In our last post, we talked about some ways to manage your stress and get ahead of your anxiety during COVID-19. This week, we’re focusing on another way to prevent anxiety: getting rid of unrealistically high expectations and releasing yourself (and your child) from pre-COVID standards.
It’s important to remember that “lowering” your expectations doesn’t mean you’re expecting less from yourself or that you’re dropping the ball. To the contrary, giving yourself permission to redefine and reorder your priorities allows you to make room for things that allow your family the flexibility, regulation, and resiliency to be truly successful.
Adjust your expectations.
- Learn to recognize symptoms of anxiety in yourself, physical and otherwise. Get in the habit of rating your anxiety on a scale of 1 to 10 throughout the day, and let your family know when you start feeling overwhelmed.
- This is a hard, scary time, and you are one person who cannot do everything you’re used to doing in a given day or week. Give yourself permission to let some things go.
- Accept that you can’t predict or control what the next few months will bring. Take things one day at a time and don’t spend valuable energy worrying about when schools will reopen or whether you’ll be able to travel for your summer vacation.
- Forgive yourself for “falling off the wagon” with homework, to-do lists, or fitness routines. Focus instead on how quickly you can get back on track, and let the getting back be your marker of success. Expect curveballs and disruptions—they will come.
- Give yourself and your child permission to say no to socially distanced activities that feel stressful or draining on a given day. You don’t have to attend every Zoom playdate, birthday drive-by, or virtual happy hour.
- Say all of this out loud—your child needs to hear it. Be explicit about what tangibles are changing, such as how we do our work, how much work gets done, and how we connect with friends and family. Let him know it’s okay to let some things go for now and that you don’t expect him to be perfect.
Check your own baggage.
- Let go of the idea of the “super parent.” Parenting during quarantine means you’re a lot more than just Mom or Dad: you’re also a teacher, coach, therapist, housekeeper, chef, nurse, and play date. Learn to be okay with dropping the housekeeper today so you can be a better teacher—or giving the teacher a day off so you can be a better play date.
- Don’t get hung up on your idea of what your child’s experience should be. Maybe you have great memories of your childhood birthdays, full of expensive gifts and parties with all your friends, but social distancing means your child’s birthday can’t have those things. Instead of getting upset about what’s missing, try to find a new, creative way to make him feel celebrated.
- Be proactive in managing your stress and anxiety. (Last week’s post has some great tips!) Keep in mind that blow-ups and lashing out are usually the result of feeling overwhelmed and are rarely about whatever’s happening in this exact moment.
Redefine success for your family.
- You can’t perfectly recreate pre-COVID routines, but you can still craft successful days that focus on family and whole-child development. Pre-COVID goals might have been getting to school on time, completing homework, and going to bed without a meltdown. Shift your focus from specific tasks to things like staying regulated, keep learning, staying sane as a family, and having some fun together.
- Likewise, think about redefining academic success for your child. A successful day might not mean following the pre-set curriculum and getting 100% on every assignment—it might not even mean completing every assignment. A modified COVID curriculum might include things like self-regulation, independence, and self-directed learning.
- Remember, no child has 100% successful days, even when things are normal. Distraction, irritability, and overstimulation happen at school, too, but these may seem amplified now that you’re responsible for their “school day.”
- Instead of focusing on what COVID has disrupted, look at what this experience can offer: more time together as a family and more time for self-led interest activities.
- Keep experimenting! As long as you’re still figuring out what works, dropping what doesn’t, and adapting to new challenges, you are successful.