9am.
I know it’s been a figuratively earth-shattering week, but why is the earth actually moving?
A portentous rumble ripples sporadically through my village. What fresh hell is this?
I head upstairs for better vantage across the fields to the houses beyond…
I hear music, I see movement. Is that a sweatband?
Something momentous is happening: Joe Wicks is happening.
The nation’s at home and on their feet, jumping, pumping and pressing their bodies into the new day.
Much about this era is unexpected, but top of the list is this new fervour for co-ordinated exercise.
Erasing unhelpful Orwellian references from my cynical mind (The Physical Jerks - eek), I make a note to get the fam involved tomorrow. It seems to be buoying up everyone else, and I’ll happily sample a piece of positivity pie, even if it takes the form of peskily perky P.E.
How are you?
I’m hearing shifts in our language, subtle changes which point to the huge tectonic recalibration of society’s priorities, goals and systems.
Note our salutations.
‘See you later’ seems to have fallen by the way-side: the hopeful, ‘Stay well’, in its place.
And it’s important that we do: we must. Parenting just got more complex, the stakes, higher, and the challenges changing daily. Wellness - physical and emotional - just got more difficult to attain and sustain.
There’s an odd discord in Cornwall as I write this blog…the sun is shining, the beaches should be filling and the shoulder season shrug into the bustle of the Easter hols.
Yet, as spring unfurls, we retreat, snail-like.
The anticipation of the external liberation that warmer days and mellower winds allow has been halted: and we’re forced to limit our expectations, reduce our world and close the doors.
Our families’ metaphorical new buds have been nipped by this unexpected frost: spring, it feels, isn’t blossoming.
Perhaps this is why, despite social feeds full of tips, timetables, lycra and wholesomeness, it can be challenging to own this moment. To decide how to parent, nurture, support, even feed, your family. How to suddenly be their whole world: parent and teacher and entertainer and buddy and cook and role model.
I think it’s important to acknowledge that a hollowing out - or, a stripping down - has happened. Pressing on as normal, is one stiff upper-lip too far.
So, what does this look like?
First: talk.
Discussing Covid-19 and the new patterns of behaviours we need to assume could be a starting point for crafting your family’s response and calming little minds as they too adjust to an altered routine.
Sarah discussed the importance of talk in PACE parenting in last week’s blog and there are some helpful bits, specific to coronavirus, to help
Second. Take a breath. Since when was parenting easy? You’ve got this. Really, you do.
When you’d just figured out how to get little Jimmy to eat broccoli, he started wetting the bed. And decided he didn’t like Tuesdays. But you handled it.
When Samantha finally stopped sucking her thumb, but would only fall asleep with three bedtime stories, two rounds of twinkle twinkle and her blankie (which must not ever - NEVER - be cleaned) wrapped just-so around the fourth finger of her left hand - and a cold pillow - you handled it.
And when school’s out, work’s shut or limited, there’s beans and something which might be a gherkin in the fridge, you’ll handle it.
Parents’ resilience is tempered by years of operating on minimal sleep, tantrums and emotional turbulence.
In a crisis, the parents will take a deep breath, give a quick backward glance at the perennially untouched cuppa, grab a wet-wipe and head into the fray.
Whether you’ve colour-coordinated your family’s schedule or have decreed a week-long pyjama party, you’re exactly where you need to be. Doing exactly the right thing.
Their shelter in a storm
Because whilst it does feel like we have lost something fundamental to our lives - some core of our beings, whether that’s work, routine, personal freedoms or even our health - really, our core remains: these little people and our little world, enormous with love.
Acknowledging, and labelling, feelings is a key part of the PACE approach and is illustrated by Bartley’s mum in the lift-the-flap book we’re Crowdfunding to publish, ‘Please Stay Here - I Want You Near’.
And what does she do to help Bartley cope with his worry? See it. Accept it. And give him a big bear hug.
Whilst there’ll be no swimming lessons or soft-play for a while, these things on some level are extraneous. Distractions, happy ones, but they are not fundamental: you are.
You are their firmament. You are their world now, but always have been.
If you’ll allow me to switch metaphors, you are your family’s tree…
Your roots will ground them, you will protect them - and they’ll swing on your branches until the parks re-open. (Good luck with that!)
Standing still, being present, will be enough. Your children will blossom under your care - have faith in that.
And the thing about spring, is that it’s been happening for weeks, below the ground, in the roots, deep in the earth. Nature’s resilience, its power, pulses unseen.
Just as yours does.
Spring will come, as will the return of the spring in our steps. Until then, talk, take a look at our PACE resources in our other blogs for a resilience boost and try to stay grounded.
As Sarah mentioned last week, until the Crowdfunding comes to an end we can’t get the Parenting Handbook to print but if you are interested in receiving a pdf copy please contact us through our
Crowdfunding page
or email hello@parentingthroughstories.com. If you can afford it we would be grateful if you could pledge (even a small amount) but, if you’re really struggling financially, we will send it out to you for free. At times like this we need to focus on supporting each other as best we can.
Now, pass me the lycra…I’m coming for you, Wicks.
Stay well, everyone.
Becks
Find me and more of my writing at www.rebeccaritson.com
On Twitter @rebeccawrites
On Instagram @rebeccaritsonwrites