Mornings, Meltdowns, and Mindfulness

This week, I joined my 5-year-old daughter for the social-emotional learning component of her virtual school day. She and my son are enrolled in our local public elementary school, which is fully virtual through at least January. The school has set aside 10 to 20 minutes a day for focused social-emotional learning, including practicing mindfulness skills, learning how to identify and express feelings, and spending time connecting to each other. This kind of skill-building feels especially important to do in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, when children may be even more emotionally vulnerable than they were last year at this time.

The teacher posted the instructions to the Zoom room and I was ready: “We’re going to breathe!” My daughter’s response? “I HATE THIS! I’m not doing this. It’s boring.”

I brought my enthusiasm: “I’m breathing! [Exaggerated breath in, big breath out, like blowing out a candle]” She shouted: “I HATE THIS!”

I was no longer breathing. I was frustrated, embarrassed, afraid, anxious, and angry. (I can be pretty good at identifying my feelings, it turns out!) How did I express those feelings? I’ll leave it to your imagination.

I was also not connecting with my daughter. As much as I wanted her to pay attention to the lesson, I wasn’t paying attention myself, to her. She was showing me, in every way possible, that she was uncomfortable and unhappy.

I know I’m not alone, and I know she’s not alone. This school year is hard, no matter if it’s in-person, hybrid, or fully remote. It’s not what any of us expected or are truly equipped for.

Parents: What can we do to try to make things better? I promise this won’t be a list of additional to-do’s, but a way of approaching this incredibly challenging situation with, perhaps, a different perspective.

Talk about it. Try not to let all of the feelings that are coming up stay stuck inside. Acknowledge that this is hard. Talk with your friends who are managing similar stresses — not to compare yourselves or your kids but to just share in this difficult experience and name it as challenging. Talk with a spouse or co-parent if a conversation can offer support rather than criticism. And talk with your kids. If you make a mistake or overreact (like I did), it’s an opportunity to check in about what was happening for you, why you reacted the way you did, and what you want to do differently next time. (An additional resource for exploring and working on your own reactions is Carla Naumburg’s How to Stop Losing Your Sh*t With Your Kids — never a better time for this book!)

Shift your expectations — for your kids and for yourself. Personally, I struggle with watching my child have a hard time focusing and participating in “Zoom school” while seeing her same-age peers sitting, looking at the teacher, following directions. By “struggle,” I mean that I am filled with disappointment and fear. If I spend too much time in that place, it’s not good for me or for my child. I am trying to go for “good enough,” meaning that each part of the day is a chance for a new start. The morning went terribly? Hopefully the afternoon will go better. And if not, there’s always tomorrow. This year just isn’t going to be the year she should have had, and she’s not necessarily going to make the progress she could have made if we’d had a full year of in-person school. We are lucky — she is little and the stakes are low. What’s most important now isn’t her academic performance but that she feels loved and taken care of.

Take care of yourself. We are burnt out. There is very little time, if any, that we can call “ours.” Taking care may feel impossible (and may actually be impossible) given the demands of work and home life. Depending on life circumstances and resources, it may be much harder for some than for others.

For some people, taking care is going to look like re-establishing routines (daily showers, anyone?). For others, it will be creating a way to re-connect and get support (text a friend, then text another friend). And, for some, it will mean changing the way we think about time to truly carve out time for ourselves to do something that gives us a sense of meaning or wellness (an old hobby, a new hobby, exercise, reading, journaling — something that requires an investment of real time but that has value for us).

All of these suggestions are shared with the spirit of solidarity as well as with the knowledge that many parents are literally just trying to survive each day. Many parents are experiencing tremendous financial difficulty while others are in deep emotional distress. Some are holding both. If you’re feeling like you are at your lowest, there are resources available to help you manage a personal crisis. The Crisis Text Line is available 24/7, at your fingertips. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24/7, by phone (1.800.273.8255) or via a chat feature on their website. You do not have to be suicidal to utilize these resources. They are there as an additional form of support if you just need someone to connect with.

Mindfulness Essential Reads

Finding Joy in the Present

A Path to Wellbeing in Education and Beyond

While I started out this piece writing specifically about the stresses of online schooling, what’s really so hard for parents right now is that we’re managing too much: We are doing all the “regular parenting” we had to do before and are now also responsible for our children’s education and social-emotional support and growth. There is a reason it feels like too much: It is too much!

What I took away from my own un-mindful moment with my daughter was a reminder that, though it is definitely something extra on my already-full plate, I’m facing an opportunity to teach her how to get through hard things, tolerate feelings of distress, and come out the other side more resilient. While those themes hadn’t necessarily been a part of my plan for this year, they are now front and center. As pediatrician and child development expert Dr. Dan Shapiro says, “Don’t let a crisis go to waste.”

Copyright 2020 Elana Premack Sandler, All Rights Reserved