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Illustration by Mary Kirkpatrick
It’s 6 o’clock on a late spring Sunday night, which means one hour until bedtime, two hours until the kids actually fall asleep and three hours until I finish my weekly meal-prep scramble and collapse exhausted on the couch.
My daughter wanders into the kitchen and stares at the peanut butter sandwich I’m slapping together. “Isn’t that against the rules?” she asks. “Oh honey,” I reply, “School isn’t opening yet. You’re back on virtual tomorrow.”
As her four-year-old features fall I hear my voice defaulting to the same simplistic explanation, the phrase that has launched a thousand meltdowns in our house: “There are too many germs.” My daughter begins to sob. Her younger brother is now freaking out because virtual school decreases the amount of attention he gets by about 75 per cent, and from upstairs I hear the baby join in – presumably out of solidarity. In the brief pause between setting the peanut butter jar back on the counter and reaching for my children, I think to myself for the millionth time over the past 16 months, “Well, I could’ve handled that better.”
Anyone who has been a kid, raised a kid or witnessed a tantrum at the grocery store knows that children need transitions. They need to be prepared for what’s coming next so that they aren’t overwhelmed by the unexpected chaos of their lives. For this reason my husband and I strive hard to maintain an illusion of organization and predictability in our family life.
At the best of times this is a big undertaking; in the age of COVID-19 it became downright impossible. Suddenly we were pulling our kids from every familiar activity, upending our schedule over and over again in a desperate attempt to impose order on our experience of an unprecedented global crisis. It was a massive transition and we couldn’t help but mismanage it; we also mismanaged the smaller transitions embedded in the larger one: school openings and shutdowns, cancelled holidays, postponed vacations and lonely birthdays. As we reflect on the past year, our overwhelming impression is, “Well, we could’ve handled that better.”
Instead of baking, we passed the pandemic by making moonshine
My son isn’t like everyone else, but he still needs a welcoming place to live on his own
And now another transition is coming. As the news shifts from completely horrifying to somewhat less horrifying, we can sense the world trying to return to normal. On the distant horizon we can distinguish things such as soccer practice, school concerts and sleepovers (preferably all three kids at grandma’s while we go to wine country for the weekend). And this time we are desperate not to be blindsided, determined to manage the transition in a thoughtful and positive way. A year from now, we want to be able to say to ourselves, “Well, we handled that better.”
But the question is, can we? Because this is a more complicated shift. We are transitioning our kids into both the future and the past: We want them to grow into who they are meant to be, and in order to do that they need to rediscover who they were a year ago before their entire world was turned upside down. We have to help them regain the independence, confidence and creativity that we have sacrificed for safety. It’s going to be a lot of work, and it starts with us.
Prior to having kids, we’d been advised to avoid helicopter parenting and were told that a reasonable measure of independence would encourage our kids to be responsible and resilient. This strategy was going mostly okay until the night COVID-19 morphed from a vaguely concerning news headline into a tangible threat.
We were seated side by side in the ER waiting for (luckily positive) news about a pregnancy complication, watching in shocked silence as a barrage of previously inconceivable information flickered across the fluorescent TV screen: the WHO was declaring a global pandemic. Flights and travel could be suspended. Schools might be closed. And – the biggest gasp from my husband, himself a school vice-principal – the NBA was postponing their season. By the time we arrived home from the hospital, to say that we had shifted into full helicopter-parent mode would be an understatement. We had the general ambiance and energy level of a rookie SWAT team unexpectedly tasked with preventing an apocalypse. Basically, we were freaking out.
Suddenly all of our parenting principles seemed reckless and irresponsible. We could no longer encourage risk-taking because literally everything was too risky. Even grocery shopping had to be carefully planned to minimize danger and stress. And activities? Spontaneous trips? Attempts to broaden our children’s horizons beyond the four walls of our home? No way, absolutely not. If it couldn’t be ordered online, quarantined in the garage for three days and wiped down obsessively with disinfectant then we were not interested.
Frustrated and anxious, we funneled money that we’d been saving for a summer trip into every toy and game the internet had to offer. Our house now resembles a freestyle daycare and our backyard is basically a low-budget theme park. Looking around, we wonder if our children will ever rediscover the value of experiences over material things, and how to help them feel comfortable taking risks and being independent.
The first step toward this independence is removing the barriers – visible and invisible – that we have placed between our children and the rest of the world. The calendar has been filled with “remote school” and “virtual playgroup” – every activity preceded by an adjective that keeps others at a distance. You miss grandpa? Maybe he can read you a story over FaceTime. Want to see your friends? Let’s sign up for the same Zoom ballet class. Our iPad has about 10 new apps, each designed to prevent spontaneous social interactions and maintain our tenuous household bubble. Now we have to burst the bubble and ease our kids back into this old/new, same/different world.
Our children have spent formative years during an unprecedented crisis that challenged and changed their experience of the world. These kids – the same kids who used to race into grandparents’ arms, pile onto the couch with friends, run as a pack chasing a single soccer ball and share snacks, dips and germs unconsciously and wholeheartedly – will always remember drive-by birthday parades, remote learning show-and-tell, micro-weddings and meeting virtual Santa. There have been many tears and many tantrums (some of them mine). And there will be tears and tantrums again as we transition back to normal life.
But as I tuck my children into bed on this Sunday night, my four-year-old gives me a sleepy hug and I manage to feel both grateful and optimistic. Because amid the chaos and stress of the past 16 months there have been bright moments. We have managed to celebrate milestones, share experiences and stay connected. And as I reflect back on this big transition I’m more hopeful about the coming one. Maybe, I think to myself, we’ve handled this better than we thought.
Heather Gencarelli lives in Kingston, Ont.
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