Q: I just found out my kids are not going back to school until September. I’m melting down! There is no way my spouse and I can get our usual work done and also homeschool and care for our kids. Do you have advice on how to juggle these two roles?
More Top Picks Best Synthesizers For Live Performance
A: You can juggle these two roles if you come to grips with the fact that parenting in a pandemic is pandemonium! Realize you are not going to do either your job or parenting well right now, so downscale your expectations. Nope, lower than that, please!
Your laundry room may have two piles: one of dirty clothes and the other clean clothes your kids dig through to find something to wear. Your meals aren’t gourmet, and if you have peanut butter and bread, you are doing well.
Parents had harried lives with kids before the pandemic. Now we are parenting during a global crisis doing everything we did before, plus homeschooling. You are not a bad parent to grieve over the kids being home full-time.
My favorite home schooling resources for elementary are: readingbear.com, ixl.com (all grade level skills), iseesam.com (elementary level books), and storyline.com (famous people reading stories to your kids) and of course YouTube on any subject. Don’t get overwhelmed by what your school is sending. No matter how good you are, you cannot actually cook breakfast and supervise children learning at the same time.
Use your workplace time management skills to tackle home schooling. Trade off primary kid responsibility with your spouse or combine forces with another single working parent, virtually, of course.
In addition to academics, work on social skills, emotional development and skills like cooking, gardening or taking nature walks Also make sure your kids get serious exercise every day or they will become house hurricanes.
Expect your kids to help you a lot more. Use the crisis to teach them about microbiology, government and health. Allow them to be part of your home team and to understand why you need their help. Let them know you cannot just be a provider of seamless services. Ask them to grow up a little during this time, dry dishes, clean house or make food.
Get support from your spouse or friends right now. You need a safe place in which you can express less than adoring thoughts about your offspring. The neverending demands of nonstop parenting and work will make everybody cranky.
Identify moments you do something, anything for yourself. We are in the middle of a quiet war, so grant yourself a few indulgences as long as they don’t become self-destructive.
Be as kind to yourself and your spouse right now as you would to anyone else in the middle of a crisis. Someday the kids will be back in school, someday you’ll get to see your co-workers and someday soon we will come out of this crisis. I heard someone say once that you don’t know how strong you are until strong is the only option you have.
The last word(s)
Q: I was informally told I would probably be laid off before the pandemic started. Now no one is bringing it up. Should I say something?
A: Yes, ask what the plan for you is. The last thing you need right now is more anxiety about the unknown!
———
(Daneen Skube, Ph.D., executive coach, trainer, therapist and speaker, also appears as the FOX Channel’s “Workplace Guru” each Monday morning. She’s the author of “Interpersonal Edge: Breakthrough Tools for Talking to Anyone, Anywhere, About Anything” (Hay House, 2006). You can contact Dr. Skube at www.interpersonaledge.com or 1420 NW Gilman Blvd., #2845, Issaquah, WA 98027. Sorry, no personal replies.)
More Top Picks Aucma 6 5qt
(c) 2020 INTERPERSONAL EDGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.