The Only New Friends I Made This Year Were My Children

March 19, 2021 9:08 AM

Lyz Lenz writes for Glamour about parenting during the covid pandemic.

A probably-incomplete list of Lyz Lenz posts previously on MetaFilter:
• The Iowa Caucuses
• Alan Dershowitz
• Moving back to Cedar Rapids
• Smiling as a form of placation
• What makes writing uniquely "internetty"
• Absalom (Biblical figure)
• Isabella Stewart Gardner

posted by Spathe Cadet (28 comments total)

The nurse giving me my blood draw for the vaccine trial tells me that in a few years America will be run by kids who were homeschooled in a pandemic by a bunch of drunks.

That's a hell of an opening.
posted by rory at 9:35 AM on March 19, 2021 [18 favorites]

Damn.

Sometimes I'm really glad my child was born just before the start of the pandemic. That I didn't have to handle Zoom school vs. in person vs. homeschool. But then I'm also worried that my 13 month old has only ever interacted with two people, ever: me and her mother. No pod, just the 3 of us. No one else has held her. She has never played with another child. Our doctor originally brushed off the concerns we brought up when she was 6 months old last August. But at her 12 month appointment, she treated them more seriously.
posted by carrioncomfort at 10:00 AM on March 19, 2021 [11 favorites]

I don't think a lot of people without kids, or with older kids, yet appreciate how profoundly the pandemic has affected small children and their parents. Ours were 1 and 3 when this thing hit. I get invites to zoom meetups that I don't have time for, or long catch-up emails that I barely have the energy at the end of the day to read, much less respond to. We finally got an IEP for one kid, but we can't find anyone to work with them because every child is struggling this year. I wonder sometimes if everyone out there in the world just assumes we're all ok because they haven't heard from us.
posted by phooky at 10:31 AM on March 19, 2021 [13 favorites]

Agree that it's very different based on how old your kids are. Mine was 16 when this started and is about to turn 18. Which means ordinarily this would have been a year where he was gone from early morning into early evening every weekday (he had activities at school before and after regular school hours) and then off with his friends on the weekends. I am grateful for these many, many days we've had together, mostly just the two of us while Mr. BlahLaLa was (mostly) at work. Looks like his school is going to start up in another four weeks and have to admit I will miss spending the whole day with him.
posted by BlahLaLa at 10:36 AM on March 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

As others have said, age matters so much when it comes to families’ experiences over the past year. My kids are older —late elementary and middle school aged — and honestly getting to spend so much time with them over the last year has been really wonderful. It has been probably the best year in terms of our parent-child relationship. Not every moment of course. But I really cherish some of my memories with them from this time even though the year as a whole as been wretched, and not just because of Covid.
posted by scantee at 11:23 AM on March 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

My three-month-old doesn't know what's going on, she just knows she gets lots of snuggles. I feel bad that as far as she knows the doctor is the only place that isn't our house, though.
posted by madcaptenor at 12:24 PM on March 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

I’m glad there are some silver linings out there but generally this has been pretty terrible for my family. We have each lost friendships and institutions that we relied on and loved, institutions and friendships that aren’t going to automatically come back when ‘normal’ happens.
posted by bq at 12:34 PM on March 19, 2021 [10 favorites]

I'm going to read the whole thing, but I think that top pull quote says it all: "I worry my kids and I have become too close, that the boundaries between us are forever blurred. My daughter talks to me like she's 47, and my son calls me bro. But in the middle of this profoundly broken time, I’m grateful they're in it with me."
posted by manageyourexpectations at 12:53 PM on March 19, 2021 [3 favorites]

The author's story is terribly sad even absent a pandemic: lost job, broken arm, as a single parent, etc. I personally thought I spent enough time with my young kids pre-pandemic, so I'm not feeling closer, I'm feeling something more like smothered. But yes, everything else rings true. When the deep freeze hit, we had basically no choice but to join some friends for a few hours who have children my kids' ages. It was great to see them interact with people their own age for a while and off the ipads.

