A friend in Madrid is snowed in and has to work throughout the night because her kids can’t leave the house at all, not even to go to school, which is already operating under reduced hours because of the coronavirus. Claudia and Davina, respectively in Bangkok and Brighton, tell me they’ve had to let go of their newly-found work routines because schools are going online or shutting down – again. In Buenos Aires, Estefi is worried that a new bout of the coronavirus will leave her kid without kindergarten and occupational therapy for a second year in a row. In Minnesota, another friend says he’s been talking to his toddler about inequality and racism, with Black Lives Matter protests and the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol as backdrop.
These are not easy times, and my friends are not the only ones struggling. After a year in which millions have had to endure unimaginable losses, being healthy, having a home and food on the table may be enough of an accomplishment. But what exactly counts as healthy? As we try and keep our heads together, those of us who have children in our lives also have an extra responsibility: to be the grown-ups in the room. We have to try to filter and make sense of the outside world for our kids while keeping our cool when, honestly, absolutely nothing out there makes sense to us.
Of course talking about the Black Lives Matter protests to a toddler is not the same as trying to explain to an adolescent why school, and parties and hanging out with friends, are cancelled. But the common thread is the feeling that we, the all-powerful adults, should be fixing things for our kids when the truth is that we can’t. We can’t fix much, and we shouldn’t try either, as psychologist Lisa Damour writes for The New York Times. “We just have to remind ourselves of the territory we control right now and be the grown-ups there.” Think smaller than global protests or pandemics, and more along the lines of what’s for dinner, or what kind of games you play – though even there you may have to let your kid be in charge.
As a parent, one of my constant worries is how to make sure that these external events won’t leave a mark on my son, Lorenzo, who’s almost two years old. Media and experts are asking if the coronavirus will haunt children, whether it will create lasting trauma? The answer is, we just don’t know. Inequality plays a huge role here; if carers are at risk, or they’ve lost their jobs, if kids don’t have access to outside space and are cramped in small living areas, the effects of the coronavirus pandemic will be harder.
Yet, from interviews and research, I know one thing for sure: as long as children have one carer around who can cope and create a narrative to explain what is happening, the kids will be all right. Think of Life is Beautiful, the Roberto Benigni film in which the father transforms life in a German concentration camp into a game to protect his child. Or if you prefer a real story, think of Abdullah Mohammed, the Syrian father who taught his 3-year-old daughter Salwa to laugh whenever she heard a bomb fall so that she would not be scared.
As Stephen Boos, a US paediatrician focusing on child abuse and a member of this community, told me: “If parents can cope, and if families can tell stories that give enriching meaning to their pandemic experience, things will be better. Children will certainly be affected by and remember their experience, but the verb will be grow, not haunt.”
Who cares for carers?
I can write my thoughts with more clarity this week, because nurseries in Greece reopened and I’ve actually had some time to think. Hurray! Lorenzo was at home for two months as a full lockdown was in place here. He hardly saw any children (most playgrounds shut down too in our area), while my husband and I came up with a complex schedule to try to work while taking care of the house and the food and Lorenzo. Not easy when one of us has also lost their full-time job during the pandemic!
On Monday, Lorenzo’s first day back at nursery, I made plans to write, research and tidy up. But an hour after he was gone, I started feeling very, very sleepy. Why not take a brief nap, I thought, and feel more energised afterwards? So I lay in bed, with the early morning sun shining through the windows right into my face. Three hours later, I opened my eyes, and I could not believe how well I felt.
Rather than asking about children’s trauma, should we be asking how to take better care of carers in this pandemic? Our children are supposed to have a proper network around them, not parents that act as teachers, friends, and extended family all at once. Without an external structure to rely on thanks to corona, with no school, sports, friends, family or even strangers to connect to, carers are left being everything to their child and carrying much more weight than we can actually handle. And it’s mainly mothers who are taking the hit, with a considerable effect on their overall well-being and mental health.
I would be acting like a pretentious grown-up if I pretended I had any answers to the questions I’m posing. I do know that government support is indispensable. For example, parents in Germany will receive an extra 10 days leave to look after their children during the current lockdown, with single parents receiving an extra 20 days. I also know that for nuclear families, life in confined apartments in cities away from nature sets carers up for an extremely hard job. In my case, the pandemic has made me long for community more than ever, and even more so as a mother.
So, thank you for helping me set up this one community where we all believe in the importance of childhood. And if you don’t trust me, trust Pixar’s new short Burrow (I review it below): only through a community can we realise our own personal dreams.
What I’ve been reading
Heather Lanier’s letter to a stranger, a mother she saw on a beach during the summer, combines lyrical prose with some very concrete, painful truths. “The nuclear family can be a beautiful thing until it breaks. And it breaks for many private reasons. But it also breaks if the world sits too hard on it,” writes Lanier. “When I carried my two kids in my body, I expected my cervix would one day open, but I never expected the social netting of childcare and public school to split open, too. We have fallen through it, all of us, landing isolated on our own sandy islands.” A definite must-read.
What I’ve been listening to
The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University has some great resources to explain how brains are formed and how children grow into adults. They launched a podcast in 2020, which includes interviews that are quite illuminating and useful too. This one episode called Mental Health in a Locked-Down World gives some great practical advice and offers a lot of insights into how to look at the pandemic as parents too. “Whatever little the parents can do to support themselves really matters because they are right now in fact the primary support system for kids,” says Archana Basu, research associate at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
What I’ve been watching
Madeline Sharafian’s Burrow is a charming short about how important community is. A rabbit sets off with a dream: to have a burrow of her own. She puts out her mailbox and then starts digging. But as she digs she accidentally comes across mice having dinner, frogs in their library, aunts at a restaurants. The more she digs by herself, the more problems she creates for the whole ecosystem, without managing to realise her own dream. The short is a great metaphor for how much we need a community to realise our own personal dreams, and how much exacerbated individualism can put everyone else in danger. You can watch the trailer here.
Who’s been inspiring me
It’s impossible for me to think about mental health without being hugely inspired by Tanmoy Goswami, my former colleague at The Correspondent, who now has his own newsletter, Sanity by Tanmoy.
I’m also enjoying Austin Kleon a lot. He’s a writer and artist, the author of several books, including the best-selling Steal Like An Artist. I loved his reflections on how we can talk to our kids during difficult times, but it was his New Year’s discovery of an owl in his backyard that won me over. He set me off on a tangent on how beautiful things grow out of shit. Yes, literal shit. More on this next week!
What I’m missing out on and would love your help with
We all have blindspots. I have so many I probably don’t even recognise them. This is where I would love your direct involvement and support. I am really thin on good literature about parenting and early childhood from Asia, for example. In general, I’m trying to diversify my readings and sources, and I will start keeping a log of the sources I refer to, the books I read and the people I interview. So, if you have tips on books beyond the English-speaking world, experts beyond WEIRD societies, then please send those tips my way by replying to this email. And remember: experts are not only people with PhDs. Parents and carers can also be experts in my field, as are people who work in education and those who work with children.
I’ll be back in your inboxes next Wednesday.
Until then, keep safe.
With love and care,
Irene