Suggestions for Maintaining parenting sanity in a Covid-19 world?
I could use some help. Summer camps have been canceled, three kids under the age of six, quarantining like a champ, but I need a coach. Can you talk me through finances, child care options, family visits, and how to fit our new post-covid work schedules into our life?
Answers ( 1 )
Yeah- good luck with that. I mean, you may as well not bother adding the descriptor "...in a COVID-19 world" because maintaining parental sanity qua parental sanity is difficult enough.
When you consider it that way, though, you realize your sanity is being frayed because you are having to be reactive rather than proactive; your routine is upset, your knowledge base is shaky, COVID didn't just force you to up your game, it is forcing you to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Change is hard- it's so acceptable to say, "I thrive under stress" but, apparently, for nearly 100% of people alive right now, that isn't true. COVID is changing everything; good or bad, change is a stressor; stress is NOT a successful strategy for feeling copacetic.
So, here's the bad news: You have to start accepting change and being reactive rather than proactive is a big part of your world now. And accepting that is a very difficult skill to master. Being reactive takes a lot out of you; instead of allowing yourself time to process a change and what it means, you start thinking of all the ways things could change even more, what you're going to do about this, about that, what if schools don't start, the daycare closes, my kids don't learn well virtually-- arrggghhh! Before you know it, you aren't considering strategies to adapt to change, instead, you are worrying.
And worrying sucks.
It will take practice, but one strategy is a little spiral, flip-over notebook, and when you find yourself wondering about all the possibilities living in the time of COVID might bring next, get the notebook out, write the date, and list your worry. Or worries. Leave a line or two between each one. Then, tell yourself- now, I mean this- you have to firmly tell yourself- you are going to let your unconscious mind consider the issue, and come up with a workable solution.
Then put those listed worries out of your mind.
I reiterate: Put them out of your mind.
Eventually, your brain will give you a eureka! and you'll have a solution to one of your worries- now go write that solution down under the worry in the notebook.
See how this is working?
No one can give you specifics; no one is in your specific situation. But the key to not going crazy during the time of COVID is to let go of your need to control and be proactive all the time- because you can't now. You can plan, and you can think it should all be orderly, but it won't be- this is a chaotic time that is going to drag on for a while yet, changing everything.
Get yourself that little notebook, and start letting your brain work on its own without all that worrying.