When I woke up to piles of snow on Monday morning, my heart sank.
Monday was supposed to be the day my four-year-old daughter went back to school, and the day our lives would hopefully return to some semblance of “normal.” But like a cruel joke on parents of school-aged children, this snow dump buried our hopes.
I lay in bed for a few more minutes thinking about how I was going to handle another day of having my kindergarten – and probably also my almost three-year-old daughter – at home while working.
As any parent working from home for a young child knows, having your kids at home with you is like working two full-time jobs.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my kids. But it’s been nearly two years since my then baby and toddler, and now toddler and kindergartner, have been home multiple times.
Our routines were inconsistent and the constant disruptions slowly wore me down. My children have watched more television in the past four weeks than in their entire lives. That’s not how I want to be a parent, but I’m stuck in a situation where the only way to have an hour and 50 minutes of time to write and do interviews with few interruptions is to put on a movie Disney in the afternoon.
I haven’t always felt so overwhelmed juggling solo parenting while working from home. It was a little easier when it was new and when we all thought it was temporary.
The first lockdown of March 2020 was a whirlwind. I had just returned to work six weeks earlier after maternity leave, and I was so disappointed to be back home and not in the office. It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about how I started my mornings in those days: I was breastfeeding my 13-month-old baby, then quickly shifting gears into pandemic report mode when I logged into my meeting. Morning zoom. I did most of my work during siesta.
When my children finally returned to daycare, they were constantly coming home as we suffered from the days and days of runny noses and coughs that plague all young families. The uncertainty of this chaos began to weigh heavily on me. When would this end?
Fast forward to fall 2021 and my oldest daughter is in kindergarten. Just when we’ve finally gotten used to a new family routine, it’s been disrupted by the most recent closures. Now my kindergarten student has been home with me for four weeks, sometimes accompanied by her younger sister. I am tired.
My spouse helps out as much as he can, but he can’t work from home, which leaves me in this situation of balancing work and childcare over and over again. I know my work has suffered, and what hurts me even more is my shared attention to my children who deserve far more attention than I have been able to provide.
Although I complain, I am very aware of my privileges: my family is financially secure and my job is mostly self-employed, so my schedule can be somewhat flexible to handle my children when they are not feeling well or when the daycare or school is closed. .
I know there are so many parents who have lost their wages – and even their jobs – because of this constant disruption of school and daycare schedules. I’ve read the desperate posts in local Facebook mom groups, written by women expressing how hard it is for them to get through the day. I feel sad for them and very frustrated.
All parents are struggling at the moment but, as usual, it is mostly women who bear the burden of childcare.
Even though I can technically do everything, I no longer feel capable. I don’t want to do everything, yet I do, and it deflated me. I know I’m not the only parent feeling this.
This last week has been particularly difficult. My daughter couldn’t concentrate during virtual school – she’s only four, after all – so we decided to skip her for the rest of the week. The decision to leave virtual school meant I had to find more independent activities for my daughter so I could work but, of course, all she wanted to do was play with mum. I was heartbroken.
I took days off when I could, but that doesn’t make up for nearly two years of distracted pandemic parenting.
On top of all the stress of balancing work and childcare, the Omicron variant of COVID-19 has added another layer of anxiety for many parents worried about their kids getting back to school.
Each option for families with young children comes with caveats: What’s the right decision for my family? For some, it’s about keeping their children at home. For others, it is about sending their children to school.
No one is right or wrong, and none of us want to make those tough decisions in the first place. We’re all doing our best to tackle the most impossible parenting challenge of the century.
Maybe I expected too much of my daughter to go back to school on Monday, hoping that everything would be better if the schools were open. But it’s not a bad thing to hope that a difficult situation will improve.
It has been 22 chaotic months. I can’t count the days of working from home while raising my children alone, but I know I will remember those stressful experiences fondly.
Like the time my almost three-year-old climbed into my lap as I was trying to write on time and asked me what letter I was going to type next. Mind-boggling, yet adorable.
Or the time my four-year-old brought me a little stuffed lizard and walked it over my left shoulder and over my head during a Zoom interview. I was mortified and forgot the question I was asking about myself but couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Fortunately, my interview subject, who also had a young child at home, totally understood.
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