When the casual becomes intentional

Someone asked me recently how my parenting style will change as a result of COVID. It made me realize that two-thirds of my parenting experience has been during COVID. My son was just 6 months old when the world went into lockdown, my daughter was born during COVID. I don’t know how my style will change because I’ve really only parented during COVID. 

That also means I haven’t had the benefit of parenting alongside other parents ‘IRL’. I haven’t been able to learn from other parents in person, so I’ve had to do it online. Unfortunately, talking about parenting online can be a messy business. When most people think about online parent groups they picture the notorious “mommy wars” - Facebook groups that have spun wildly out of control. Luckily, that’s starting to change. 

I was fortunate to be part of some really impactful conversations just this week. All of them were with parents I’ve never met in person, and likely never will. These conversations were all the more meaningful to me because it was a week where I was wrestling with the reality that my daughter is getting less attention than my son did at that age. I know that’s probably normal, but it’s also exactly the type of thing you’d talk to another parent about at a playdate and get a reality check. We know all too well that there’s no manual for parenting. The closest thing is usually other parents, but if we’re not seeing other parents, how do we do that? The conversations I joined this week were a start; they were each deeply personal, and in many respects, private. We were learning together. 

What struck me about these conversations was the vulnerability and transparency. We talked about the mental health of our kids and the behaviors we’re seeing and are worried about, the challenges and often uncomfortable reality of talking to kids about race, and the amount of help we have (or don’t have), how we afford it and the guilt we feel over it. None of those are easy topics. They are the types of things we might only talk about with our closest friends, or avoid altogether. People talking to strangers online is nothing new. Incredibly time constrained working parents who are already stretched to their limits making the time to have these conversations with people they don’t know outside of those online communities? That is new. To be clear, they weren’t anonymous conversations. These are people on video and in communities where they use their real names. They were exposing themselves to people they haven't met, but talk with frequently. It was both powerful and unusual. And highly needed.

It is exactly this type of open, honest conversation that we both crave and desperately need right now. As the world around us has shrunk, in many cases our challenges have expanded, and we’ve been left with nowhere to talk about them. We’re not having casual conversations about our families with parents at the park or at school. Moving these conversations online and into Zoom means they have to be intentional. That raises the stakes. To make themselves vulnerable and share this kind of personal information, parents must feel an enormous amount of psychological safety. Building that safety takes significant time, work, and intention. It's not surprising that we didn't see it happening right away, it's taken almost a year of the Pandemic to cement the foundation necessary to allow these conversations to take place. Talking about our concerns for our kids, the socioeconomic realities of our families, and how we teach our kids about race are always complicated topics. But the fact that people actively wanted to have these conversations shows how deeply we need to learn from each other; we’re willing to take a risk and do something a bit unnatural to achieve it.

It’s going to be a long time before we’re fully back to parenting alongside each other in person. I’d love to know, where are you connecting with other parents? Are you finding ways to learn from other parents when we can’t be near other parents? How do we continue to create that space, to foster the empathy and openness needed, and to do it in a way that supports everyone?