Imagine the Next Normal — Parenting

Part #7 in a series focused on creating healthier and safer communities for all

I am pushing back HARD against the desire to return to normal.

Instead of wanting to return to what was pre-COVID, I am stepping into the future — the NEXT NORMAL — with the hope that we can create healthier and safer communities for all. Returning to 2019 normal is unacceptable. PERIOD. It is unacceptable because we have all changed, grown, and learned so much living through (read: surviving) a pandemic.

I invite you to explore this NEXT NORMAL with me in this 10-part blog series (yes, I am fired up, inspired, and really excited). If you are jumping in today, please go back and read my inspiration for the series as well as my posts on physical health & access to healthcare, mental health, social & emotional health, community health, health equity, and redefining health.

As many of you know, I am an epidemiologist mama. I have two kiddos (a 13-year-old daughter who is a ballerina & a 10-year-old son who loves legos, soccer, and Pokémon - in that order). I have been working in the field of public health for more than 20 years. My passion and calling in life is to create healthy communities. I am a scientist; am committed to preventive healthcare; love research; advocate for vaccines; and have dedicated my career to educating the next generation of public health professionals. 

In The Land of the Giants (summer of 2017).

I am a parent, but I am NOT a parenting expert.

Need a glimpse into my parenting brain…? need evidence that like so many pandemic parents I am taking it one day at a time (sometimes hour by hour or minute by minute)?

Recently we took our daughter to high school orientation (yes, she’ll be in high school next year). I expected to be emotional as I thought about my baby going to high school in the fall; instead, I found myself in a celebratory mood sitting in the auditorium during the orientation meeting. I looked over at David and said something along the lines of holy crap, we did it. Somehow we’ve kept that little baby who weighed just five pounds at birth alive for nearly 14 years. I didn’t think we would survive the first night. And here we are. This is cause for celebration!

Living through a pandemic has been hard; the extra stress of parenting through the pandemic has been even harder. Over the past two years, we’ve had to navigate vaccinations, illness, remote schooling, hybrid classrooms, quarantines, potential exposures, school closures, the cancelation of so many important events, and the fears, anxieties, and confusion that COVID has brought into our communities, schools, and families. We’ve had to negotiate when to mask (or not), establish friend/family pods, cancel or reschedule trips, and deal with sicknesses and deep nasal swab tests.

The pandemic has been exhausting. And yet, as parents we have little time to rest because there is parenting to do. There has been no shortage of confusion, misinformation, or differences in opinion. There is no book providing advice/guidance about parenting through a pandemic; we are building the airplane as we fly it (nothing like attempting to parent at 30,000 feet while assembling, testing, and putting new engines in place).

However, as case counts continue to decline (and there are low levels of COVID in the wastewater), we have a moment to pause and reflect. To dream about how we can be better parents in the next normal, given that we have learned so much during the past two years.

As an epidemiologist mama, I am focusing on these three truths that I have learned during the pandemic as we move into the next normal…

1. I must take care of my own health FIRST — physical, mental, and emotional.
   
   In order to be the best parent I can be, I need to be healthy as an individual. This allows me to model healthy behaviors to my kids but also ensures that I have the energy, capacity, and patience to love, care for, and serve my kids. I have shared this before, but should be repeated…
   
   Early in 2021, I stumbled upon a friend’s Facebook feed where they were wishing their mom a happy birthday. The post went something like this… to my mom, who always puts her wants behind those of her family. While the sentiment could be classified as lovely, I was immediately upset by the post and those words played over and over in my mind (like a nightmare).
   

   What I first imagined was my daughter in the future with her own kids (work with me here). I imagined my daughter’s child (my imaginary grandchild) saying this about her mom/my daughter. And I was livid; I imagined my daughter had given up ballet, art, reading, pacing up and down the street barefoot, recording her daily steps, timing her showers, and her “friends in conversation” google chat group. She gave up everything that she loved, all of her wants and dreams, and hid all of her gifts and talents in order to please her family? to put their wants above her own? Wait! What? Is that what being a mother or a parent is?
   
