings rather than repress them, with moving through them so they don’t swallow and bury us (see a good resource in the Resources list at the end).
As more articles are coming out about how we can cope with this pandemic in the healthiest ways, radical acceptance has been a common theme. The word “radical” may sound alarming, but the concept is about nurturing calm through accepting rather than resisting reality. This is healthy when we are facing a reality we cannot change. It takes up an extraordinary amount of emotional energy to fight reality we cannot control; if we accept it (this does not mean we like it), it helps us have more energy and internal resources to deal with it the best we can. I worked hard on this around remote learning. I DID NOT WANT MY CHILDREN LEARNING FROM HOME EVER AGAIN. I fought and fought the looming hard truth and finally surrendered. I can still hate it, but I feel better.

Mental Health

A recent article in the New York Times explored recent survey findings showing parents are not only endorsing the highest pandemic stress levels (duh), but two studies showed that parents who are pregnant or recently gave birth are reporting anxiety and depression at levels 2-3 times higher than usual. People of color report even higher levels of stress, so I imagine parents of color are even more stressed than the general survey results, and possibly at greater risk for anxiety and depression.

Based on what we know about how much parental mental health affects children, this may be more of a threat to child well-being than the pandemic itself. So, the greatest act of self-love, and love for your children, is to seek mental health support if you feel you might need it. I know this can be easier said than done, but the recent expansion of telehealth may help make it more realistic. It’s a priority right now for the marathon we are unwillingly running, and the sooner people get the support they need, the more it helps.

How to Help Our Children

Most of us are worried about our children and the data about current mental health statistics add cause for concern. I don’t need to belabor this part or we will find ourselves back in the Pit of Despair. Let’s fast forward to encouragement and hope.

Safe and Secure Base

Parenting in a pandemic: A Guide, Fall Edition

What our children need most from us for the best outcome is actually quite straightforward: they need to feel safe and secure at home. We are their anchor in this storm. And we shouldn’t underestimate or minimize how much this matters. It matters more than whatever they are missing out on educationally and socially right now. The sad truth is that many children do not have this safety and security in their homes, and they are the ones at the most risk. Although the younger the child, the more shelter from the storm we can give them, it is true across ages.

What does this “safe and secure base” even mean? It means our children trust us to be there for them. Not just physically, but emotionally. And even if physically isn’t possible because you are an essential worker or otherwise unable to work from home, if they know they can come to you crying and scared for comfort, that is a safe and secure base.

Check Yourself

These same children who seem impervious to our voices when we tell them to clean up or turn off their iPads, are listening and absorbing what we say and do. This is especially true in a scary situation where they are referencing our reactions to gauge how they should feel and respond. Back to a pain management example, babies and toddlers scream more or less depending on what their caregivers are doing during shots. If we are freaking out, they freak out. If you think you ARE calm and your child is still panicking, I promise you it would be worse if you were also panicking.

Of course, we are allowed to feel the fear and anxiety and shouldn’t repress that, but we need to be mindful of how much that is coming out around the children. One critical example of this is how we talk about the school situation. We can have a laundry list of worries and complaints about no great education options, but the more they hear this, the more it affects their attitude toward school. We don’t need to lie or pretend, but if we can convey confidence in any sincere way (mine was that it would be better than the Spring, which has been true, AND something I’ve heard my children repeat), it helps them also approach it with a more open and positive state of mind.

Believe in Them

I’m starting to hear this everywhere so I know it’s not groundbreaking, but it’s worth repeating: children are resilient. I have already written about how we can build their resilience, but we also have to believe in it. If we have confidence in them, they will have more confidence in themselves. One of the coolest parts of working with children is seeing their brain plasticity in process: the stress of the current moment may indeed be affecting their brain chemistry and neuron connections, but they have the neurobiology of youth on their side.

Back to the trauma aspect of this experience, posttraumatic growth has been studied as a psychological construct we should all know about right now. This refers to capacity to grow from experiencing a traumatic event, or build up positive character traits we wouldn’t have otherwise developed. Our children are more likely to be able to do this in the context of the safe and secure base discussed earlier, and when we explicitly promote their strengths and abilities to endure and overcome. Messaging matters, especially from us.

How to Help Our Families

Joy

Some people struggle with the idea of feeling any positivity in the midst of such suffering. But this is exactly when we need it the most. The more we can connect with even the smallest moments of joy, the more stamina we have for the suffering. As families face overwhelming and multi-directional strain, we may be turning on each other in our houses more than usual, bickering and letting out our internal rage on the people we love most.

We feel helpless about stopping the pandemic, but we can control finding or creating some joy for our families. Moments of joy may organically happen, and we need to actually notice them. As I write this, I can hear my husband making chocolate chip cookies with two of our kids while listening to an 80s play list and it may be simple, but it’s a moment of joy after a stressful week. If we can also find ways to create joy, like a surprise weekend trip somewhere safely remote, it can help us feel some mastery and fulfillment, like we CAN do this for our children.

Purpose

Feeling a sense of purpose has amazing counteractive powers to keep us from falling and staying in the pit of despair. This is one reason, I believe, that children with a history of complaining about school have realized they miss it. Going to school IS a sense of purpose in childhood, and progressing through mastery of each grade level is fulfillment of that purpose.

There is that larger sense of purpose, and then the daily sense of purpose. When we wake up in the morning, what is our purpose for the day? It may be as simple as making soup for dinner, but the more we feel we have a reason to be, day in and day out, the better we feel overall. A strange and entirely unexpected phenomenon has occurred in my own family over the last few months, and my best guess is that it has to do with this sense of purpose. My kids have embraced daily chores. Maybe not all of them, all of the time, but most of them most of the time, which is a far cry from where we were pre-pandemic. I have felt a sense of purpose to parent them into more of a “we are a team” mindset, and they have felt a sense of purpose to learn new tasks and feel increased responsibility for helping the house and family.

When I walk the streets of my neighborhood and see handmade signs in windows large and small colored with hearts and young handwriting, “We are all in this together,” “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” I marvel at what conversations these families must be having. These signs also reflect a sense of purpose in the world at this moment. Each family’s sense of purpose will take a different form, but it’s one key part of getting through this intact.

Routine: Back to Basics

By now, you have probably seen a slew of experts hailing the benefits of daily routine and structure. I am one of those people, but I will not rehash it. The extent of routine can vary greatly among families, either because not everyone is a natural at routine and it’s really hard, or because external variables like work demands make your hours more fluid than structured.

Since we are stripping down our lives of excess to the fundamentals right now, we can do that with daily routine too. With your limited mental and physical energy, prioritize the two basics of a good routine: sleeping and eating. Stick with consistent bedtimes and wake-up times for everyone (including you!) that cover enough hours for the brain to refresh, and do relaxing wind-down activities before bed (Twitter doesn’t count, sorry). If your children are anything like mine, snacking has become a natural part of pandemic life. I’m trying to throw some grapes and carrots in when I can, and stave off hangry fits with enough protein in at least some meals.

Depending on age and temperaments and behaviors of your children, these fundamentals may still feel overwhelming. Do your best, to the max of your capacity right now, and feel good about that. Every minute of good sleep and morsel of good food counts right now.

LIVING WITHOUT A TEMPLATE

We are in a crisis of existence — every day that you and your children end it safely in bed is one to celebrate. There is no way around the fact that we are living through an experience none of us was prepared for. There is no template for what to do and how it will all turn out. This guide may be a drop of water in a sea of stress, but I sincerely hope it provides some comfort, direction, and support. May we at least never need it again.