I am developing a new website and podcast, Quarantine Parent (www.quarantineparent.com) which should be coming in early May!

Setting Realistic Expectations - Vacation Parenting

So with the pandemic going on, we are in a situation that we’ve really never seen before.  Parents are put into the role of being teacher, as well as loving parent; emotional caregiver, as well as chef, and also occasional nurse, mediator, and counselor.  About the only break we’ve gotten in the pandemic is that our chauffeur work has decreased. 

Today I want to talk about the concept of vacation parenting.  You may have forgotten about this, because this was what we used to do in the before-times, before we knew what covid-19 was.  This is when the family would get together and be excited about the chance to go on vacation.  This might be in a car, or maybe on an airplane. 

Now, if you are taking the time to read an article like this, you are probably a good parent.  This means that you do things like try to give your kids nutritious meals, and try to get them a reasonably good night’s sleep.  We encourage or enforce physical activity, and limit their screen time.  You know, all those things we are supposed to do as parents.  But imagine that you are going on a trip.  When we do this, we often have rules about healthy eating, limiting screen time, going to bed on time, and physical exercise that kind of go out the window; our goal simply changes to getting everybody from point A to point B in one piece and with our sanity intact.

This, by the way, is not bad parenting.  This is simply managing the situation that is in front of you, because managing these other goals is just not realistic on that day.  You can go back to your big goals when vacation is over, but for now, you just need to survive.

But many parents are having to provide teaching for their kids inside the house.  This is not to diminish the role that our teachers have, which includes doing a job they have largely never trained for as tech expert, distance learning expert, and motivator without being in the same building as the child. 

Right now, many of us are under a ton of stress.  This can relate to fears about money, fears about our health, fears about our kids’ health, fears about our own parents’ health, fears about the world, and a multitude of other things.  As well, many parents are having to work inside the home with their kids; this can be fun in some ways, but usually involves a great deal more work for those parents, especially if their kids are younger.

I talked with a parent recently who has a child with special needs and who is in early elementary school.  This parent talked about challenges in getting her child to focus and do the things the teacher had asked.  At the same time, both parents were working inside the home at full-time jobs, and there are two other kids in the home, all of whom are young enough to require a lot of attention from parents from a basic safety perspective, much less a learning one.  It was hard for me to generate a lot of solutions for her about the academics she was worried about. 

But I realized something in talking with her; the goal here is not to provide perfect school instruction as well as the teacher would.  The goal really is more like when we go on vacation; it’s not our usual situation, so we do the best we can with what we’ve got.  We’re doing airport parenting. 

This is not to say that academic work isn’t important; of course it is.  But, maintaining a good relationship with our kids is important too.  Keeping our own sanity is important too.  So my goal for you today is just to feel OK about your parenting when it wasn’t perfect.  The race is a marathon, not a spring, and right now we are going up a steep uphill.  It is OK to not go as fast as you would normally go.