My Thoughts On The Difficulties Of Parenting During A Pandemic

In Ontario, some restrictions have been lifted so perhaps it is a good time to reflect on the last year and a half.

Parenting is hard work. It is a gruelling thankless job but also rewarding and brings a joy to my life that I never knew existed. Are there times when I wish I weren’t a mom? Yes, but these are just moments. 

Parenting in a pandemic is so much harder than I could have imagined. We were not meant to do this alone. We were meant to have a community and family to help raise our kids, especially the little ones. I went from having my family and friends around, a community of mothers and resources for mothers in my first mat leave, to almost nothing in my second. Of course, I had the help of my husband who has been working from home since March 2020 and he has been so great, but he has to work so a lot of the childcare has been on me. 

I understand that I wanted to be a mother and that being a mother is a 24 hour job, but it shouldn’t be a 24 hour job. It shouldn’t be a job where you are stuck in your house with nowhere to take your kids and no rest or respite. I was a person before I had kids and I am still that person. I want, no need, to have time for myself to just be myself and decompress. I miss hanging out with friends.

My kids also miss the socialization they once had before the pandemic. E, my youngest, is still getting used to being around other kids when we go to the park because we haven’t been able to  go anywhere. N, my oldest is a social butterfly (just like her mama), who needs time with other kids. She craves interaction with other kids.

One thing I was not prepared for was getting bored of playing. My kids have the best imaginations and it is so fun to be part of it but there is only so much of it that i can do. It’s not that I get bored easily, it’s that I have been doing this for 18 months straight. Kids need their parents and they need them to interact with them and play with them on the floor. They also need other kids to explore the depths of their imagination. It is through play and using their imagination that they learn valuable social skills, problem solving, explore relationship dynamics, and build self-confidence and language skills. These are things I can encourage and help explain but there is a limit to what I can do, and children need other children to properly develop these skills. 

At the beginning of the pandemic my anxiety was through the roof. I can be an anxious person, but I was a wreck. It was a hard time. I was scared of getting Covid. I was worried about my family getting it, especially my parents. I was basically in survival mode. I did everything I could to entertain the kids and keep them safe. It was exhausting. I was burning out and with no end insight my mental health was struggling. My mental health was already struggling from experiencing “baby blues” after E was born. I have mentioned this before on this blog and on instagram that the adjustment from 1 to 2 was harder than I expected then add on a global pandemic and it’s a recipe for disaster. Luckily, we survived it. I started seeing a counselor virtually in the Spring of 2020 and I started doing work on this blog and posting more on my public instagram page @cookiesandcreamto. 

Outside of being anxious and worried about the pandemic and the state of the world I was also concerned with my kids wellbeing and how the lockdown would affect their development. N started preschool in the fall of 2019 and she was loving it. After March 2020 she didn’t go back. It was hard for her. She is a happy kid and she adapted so well, but she still missed school, her teacher, and her friends. She still does.

I did the best I could to make sure she was still learning and doing activities that stimulated her, but I am not a preschool teacher. I would set up an activity and then 10-20 minutes later she was done. The hope was that she would be engrossed in the activity for at least 30 mins if not an hour so that I could rest, do something around the house or work on the blog, or study. It never really worked out that way.

Maybe I expected too much and maybe it was her age. I worried and I tried to be the Pinetrest mom, but it just kept adding to my stress so I dropped the preschool activities and just focused on playing with my kids. As N has gotten older she has been more interested in crafts so we aim for at least one craft activity a week. We have managed to do more than that though.

The fact that I was at home with the kids and was a stay-at-home longer than I intended was partly out of circumstance and partly my choice. Up until the pandemic I did contract work for 2 major film festivals in Toronto. When the pandemic hit there were no physical festivals. All the film festivals moved to virtual so I was out of a job. At this point I was also working towards a career change so it wasn’t a complete loss for me, but since my husband was home and I wasn’t working we decided to let our part-time nanny go.

I stayed home to take care of the kids. When E turned one I was ready to find work, but we were entering the Fall and approaching a second wave of the pandemic. I would not be able to go find work in the wine industry because there was no real work for a newbie like me. I also wasn’t going to work in the service industry and put my life and kids at risk if I didn’t have to. Trying to find something to do from home would also be difficult because I don’t have a lot of downtime from the kids so I couldn’t put in the time needed for a work-from-home type job.

I was left with little options. I am very lucky that I am in a position where I don’t have to look for work. I am fully aware of the privilege I hold here, but I wanted to work and I wanted to do something for myself. 

This is why I started this blog and started posting on social media more. This endeavour has been the means by which I have been able to create something for myself, outside of my kids and being a stay-at-home mom. It hasn’t been easy because I am also in the middle of preparing for an important wine tasting exam but I have managed.

I treat this blog, my social media managing and my studying as a job and I work at it as such. I work during the little pockets of time I have during the day when I am not entertaining or feeding the kids. When E naps, N gets screen time and I work. When they go to bed I work for a couple of hours. During the weekends Tom is off work so he takes on dad duty and I work for a bit.

 I, like other working mothers, sacrifice time with our families and time for ourselves to work, pursue careers, and chase our dreams. A lot has fallen on the shoulders of mothers, fathers, and single parents. So many sacrifices of all kinds have been made to keep our kids happy, educated, and safe. It has been the best of times and it has been the worst. I will forever remember this time as the most trying and the most fulfilling time in my life. While it has been hard we have also come together as a family. We have been together more than we ever had and we have become closer. If that’s the only silver lining that comes out of all this then all the sacrifice would have been worth it.