Thinking back as a kid (and mine are very different from me) but I had absolutely no interest in hanging out endlessly with adults as a child, so this would have been exceptionally rough.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:04 PM on March 19, 2021 [5 favorites]

My kid went into an alarming depression after being home for two months without seeing her friends, and I couldn't help her much, even with therapy. Her (tiny) hippy private school put struct requirements in place, but I still said no. But after she got COVID anyway (no symptoms) I gave in and let her go back, hoping that masks plus her antibodies would protect her. So far she's ok but I worry a lot.
posted by emjaybee at 1:40 PM on March 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

I read this essay yesterday, and it just made me feel like a shitty mom. This year of relentless togetherness has made me intensely crave the 2 hours of silence and independence I finally get after kid bedtime. I am an introvert married to an introvert, and we LIVE for our separate 2 hours of free time at night.

I haven’t taught my kid to cook independently during the pandemic. My kid hasn’t gained any new life skills, except for how to play the piano (thanks, iPad app!) and how to use a computer mouse (thanks, distance learning!). If my kid unloaded the dishwasher without me asking it would be because all of the books and toys in our house magically disappeared and they had nothing left on earth to do. Have I failed as a mother because my kid does not do helpful things around the house for me? Like literally I cannot think of a single pro-active household task my kid has ever done - I feel like I am constantly nagging and cajoling and making chore lists and enforcing chore lists and do I just suck at raising a future meaningful contributor to society? Probably.

We are not thriving together in my house; we are merely surviving while endlessly schooling and working from home. There are real and obvious learning deficits and mental health impacts happening under my roof that I cannot prevent or cure. And that makes me feel like a shitty mom, even though I know I shouldn’t feel like one because there is no way anyone should be expected to prevent or fix all the things by one’s self during a goddamn global catastrophe, but I hate it all so much.

Which is maybe the whole point of her essay? But I should really stop reading stuff like this and read escapist novels instead so I have a better shot at making it through the day without screaming.
posted by Maarika at 2:00 PM on March 19, 2021 [33 favorites]

I’m not sure how I’ll ever enforce screen-time limits again. I’m so worried that somehow I’ve broken them.

Yeah... a year ago we had rules about how much phone usage was okay, and we did one hour of screen time a night. Now it's just chaos. Phones are in bedrooms, laptops are in bedrooms, screen time is unlimited, go ahead and be on Discord all day if that's what it takes for you to stay in touch with your friends, just please bring the Switch downstairs before bed so I can play Animal Crossing in the morning before you get up.
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:23 PM on March 19, 2021 [8 favorites]

But I should really stop reading stuff like this

The whole industry of think-pieces explaining What This All Means has been going for a year and it is picking up steam as vaccination proceeds. Accept, please, this benediction stating that all of it is Trash and you do not have to read any of it.
posted by thelonius at 2:27 PM on March 19, 2021 [16 favorites]

Have I failed as a mother because my kid does not do helpful things around the house for me?

Ok, see, one way to read her article is that her kids have picked up wonderful life skills and have become helpful little people who unload the dishwasher without being asked. And another way to read it is that six-year-olds probably shouldn't be cooking dinner, and they've had to grow up too fast because their mom is overwhelmed and has had to delegate not-really-age-appropriate responsibilities to them, which is part of the blurring of boundaries that someone cited above. One of the joys of pandemic parenting is that there's literally no way to do it right, and everyone can judge themselves and/or be judged by others and found lacking. You're doing the best you can in a truly shitty situation, and I am sure you're doing fine, just as Lyz Lenz is.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 3:21 PM on March 19, 2021 [22 favorites]

Spathe Cadet, thanks for posting this here. I'd like to remind readers of something else Lyz Lenz says: The pandemic is breaking women.

The middle of a global pandemic is an absolutely terrible time to optimize your kid(s). It's a time to do whatever it takes, no matter how awkward it feels to explain it, to survive in your personal context. And Maarika? You are not a shitty mom. Really.
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:19 PM on March 19, 2021 [9 favorites]

madcaptenor: My three-month-old doesn't know what's going on, she just knows she gets lots of snuggles.

Ah! Your child will caucus with my dog, then, whose furry heart will break if I ever have to go back to the office full-time.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:10 PM on March 19, 2021 [6 favorites]

I agree with thelonius, above -- and I would add that it's pretty amazing to have a space like this place where people are honest about how ragged it's getting, with none of that sourdough/journaling/redecorating posturing that I see elsewhere. Your house not burning and your hair is long? It's all good.