   NO! That is messed up.
   

   I decided at that moment that if I am not fully, 100%, unapologetically me, I cannot be a good mom, friend, teacher, communicator, or human being. And if I am not taking care of myself physically, nutritionally, mentally, spiritually, or emotionally, I am a lousy parent
   

   The safety lecture on airplanes — where they tell you to put your oxygen mask on first before helping others -- has become my North Star. Take care of yourself first so that you have the strength to do the hard work of being a pandemic parent.
   

   

   
   

2. It takes a village.
   
   Life is a team sport. We need each other. And with kids, we need carpools, bonus parents, and neighbors who love our kids and watch out for them. During the summer of 2019, I learned the importance of this when I received a text from a neighbor two blocks away from our house. She was writing to tell me that my son was hiding behind a tree on her street covered up in a blanket/towel. I thought he was in our backyard. Oops!! Her alerting me saved me from panicking when I couldn’t find him. But it also alerted him to the fact that people are watching out for him throughout our neighborhood. (Fun fact: he had left our yard to spy on his sister and her friends who were out for a walk!)
   
   We also (MORE IMPORTANTLY) need to find friends and family — a village — to know us, listen to us, encourage us, sustain us, and forgive us.
   

   For me, this — finding friends and family to know, listen, encourage, sustain, and forgive me — has meant redefining what it means to be family and who the members of our family actually are. We have expanded our family throughout the pandemic. We have pod children. And a bonus grandparent. These relationships have been life-giving and so important as we have navigated the messy and mean parts of the pandemic.
   

   

   Dr. Curt Thompson is a writer, podcaster, and psychiatrist. He’s written three amazing books, including his most recent “The Soul of Desire”

3. Curiosity needs to be fostered.
   
   Throughout the pandemic, many people became armchair epidemiologists, vaccinologists, and clinical researchers. The need to be right, to have all the answers, to proclaim truth, and to claim expertise has become epidemic. We have an outbreak of know-it-alls.
   
   As a whole, we have been bad listeners throughout the pandemic. Most of us have been quick to insist on vaccinations or to yell about mask mandates. Throwing out threats on social media or excluding people with differing opinions has become the norm.
   
   We have failed to remember what Mr. Rogers taught us — “All of us, at some time or other, need help. Whether we’re giving or receiving help, each one of us has something valuable to bring to this world. That’s one of the things that connect us as neighbors—in our own way, each one of us is a giver and a receiver.”
   
   We need to foster curiosity — within ourselves and within our children. We need to remember that we all bring something valuable to this world (as Mr. Rogers says), but what I bring is different from what you bring (because we are each unique). When we are curious and humble — we can receive from one another. I can translate epidemiology studies for you and provide you with expert advice about navigating risk in the midst of the pandemic. Your expertise may be to share your poetry with me or teach me yoga. You might have parenting advice to share. Or you might be my physician who has walked me through false-positive mammograms, sepsis, or my kid’s ingrown toenail.
   
   We do not need to be all things at all times. We must embrace our individual strengths and expertise. And at the same time be curious and rely on the expertise of others. Each of us is a giver and a receiver.
   
   Mr. Rogers also said — "It’s good to be curious about many things.”
   
   Mr. Rogers never said to be the expert, don’t listen to others, and it’s ok to scream when you are angry. In fact, he preached the opposite — "As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has or ever will have something inside that is unique to all time. It’s our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression.”

(I’m assuming you realize this, but) I wish Mr. Rogers would have been alive to help us navigate the pandemic as parents. I can imagine him telling us to slow down. To look for the helpers. To be ok with feelings of fear and anxiety. And I think he would have helped us to be curious about a mutating virus, changing public health policy, new vaccines and treatments, as well as helping us to overcome all the yelling and the insistence of many that health is an independent action/decision.

The work that we have ahead of us — to parent into the next normal— involves each of us. And the work to teach, lead, love, and build resilience in a generation of children who have lived and lost so much throughout the pandemic has been assigned to each of us.

We are all public health. We need each other; life is a team sport.