How to Cope with Work and Parenting During COVID Isolation
How to get the priorities during the period of quarantine right, especially coping with work and young children? Is it worth being after perfect studying? Will schedule and good planning help?
Isolation can seriously affect mothers raising children alone. They are isolated “by status”. What are the risks?
Any isolation is, in other words, life with a large number of restrictions, when it is impossible to satisfy a bunch of important needs. So it has the risks of varied exhaustion: nervous, physical, emotional. In this state, life loses its meaning. You see only negative things.
Isolation with children, especially little ones, is a double or triple burden. There is multitasking, endless decision-making, communication efforts, and routine physical work. There are more worries, but less sources of strength. The risk of getting into a state of burnout increases significantly.
The main thing which needs to be done is to hide a superhero cloak in the bedside cabinet. In other words, you should greatly reduce the degree of expectations from yourself and the children.
When you are one for all and, in addition, when you are in total restriction, you can’t be effective, calm, good-tempered, and full of strength and so on. It is impossible for human ability.
But it’s real enough, and it is the most important thing, to persist physically and emotionally. It is the high point. From this point of view, many things are seen differently. If you are unable to cope with four children and work from home, answer the following questions: did my children eat today? Are they dressed? Did they “go” to school? If your answer is yes, then you can do it perfectly!
Schools have introduced distance learning. It is good for parents who have independent and responsible children, but today there is a minority of them. Now it’s too late to talk about “why it happened”, but if a child in the 7th grade does lessons under his mother’s control, what’s to be done with distance learning?
Will a clear schedule help? How to get priorities during planning right, especially in a situation when the mother copes with work and children? What to do, if your child ignores your schedule?
If a schedule is for keeping calm in the world, which changes every second, and you are able to stick to it, it will help you. Any schemes and rituals, especially familiar ones, will create the necessary support now and give a feeling of security and control of life.
What is useful to know, if you stay at home
It is true that, first of all, the priorities in any schedule should concern the mother’s interests and preferences. The survival of the family depends on her, therefore she can make rules that will help her satisfy important needs.
Do only what you can
If you try to control the children, especially those who have grown, in a new way with the help of a schedule, you will have huge problems. The children, who are not used to a clear framework of rules, will rebel, even if you confidentially talk to them that the situation has changed and now you expect more of them. It is also an additional stress.
Is it worth it? Therefore, to begin with, clarify the goal and make it realistic, small: doing part of homework and housework in a certain period of time. Then again, test your strengths and situation. If you cannot control the schedule, and the children are not responsible enough, then it is better to postpone the efforts to gradually improve the orderliness of life and increase the independence of children for the period “after quarantine”. Do only what you can.
What rules can you discuss with your family in advance?
Try to comply with these rules. How to persuade an elder one to help with housework or play with the younger kids? It turns out that parents should occupy an older child with something cognitive or interesting so that he or she does not sit 24/7 with the phone. Besides, you need to involve the youngest one and keep him/her busy, for them not to interfere with your remote work. It is a never-ending circle.
As a rule, crises accentuate the existing problems rather than create them. Many parents are now facing the fact that children are utterly ignorant of their occupation, have not learned how to concentrate, are not able to organize routine work and are not prepared to cooperate in everyday life. Let us leave the causes aside, although this is a whole phenomenon. Such a reality at least gives rise to a wave of new problems for already worn-out and exhausted adults.
Again, it is not the time to radically re-train anyone, even yourself. Change takes a lot of effort.
Can you immediately occupy the older child with something «useful» or make him/her responsible? You cannot. Can you urgently prepare the youngest child for loneliness? You cannot either.
You need to focus on what is in your power.
Think about your life with the kids in an ideal way. What would you like to see? This image in your head may tell what rules must be implemented in everyday life.
Choose from them a couple of the most important rules for the present-day situation. For example, it may be the older child helping with the younger one or with doing the housework.
Remember what helps in training a new skill: repetition, as well as positive reinforcement (reward for execution and punishment for evasion).
Talk to a teenager, sincerely admitting that the old way of living does not work anymore. You cannot cope alone and you desperately need help. Announce his/her new responsibilities, as well as the system of rewards and punishments with which the child must agree or perhaps offer his/her own alternative.
Get ready for the fact that failures will certainly happen if a person is not three years old. Let the thought support you: you render the child an invaluable service: he/she learns to overcome difficulties, do uninteresting things, organize himself/herself, which will strengthen his/her faith in themselves and will provide stability in the outside world.
