July 2020 – Happy Parent UK

My narrow cottage garden has a low fence separating itself from our neighbours’ gardens on either side. When we first moved into this house, the garden was in dire straits. Heavily pregnant, I opted to pay a gardener to help sort it, including levelling it and laying new grass. It looked almost artificial in its perfection – a plain, even ground. It was almost too bare, too plain, without any other planting, but it made the garden serviceable for my then-four-year-old to play safely.

Fast-forward two years and we have grapevines spilling over from the garden to the right of us, and no less than three tree saplings have started growing (an ash, a bay, and a cherry). These grew through the root systems of my neighbours’ trees to the left of us. Reaching under and over the fence, the trees have continued to reproduce.

In this instance, I’m thrilled, as I love trees and they are flourishing, making the once tidy-but-bare garden lush. But it got me thinking about the highs and lows of our interconnectedness.

Of course, there is no more glaring example of this than the current coronavirus pandemic. Emotions understandably are running high, as my choices affect my community, and their choices affect me. To wear or not to wear a mask. To observe social distancing or not. To quarantine or shrug it off.

It is why countries are starting to penalise those for breaking quarantine and fines in some cities around the world for failing to follow mandates for face coverings. Our very independence of choice is threatened, because one person’s choice to enter a shop without wearing a mask impacts the choice of the person working in that shop to limit exposure to a potentially fatal novel virus. What the families of the children in my son’s class at school do impacts us, as he will be in a ‘bubble’ with them come September.

So what can we do when the actions of others effects us, and yet our control over those actions is limited or non-existent?

Clarify the circles of control

This has been helpful to me in so many ways on so many occasions. Author Stephen Covey popularised this idea which, like the best ideas, is simple yet profound.

Imagine three concentric circles. Innermost is the circle of control – the things you can control directly – what you eat, whether you choose to wear a mask, what you put in your garden.

Outside that is another circle of influence – what your partner eats, promoting mask-wearing amongst your social circles, asking your neighbour if they can trim the vines that are starting to encroach your garden. You don’t have total control, but there are some steps you could take that may influence the outcomes.

And beyond that is the circle of concern – what foods are available in the grocery store, the global spread of coronavirus, climate change. You can’t really control it.

The trick with this is two-fold: first, clarifying what goes where in and of itself is helpful to understanding how you feel about it. For example, I realised how much was outside of my control at the start of lockdown. That wasn’t comforting, per se, but it was helpful to understanding why I felt so emotional and anxious.

The second is looking at how you can expand the inner two circles. What can I do that takes something outside my control and puts it within my circle of control? How can I build upon my agency?

This can be seen in lots of quite popular ways, such as baking or organising cupboards or taking on a DIY project around the house. You get the dopamine hit of reward for accomplishing something, and you are filling your brain’s attention with something you can control. Coronavirus may be raging outside but my kitchen cupboards are ordered and under my total control.

Then looking at circle of influence, there may be things in my circle of concern that I could influence in some small way. Petitions, letter-writing campaigns, donating to charity are all popular ways of making some influence, even if the wider systems and issues are beyond our control.

There will always be things in that outermost circle. That’s life. It’s like the old serenity prayer – “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.”

This tool helps us gain the wisdom to know what goes where, so we can spend our energies where we can make a difference.

If you, like me, have been struggling with some of the many decisions and opinions that coronavirus is throwing at us, then this post is for you.

As parents, we are having to make all sorts of decisions. And there are so many deeply polarised opinions, many of which can trigger quite strong reactions in all of us.

The school question in itself has created a lot of turmoil for me, not least because there are so many different viewpoints amongst my circles. And frankly, some of these viewpoints are expressed strongly and in absolutes. There is literally no opinion I can have, it seems, that won’t rub someone the wrong way.

This in itself is not new. As parents, we can easily feel judged about everything. It feels a long time ago when I learned I needed to just connect to my gut, listen to the evidence and ultimately decide for myself and my kid. It’s simple, but not always easy.

But the pandemic has forced us to appreciate how much our individual choice impacts the wider community. My choice to wear a mask (or not) impacts you, either directly (I could get you sick) or indirectly (the more people refusing to wear masks could increase the spread of the virus and prolong the situation).

This struggle between personal choice and collective responsibility is also happening amid a widening awareness about privilege.