(I mean, go, you if you got something done, but there's a two-pound bag of yeast in the freezer that did not get made into amazing bread in the last eleven months, while there are also a few empty one-quart honey containers that did get stewed into mead for me to genteely swill of an evening's doom scrolling.)
posted by wenestvedt at 7:16 PM on March 19, 2021 [4 favorites]

Ah! Your child will caucus with my dog, then, whose furry heart will break if I ever have to go back to the office full-time.

Our cats, on the other hand, will be so happy to get the house to themselves again.
posted by madcaptenor at 8:22 PM on March 19, 2021 [6 favorites]

This year of relentless togetherness has made me intensely crave the 2 hours of silence and independence I finally get after kid bedtime.

I feel that sentiment so much! I tell my kid that at 8 pm I'm just... done being a mom for the night. He can read in bed until he falls asleep, I just can't possibly take one minute more of interaction with him after that.

This year has been the most stressful, anxiety ridden, awful time for me. I have no idea how much it's harmed my 10 year old, most of the time he seems fine, but he has no friends, so I fill a lot of his after school time with online activities like Dungeons & Dragons, and then he spends the rest of his free time playing video games and watching tv. I force him to go for a walk with me once a day, and he valiantly tries to make conversation during it and I'm just so tired all the time, I can barely deal with answering all his "what ifs" and "would you rathers." I feel like I've failed him so much this year, by not being able to provide him with some outlets to be with kids in person, by not having a backyard and living in the city, so he can't just go outside. He does art therapy over Zoom once a week, I'm not sure it's helping at all, but I hope it at least can't hurt. He's going back to actual regular in-person school in a couple of weeks, and I'm relieved for it, but also worried about the virus, and worried about just how we're supposed to find our way back to normal after all this.

Meanwhile I'm working from 8 am until 5, making dinner, trying to spend some time with my family, and then logging back into my work computer for a few more hours of work after the kid goes to bed. I've forgotten what I used to do for fun. Anyway, my thoughts go out to all of you who have been slogging through it, too. I really hope there's relief on the horizon.
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 8:24 PM on March 19, 2021 [17 favorites]

And for every “Things are so fucked up” story parents are willing to share here, presume there are ten more we’re not sharing to protect our kids’ privacy.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:46 PM on March 19, 2021 [11 favorites]

I am one parent in a two-parent household, and this is not my experience. My experience is terrible and weird in different ways. We maintain our regular parent and child roles, more or less, but with more stress and more yelling and intense fighting about screen time. And maybe when we look back there'll be a sense of having made it through something together.

But. I have multiple friends who are divorced and share kid custody, and this woman's experience looks a lot like a window into their heads. It fits with a lot of what they've been telling me. And, this year more than ever:

I can't imagine sending the people I live with, the only people who are really part of my world, off to live somewhere else for a few days, and then getting them back again. Every damn week. It would break my heart and brain.
posted by gurple at 10:41 PM on March 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

I lost my job last summer but we can survive without my money, so in theory all this school at home and enforced togetherness in a house that is big for our area should be manageable, right?

In reality it feels like my organised partner has ended up with more domestic stuff on his plate, as well as a full time job, we are failing the younger kid in that she has had a mystery problem since before the pandemic started, still no diagnosis or clear idea what is happening, I futz on the internet a lot and make beautiful bread but frequently fail to provide 3 square meals for the 4 of us and we had done no supervision of the elder's school work at all. The school say she is mostly coping fine but I worry she will burn out before she even gets to exam years.

As well as all the domestic stress, I haven't seen my parents for over a year, and despite both being over 70 and having health conditions, vaccination in Ireland is not going well and they are still unvaccinated.

So I can tell stories about being impressed by the positive coaching the younger does when watching me play botw or getting better at not killing house plants but the other stories about inadequacy and failure don't get shared because they are too raw and too personal.
posted by hfnuala at 6:46 AM on March 20, 2021 [8 favorites]

Frequent beatings helped.

When school stopped we were in line at a store and the guy in front of us indicated he was going to rob the place and I frustrated his ambitions. The kids decided to get serious about martial arts.

So we padded a room and got helmets and there's this girl here who can kick you in the head twice before she touches the floor again. I didn't have my mouthguard in. I had perfect teeth.

Anyway, aggression never built up around here and I get my ass handed to me pretty often now. I think it helped a lot.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 7:45 AM on March 20, 2021 [1 favorite]

I just want to say to all the parents, guardians, responsible adults, and caretakers here: you are doing a good job even if you are sometimes or in some vectors not parenting to either your previous standard or whatever standard lives in your head for disaster/wartime parenting. There was no guidebook for this, you were given little to no additional resources for dealing with it, just getting through it is hard enough.

