As life shifts into a slightly new normal and the busyness that we used to maneuver pre-pandemic begins to slowly pick up, how will you look back at parenting during the pandemic? And what will you change or keep moving forward?
These are questions I am starting to contemplate as we plan for the kids to shift back to in person school full time and as our extracurricular activities start to pick back up. Though things will not be what they were, they will be different than they have been as of late.
What do I want to keep, what do I want to let go of, and how will I look back at what it was like to parent during the peak of this pandemic?
The last year has been wild, on every level – so many unknowns, stressors, shifts, endings, and beginnings. I homeschooled my now 5-year-old for a year. That was not a job I ever wanted. But we did good. I surprisingly was able to teach her a lot! Sometimes I was parenting like a rock star, sometimes that was not the case.
I learned to give myself and my family a lot of grace after parenting during the pandemic.
Being isolated the way were for a year with 2 kids taught me a lot about patience, even more than parenting for a decade had. It also helped me relax a little when it came to some things and it gave me an opportunity to teach the kids more about our responsibilities as a household. My kids finally see how much work it is to maintain a household!
And as a person I grew a lot and began to do more things for myself because – spoiler alert – my mental health really matters! (So does yours!)
While I am still restructuring my business from the shifts that occurred over the last year, I have been spending a lot of time thinking about when and how I want to work and how I want our time to spent moving forward. I am not 100% clear and I still do not know what the future holds but I know what I don’t want.
Parenting during a pandemic has taught me:
I don’t want to be busy, scattered, and running around like a crazy woman. I want to have some space in between things and I want to make sure I take time to be better prepared for all the things we want and need to get done.
I know that I do want to ensure that we keep family time a priority. I want to make sure that we play, get time and space to decompress, and still take random adventures that we would not have pre-pandemic.
So, I will take this shift as an opportunity so slowly restructure the way that we live, the way our days unfold, and the things we say yes and no to. And I really hope that others take this opportunity as well.
Tell us in the comments below, what is the best lesson you have learned about parenting during the pandemic that you hope to carry forward into the future?