My view on reopening schools or easing lockdown is of course influenced by my own privilege. That I have a job I can do from home makes me lean more towards slower easing of lockdowns. That I have found a way to work effectively whilst keeping my kids at home will allow me the privilege to feel differently about schools reopening than perhaps a parent who is finding that more difficult for any number of entirely valid reasons.

Conversely, another white middle-class person’s insistence that schools reopen because they are struggling to work from home with their kids at home is speaking from the privilege of having healthcare and being lower risk, whereas someone from the Global Black Majority may feel differently after seeing the higher rates of mortality amongst her ethnic group.

Each of these people could very easily label the other as selfish. In a way, they’d be right. One person’s opinion to keep schools closed and lockdown measures in place could seriously harm a person unable to earn money if my views were enacted. Another person could harm someone at risk if their choice of reopening the local school led to illness or death.

How do we reconcile the challenges and different forms of privilege we’re seeing to the very real need to come together as a global community to get through this pandemic with as little heartache and harm as possible?

Step 1: Own our challenges honestly and without shame

Just like with parenting in normal time, people will have different specific challenges. It’s like when one of the mums in the mum-and-baby group had her baby sleeping through the night and another is running on caffeine and fumes after being up all night, every night, for months. But that exhausted mother has been able to breastfeed without issue whereas another mother battled tongue tie and poor latch until deciding to bottlefeed formula (which she still feels sensitive about).

And that’s okay. They are all okay. It doesn’t mean any of them are doing anything wrong because they’re struggling where another one wasn’t.

We will each have different struggles through this, and it helps to be able to understand our own challenges without feeling ashamed. If I don’t admit my struggles to myself, and can’t see them as valid struggles without internalising them as a personal failing, then I cannot see how they are shaping my world view.

Step 2: Own your own privilege

Just as we can own our challenges, we can reflect upon and name our privileges.

And as with our challenges, owning our privilege or helpful circumstances isn’t about shame or apologising. It’s just seeing it for what it is.

And just as our challenges can shape our worldview and political opinions, so can our privilege, especially when left unexamined. I could favour policy decisions that could really harm someone else in another situation, but not see it.

Step 3: Listen and appreciate others’ struggles

This is only possible when we can understand and own our own struggles and privileges without defensiveness.

As we understand the challenges that others are having, even if they do not resonate with our own lived experiences, we can start to understand why there are so many different views on contentious issues.

Step 4: Reflect, discern, decide, and act

Ultimately, we will not all agree on any course of action. Of course we won’t. This doesn’t mean we cannot and should not act on our convictions. But by going through steps 1-3 above, we do so without blindly being swayed by our own personal circumstances. We do so with eyes open to the challenges we are all facing.

This also means we can try to find holistic solutions. If there’s a negative externality to what I have decided is the best way forward on an issue, then we can start to talk about how to address that. Yes, it’s a bit like finding a medicine to treat the side effect of the cure, but we need to be able to talk about solutions without believing in a magic cure that has no downsides for anyone. But if we can honestly strive to understand the full lay of the land, we’re in a much better position to be able to problem solve creatively and innovatively.

Before I go…

I admit that the reason for writing this post is that I needed to read it. I have not always been doing the above. Far from it. We will still feel angry and triggered by people for refusing to wear a face mask in Costco or for someone saying your selfish or politicising an issue for having a different opinion to them.

But it’s also so freeing to be able to name and own our own challenges and privileges.

The other part of the above steps where I know I’ve personally not followed my own advice recently is the step of reflection and discernment. Partly it’s because there has been very little time and headspace.

A large part of this though has been that a lot of the conversations on this topic I’ve been having have been on social media, which is not built for discernment. I read a post or comment, I feel an emotional response (often anger or vindication), and I reply immediately before scrolling on. And repeat. Many times over.

So I personally will be going back to limiting my social media usage and making sure to have more time to reflect and discern, to read without replying. Only through following these steps do I feel I can act with conviction – whether that’s to campaign for schools to remain closed, or to decide whether it’s safe/responsible for me to take my family on a staycation, or to find my way forward to promote racial equity.

Journal prompts

Here are some prompts to journal or reflect upon that I’ve found helpful to explore my own challenges and privileges.

What has been hard for me lately includes…

I’ve surprised myself in finding ways to cope / finding some things easier, such as….

What circumstances in my life have helped me?

In what ways do I feel ‘lucky’?

In what ways do I feel ‘unlucky’?

Month: July 2020

Control in an uncontrollable world