3 Important Things I’ve Learned Parenting My 16 and 6 years old Boys Through COVID-19
"The sky is falling, the sky is falling” - Chicken Little
March 13th, 2020 was my 37th birthday weekend.
This was when the announcement came about shutting down all non-essential services indefinitely for the new jersey area and most of the United States.
It was also the start of a one-week spring break for the kids.
At the time everyone was kind of excited to be able to have more family-time. We had no clue that it would last 3+ months. Hmmph!
I’m the type of mom who likes structure for my boys and this pandemic was nothing but normal. We had to pivot and pivot quickly, from regular school hours and routines to homeschooling.
I remember having anxiety the first week, literally feeling tense and stressed about the uncertainty of the season we just entered in. I found myself….Screaming!!!!
Now, because I’m a woman of faith I had high hopes for things to pass by within a month’s time.
In some strange way, God had prepared us for this a few months back when my hubby injured his achilles tendon and had to have minor surgery. This kept him away from his job for almost 6 months in the latter part of 2019, so we had already developed a new routine of spending time doing more things as the “Francis Quattro” (that’s what we call ourselves) LOL!
While there are so many wonderful lessons learned during this time, I’ve chosen 3 that really stuck with my family and me.
1.It is totally normal during a pandemic to push the panic button
Yes, you heard me right, it is totally normal to freak out when uncertain times come around. It took me about 3 weeks in, to finally hit that button. In my head, I was thinking this won’t last long, so I kept my cool.
When you’re a mom, you rarely feel like you are allowed to lose it. So when I finally did, I left for an 8-mile run in our neighborhood, came back, rearranged my workout space, locked myself in a room, and had a mini dance party for myself.
It was ‘OK’ to not be okay, and when I spoke to all my mom friends they were experiencing the same frustration. I wasn’t alone!
2. The kids will be okay in the end as they are more resilient than we think
My 16-year-old son is about to enter his last year of high school. In the last 2 years, we moved to our first home, he started at a new school, and made new friends.
So during the pandemic, it was hard for him to be stuck indoors doing online learning unable to be outdoors with friends.
If you know me well you know we are an outdoors, adventure type of family. We hike and do everything there is to do in nature. He was sad.
My 6-year-old was as well, trying to understand why he couldn’t see his first-grade buddies face-to-face.
I wasn’t worried about them getting through, I was concerned about the length of time they would have to do this. Whoosh!!!!
Needless to say, we wrapped up an amazing school year with good grades for both of them. Some of the activities I did for both my boys were to help keep their mental health in check.
We read 3 days a week together as a family; had talk time where we discussed our feelings and things we needed to work on. We even had worship and bible study time every week and taught them a 10-week course in Philosophy. We held weekly game and movie nights, and of course, enjoy the outdoors. Most importantly, we hiked as much as possible when it was allowed.
3. It’s extremely important to have one-on-one kids’ time as well as a date night with your spouse
Before the pandemic, my husband and I did date night maybe once a month. During the pandemic, we had date nights almost every week. This July we will be celebrating 15 years of marriage. I have no idea how we made it this far without having consistent date nights LOL, but we did and it’s by God’s grace.
We are but the sum of the choices we make daily, even in pandemic we can make the choice to go through it the best we know how and that is okay.