The COVID-19 Parenting Do Over
April 12, 2020
When our daughter finally arrived home from her interrupted semester abroad a few weeks ago I couldn’t hug her. She was required to quarantine herself at home for two weeks, keeping a safe distance from us. By the end of the two weeks of serving her breakfast, lunch and dinner and cleaning up with disinfectant after we were done, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hug her or send her back.
Only a few weeks into our social distancing, I miss the days when I could just, well, miss her.
It’s the end of the empty nest as we know it. In this age of COVID-19, we empty nesters went from having sex on the kitchen floor to having too many cooks in the kitchen and wondering if we’ll ever have sex again.
Oh, and we are the empty nesters who decided to downsize this year. What were we thinking?
I’m very grateful our daughter is home safe and well. And now that she’s out of quarantine she’s very helpful — when she wants to be. If I ask her to be helpful I get to relive her teenage days of sighs and eye rolls, which I would be happy to never live through again.
There is one benefit: We parents get to “redo” our parenting. One friend told me she’s fixing everything she aspired to do, but was too busy to do, during their childhood. She’s created a daily chore list and hosts family meetings — although those family meetings might be redundant since they are literally tripping over each other every day.
I now realize that for all my best intentions as a mother, I failed my daughter in the basics of life — like cooking, cleaning and the list of classic movies she should know. Yes, my children were always required to straighten up and make their bed, but we never got down on our hands and knees and scrubbed a toilet together. We have now. And when we were finished, it was beautiful.
And it’s not just the constant togetherness with adult children who have moved back home, even the adult children who don’t live with us are in our homes virtually. Our son is way across the country and when I don’t answer his FaceTime call because I’m doing something like working, he will wait three minutes and call my husband. We are expected to be virtually available 24/7. A friend said one upside is that we’ve all got tech support 24/7.
Dr. JoAnne Pedro Carroll, a renowned therapist, says these are challenging times for both parents and their adult children and having empathy for each other is key as everyone is adjusting their needs and wants. She writes: “Rather than think of our time together as stuck at home, think of it as an opportunity to be in the shelter of each other. Create space at home for positive connection by sharing meals, cooking together, laughter, games and music. Plenty of studies show that positive relationships not only make us happier, but also healthier with a boost to our immune system.”
What I know is that no matter the age of our kids, we are parents forever. Being there for our children, whether under one roof or virtually, is all about ensuring we all take the time to make deep, lasting connections not only about the big things happening in the world right now, but the little things happening every day.
To all: be safe, be well and stay home.
Dr. JoAnne Pedro Carroll is a volunteer on the New York State Mental Health Help Line: https://omh.ny.gov.