Parenting in the current climate is
hard. For many of us it is harder than we would have thought it would be. Having
our own children around and spending time at home with our spouse aren’t traditionally seen as hardships. However, fear of illness, employment uncertainty, frustration,
with new learning processes, and a loss of our own social support are new trials we are struggling to endure.
For those fortunate to still have gainful employment, there are stresses of working at home with children to parent during the day. For families experiencing job loss, unemployed or underemployed, uncertainty regarding meeting their families basic needs exists, and this breeds fear and anxiety.
Fear and anxiety love to grow in
uncertain times. When we lack a mental schema, or a mental representation for how
to proceed, our creative instincts can get the best of us. We have so few answers, and no real
understanding of how or when this will end, what our culture will look like,
when can we return to regular mass, what will happen with the schooling in the
fall.
If we were “just” and I use just in air
quotes, experiencing an economic recession, we would sort of know what to
expect. We have been through some of those. If we were just experiencing (again
with air quotes) a big flu season, we may know better what to expect, when it
will go away.
The fact we aren’t able to plan for the
future makes this so much harder.
We need to balance the reality of the
day-to-day difficulty with the truth that parenting is our vocation. Just as God can bring good from suffering, as
parents we can invite Him to bring increased goodness into our homes now.
We parent in the present, we love in
the present, we live in the present. So we can take this time to learn to be
more present. Don’t worry about the future – Saint Padre Pio said “Pray hope,
and don’t worry.”
That doesn’t mean being less
intentional about your parenting.
We should all take some time to think
about how we want our kids to remember this time (read more about thathere). We have a beautiful opportunity to spend time with, and connect with our
kids in such a unique way right now, but we need to be intentional about it. The
intensity with which we parent now has changed as has and the opportunity to play a bigger role in our children’s lives.
Being present and living more in the
moment is the answer to more fully embracing the opportunities we have at home
now.
The research on stress tells us that
if we are under stress, we either need to remove the stressor, or we need to
change our reaction to the stress. We can’t remove our children, or spouse, or
the threat of illness, so we have to change our reaction to the stress.
