How To Navigate Parenting In Quarantine

As families are being brought back under one roof during quarantine, many old emotions and ways of interacting are being brought to the surface. The truth is, although we might be living in the same spaces that have always been “home,” the systems that once populated these very rooms are outdated. For my family in particular, there is the challenge of living as parents and kids, with kids who are now actually adults. 

This shift is a complicated one to navigate, and it takes reflecting on our old family system to create a new one. Being a parent is not a stagnant job. And your journey in the role often starts before you even have kids, with you noticing how your parents raised you. This can be intentional or subconscious, but we are aware of what “good” and “bad” parenting looks like to us long before we become parents ourselves. For me, this exploration was intentional. I knew that I wanted to have a family, so I began working on my role as a father before Gertrude, my wife, and I had kids.

This started with taking classes at The Wright Foundation, and clearly identifying the ways I wanted to emulate and depart from my dad’s parenting style. I’d recommend to any future-parents reading this that you get a headstart! The work I did before having kids was an important foundation to return to when raising them. Because once I had them, it became abundantly clear that if I wanted them to grow up to be contributing members of society, who would stand on my shoulders and become better than me, I would not be able to play the role of friend. This is a hard realization to make, but setting the groundwork for my fathering skills and developing a community of supporters made this much easier. 

Still, being a parent and NOT a friend had its challenges. I was very performance focused with my girls and I held them to a high standard of excellence. It isn’t always fun or easy to have someone pushing you to be your very best, so there were definitely a few “I hate you, Dad!”s tossed around. While I knew that meant I was doing my job right, that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. But of course, instead of taking those emotions out on my kids, I turned to support from friends and family to work through my feelings. Most importantly, I relied on my wife to not only support me, but also to help establish a family culture that we could both enforce. 

This really came down to setting the same expectations for our girls — we both wanted them to grow up to be respectful human beings who contributed their best to society, even (and especially) when it wasn’t easy. Having this shared mission made it easier for us to parent as a unit, even when we didn’t see eye to eye. One thing I found especially important in raising our girls was to not let specific situations divide Gertrude and myself as parents. This took discipline, commitment to a higher vision and again, support from outside parties. I found that similar to my work as an entrepreneur, it was sometimes best to step away from the situation and seek advice from people on the outside, with similar experiences. In both cases, this makes the tough calls a little easier to make and the path forward much clearer. 

While raising my girls as a parent and not their friend wasn't always easy, I like to think that it worked out. They’re living in a male-dominated world, but they’re equipped to do their best, stand up for themselves and succeed — I’ve seen it with my own (proud) eyes, and I’ve had them tell me, too. Now that they are adults, our relationship has changed. The work of actively raising them has passed, and there is room for friendship in our relationship. This is exciting, but especially given our current living circumstances, it can also be difficult. We are all experiencing a form of regression as we attempt to live our new relationships out through old modes of functioning. I find myself taking on the role of a parent again, and I’ve seen them behave more like their childhood selves. 

The only way to stop this is to recognize that change has happened. We, as a family, must mourn the end of our old systems, and celebrate the start of new ones. Ones where we can engage with one another more equally. Not only will this make quarantining a little easier, but it will strengthen our relationship going forward, because just as this shift has occurred, more are soon to follow. 

The key to successful parenting is to remain nimble and ready to meet your children with the role they need, even (especially) when it isn’t easy.