It's a given that Gen C will be coming to terms with this for the rest of their lives, but every generation has had something to come to terms with for the rest of their lives and there's no way to know how this would play out differently from some other trauma - war, a different plague, everyday threat of nuclear death, catastrophic recession, state-backed epidemics of drugs or violence, etc.

I worry about y'all, though, because you'll be second-guessing it (and second-guessed AT) for the rest of your lives. There will be a constant underlying drumbeat of "is this because I handled the pandemic wrong?" A tremendous amount of pop culture/media is likely to tilt that way for a long time - expect at least a decade of thinkpieces about how the specific thing you did or didn't do Ruined Your Child's Education/Life/Opportunities - because we're never capable of blaming the institutions that failed us when there are women (primarily women, with a bone or two thrown at not-women) that can be blamed instead.

I don't know how to say "don't let it get to you" because it will, it will be designed to do so because anxious people are excellent consumers and the ultra-wealthy don't want you eyeing them with pitchforks so distractions are a must. I hope that in the coming years there will be some kind of resources available for processing and working through this trauma, but it may end up being a mostly DIY situation for many people.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:41 AM on March 20, 2021 [13 favorites]

I spent the first six months of the pandemic alone in my townhouse while my wife took our three children to my parents house to hide away from the pandemic. I became weird and lonely, working in the office so that my team did not have to, and drinking myself to sleep every night. My wife struggled with living with in-laws (who she loves, thankfully) and dealing with 2 4-year-olds and a 5-year-old. Screen time limits vanished, but they spent a lot of time outdoors with my parents while my wife coped with the stress of it all.

When they returned in September so that my daughter could move from pre-K to a fully online kindergarten things got worse. I had made peace with my stress and anxiety, but had retreated into a hermit mode that I had thought long gone. The townhome was suddenly far too small for five people, especially when the kids all celebrated their birthdays and hit growth spurts. I started working from home, but couldn't focus with so many people around and became a grumpy and shouty dad. I started therapy. My wife started drinking more. The kids all have separation anxiety, and I've spent nights with a little kid crying in my bed over not having any friends, or not remembering their teacher's name, or people dying.

We've since reached an equilibrium. There is less shouting, but more acting out. More screen time, but more cuddles. Our kids get whatever food we put in front of them, but we make sure to vary it up even when they just want PB&J or bologna sandwiches. My wife and I are exhausted and stressed and sleep only a few hours a night, but the few hours together after the kids are asleep are too precious to give up. If we were being graded quarterly, I'd be a lot more critical of us but if we went with a year's marks I would give us a B or B-.
posted by gwydapllew at 8:49 AM on March 20, 2021 [6 favorites]

When school stopped we were in line at a store and the guy in front of us indicated he was going to rob the place and I frustrated his ambitions. The kids decided to get serious about martial arts.

Don't forget to explain to them the difference between a Tae Kwon Do green belt, and Batman.
posted by thelonius at 9:02 AM on March 20, 2021 [2 favorites]

I started therapy.

That's been one positive result of all this, for me. Or at least it might be. My family has had ups and downs for a long time, and we've thought about therapy many times over the last few years but never quite made it happen -- a bad time passes, and we make excuses. Ms. Gurple and I don't have any experience with it, and it seems strange and a little scary to us.

With the pandemic, everything's worse, especially for our kid. We need to give anything a try that might help. So, we're finally starting to give it a go. Trying not to expect too much from it, but at least it feels like doing something.
posted by gurple at 9:26 AM on March 20, 2021 [1 favorite]

There was no guidebook for this, you were given little to no additional resources for dealing with it, just getting through it is hard enough.

No map, no guidebook, and no clear statement that the internal performance metrics of the beforetimes are not suitable tools for assessing how you're doing when mostly abandoned by institutions during a goddamned global health emergency. Someone on Twitter commented that holding on to our communal rituals (restaurants, religious services, etc.) for the sake of feeling a sense of normalcy risks contributing to the problem, and it struck me that the same goes for parenting. Forget the ambitious projects and fancy meals and photogenic life markers, and the pressure to Be A Perfect Parent, just. get. through. this. That will be enough.
posted by MonkeyToes at 10:27 AM on March 20, 2021 [5 favorites]