It is very important to think over and announce the schedule of your own work and rest, planning there hours, spent with the children (or when they are allowed to come to you). The schedule can be changed every day (“today I work from 10:00 till 19:00 with a break from 14:00 to 15:00, we can have lunch together, and watch a movie in the evening”) or make it permanent.
The old way of living is no longer working
How to cope with children’s voices in the background, when you need to concentrate? How to persuade a child not to come to you every 10 minutes with the words “Mom, I just need to ask you”?
The best option is a door lock. If there is no door lock and you can’t get it right now, agree with your child that within half an hour, he/she will not come to you. Then, thank and reward your child for compliance with the agreements (and if he/she fails, don’t encourage or impose fines). Much depends on age, but children aged 5 or 6 years can already fulfill these requirements.
How to deal with the annoyance because of deadlines, while you are still in your pajamas amidst the chaos?
Anxiety about the future is torturing us, we take a lot of tasks, can’t cope with them, and get annoyed. How to set a limit for yourself, after which you refuse any offers?
Ask yourself: why are you so annoyed by chaos and pajamas? Maybe there is still an idea inside your head that you can be a single mother, a successful worker and have a perfect house and appearance? So, once again: it is impossible.
Make a habit of keeping up with 30 percent of your personal ideal plan. I have a feeling that even this will be a lot.
As for determining your limit of pressure, it is a very important issue. One way or another, you already know the maximum of your working capacity (how many hours a day or a week you can work effectively without ruining your health afterwards). This is the first guidance.
The second one is body signals. If your body “resents” and resists, it means that the reserves of its forces are running out, and if this fact is ignored, you cannot fulfill the obligations and will damage the reputation.
The third important point is to learn to pause before accepting the next working proposal. During this pause, ask yourself why you are going to accept it, when you already have enough work.
If you do it because of anxiety, panic or fear, then decide what exactly you are afraid of. What is the worst thing about it? Is this fear real? If it’s real, then what will you do if your fears come true? Sometimes this is enough to calm down and take a sober look at things.
For example, tell yourself: if I suddenly have less work, there will be more opportunities to be engaged in attracting clients or building competencies.
Praise yourself every day at least five times.
How to learn not to blame yourself for failure, for not being able to become a supermom?
Learn to praise yourself for little things. By the way, this is an excellent and quite realistic “quarantine plan”. Praise yourself every day at least five times. If you can’t praise yourself for your achievements, then praise yourself for your efforts. At first, you will be bad at it, but then you will acquire a skill. We guarantee that you don’t need a superhero cloak anymore.
Moms who used to work outside the home, with their kids studying, first came into close contact with the children. How not to lose the temper and start to doubt your own feelings? Constant communication with children is simply annoying, but no one admits this under torture.
I know those who admit this and are not even shy about it. Getting tired of children is normal. Almost everyone repents that they do not like to play with the offspring, but this is normal. Why should you like to play with toy cars in your thirty years?
An adult has much more needs than procreation and communication. A simple recognition of this fact will help you to set boundaries: plan your relaxation and personal time (option – “You play Lego on the sofa, and I read the book right here, ok?”).
Even during the quarantine. Especially during the quarantine!
Is it acceptable to show children that mom has some difficulties? How can you make it clear that mom is tired, but not to cause the anxiety in their souls, if mom is the only adult in the family?
Make yourself clear: I’m tired, I need a rest in order to accumulate strength to cope with difficulties. By the way, it’s not necessary to demonize children’s anxiety for the mother. There is a feeling that can tell the child that he can also participate in common activities to help. And you can say frankly again: I feel sorry for you (I allow you to watch YouTube, play games, not to wash dishes every day) and I also want to be felt sorry for!
What conditional signals can tell us that the conflict is already close and we need to interfere with the interaction of children?
Let the conflict happen so that the children learn to overcome it. If they are unable to agree, perhaps you need to interfere: restore the order of events together, take an interest in everyone’s position, find out what each child really wanted and what the solution could be, except for insults and accusations. If you can’t stand the sibling conflicts at all, it can signal lack of strength or your inner conflicts.
The simplest thing is to give gadgets to children, turn on cartoons. How to balance this?
There are no universal answers. It depends on the purpose. If you need to work when the children are at home, and nothing more can be done so far – this is the balance. If you have time and energy to interact with children – you can assign the duration that you think is right.
What to focus on during the quarantine?
What we can do is take better care of ourselves. Even if we have time for important things (work, sleep, rest, chatting with friends, even online) in isolation, and children help us with this, an additional supply of energy will certainly be released.
It can be directed to interaction with them: not only to play “Monopoly” together, but also try to talk heart to heart, feel sorry, praise, hug. The emotional accessibility of a parent, his ability to understand and accept is the most important thing that children need.
