Category Archives: Politics

Parenting Stress

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How do you relieve stress?

The stress that goes along with parenting has definitely tapered off as my kids have grown — not because there isn’t stress, but because there is less to stress about specifically regarding them — do I worry? Yes. Do I wonder if I taught them everything I should have? Yes. But it’s not something I stress about. The are old enough to take care of themselves (which was a bigger stressor for me when they were younger), and any stress I feel now tends to be tied to not being in a position to help them, or concerns with their mental state when I know they’ve been hurt (relationship issues for example). Letting them know I’m there for them and hearing from them quells my stress.

The state of the world, and the state of America, causes me way more stress than my kids do. That’s saying something. It can feel overwhelming at times. My youngest has shared his stress, fear, and depression over what he hears and see in the news, and yes, I encourage him to disconnect, but world history and politics are passions for him. While he logically understands the benefit of tuning out, his interest to know what’s going on usually wins out. And so, there is stress. Again, I make myself available to him to talk. I try to remind him that things will be okay (even if I’m not sure they will). As long as he’s willing to talk about his concerns, it lets me know he’s okay. We have offered sessions with a therapist if it would help (and he’s done therapy before — we all have in my family), but for now says he’s okay.

Stress is hard. Adding parenting to the mix can take stress to another level. We have to be kind to ourselves and find ways to relieve stress in an extraordinarily stressful time.

How do you relieve stress? How do you help your child relieve their’s?

Scare after Scare

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What scares you? What scares your child?

My kids are well past the ages of monsters under the bed or the house creaking during the night scaring them. What scares them is age appropriate — an upcoming test, if someone will return their interest or affection, and some is the same as mine — seeing what’s going on with our politics 😞

My youngest is typically happy-go-lucky. Not that he’s happy all the time, but mostly you’ll see him with a sunny disposition (particularly appreciated in the often overcast climate we live in). My son has taken a keen interest in politics in recent years, and we’ve had many discussions post-election on how to not get too overwhelmed with everything that will come. Easier said than done, right? We’ve tried to encourage picking our battles. It can be tough when so many people are hurting from unexpected job loss, financial struggles or insecurity, food prices going up, the economy unstable, healthcare bring impacted, the environment being jeopardized, immigrants fearing deportation, and on and on.

As a parent, I feel like my job is to try to rise above it (e.g., not let my emotions allow me to fully say everything I think and feel to my child and add to their worry or angst), but to listen, empathize, and remind them we’ll get through this. It’s tough when you, yourself, have no clue how you’re going to get thru it because you don’t know exactly when the madness will end and how bad it’ll get beforehand.

My youngest texted his father and I while he was at school to let us know he wasn’t having a good mental health day. He does not normally talk in these terms, so we knew something had to have happened to cause him to text us this. It turned out he’d heard that a law was going to be overturned by the Supreme Court which upset him. After my husband and I had an exchange with him. We all determined there was no case before the court and nothing to indicate the law would change. It was a relief, but still made me sad that my teen had anxiety because of those that seem more interested in power and money, than what’s best for all, and an internet algorithm putting the misleading news article at the top of my son’s feed.

I believe many of us parents are struggling during this time. We want to model good behavior, teach our kids what’s right and wrong, and hard to counter this when our leaders appear to be acting badly with little we can do.

I told my son, there will be moments where we’re going to need to make our voices heard, but reminded him he is not alone, we are here for him —whether he just needs an ear to listen and empathize or if we need to march in a protest or something else. That’s where I can help my son.

How do you support your child when they are anxious?

Make It Count

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How aware is your child about the upcoming election?

We all want it over and behind us, right? My boys have been aware of politics and world happenings at a much younger than I was. I found politics boring growing up and didn’t feel a need to pay attention to it until I could vote.

We listened to an interesting story on the radio where a sixteen year old made the case for young people should be allowed to vote. While that might seem absurd to some, his argument was compelling, particularly when he raised the issue of working and paying taxes, but having no say in where his tax dollars were spent.

Our youth are more aware and engaged in politics and the obvious things that need to be addressed in our country — healthcare for all, equality, climate change, and so much more. They don’t have a vote, so they look to us, their parents, caregivers, family, and friends to do what they can’t … vote. They’re counting on us.

Please vote.

Exhausted

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Does your child ever struggle with sleep?

My youngest became a good sleeper after we put him in the same bedroom with his older brother at the age of one. He has been our power sleeper for many years. We’ve often joke at how he can sleep through anything — high winds (he slept through it), rain coming into our tent (he slept thorough it), and the list goes on.

Lately our son has been having trouble sleeping — either having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. We’ve talked about ways to help – no food or water near bedtime, no screen time leading up to bed, and nothing seems to help. He’s not overly worried about it, but you can tell it’s bothering him. He rather liked thinking of himself as a power sleeper.

He was asked to watch the Presidential Debate for school so his class could discuss our political process the following day. Thank goodness he was only required to watch 30 minutes. He and I agreed, every minute of it was painful. It was only a few nights after that he shared he’d woken in the middle of the night and for whatever reason he was feeling anxious and scared. When I asked him if he knew what caused him to feel this way he couldn’t point to anything in particular. The way he described it it sounded like generalized anxiety. Like many these days there is much to worry about — COVID-19, equal justice, climate change, the economy, and politics. It’s enough to make anyone lose sleep.

As a family, we agreed that since the kids can remote school from anywhere we might as well take advantage of it. Because we’re all exhausted we need to take the opportunity for change in scenery. We need to find joy in the new, and gratitude for all the things we have. We’re hoping we’ll even get some good sleep. That would be amazing.

How does your child sleep? How do you help them when they struggle to get a good night’s rest?

I’ll be away for the next few weeks spending time with family and will be back in November.

Shutdown & Adults Behaving Badly

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How were you or your family affected by the government shutdown?

I think we all were. Whether we were directly impacted — having a government job that ceased to pay, or indirectly — those that rely on the services of those government workers that were no longer getting paid, and for what?

There was a range of emotions our family went through as the shutdown extended — anger (this is ridiculous, people are hurting), disbelief (I can’t believe American workers are being made to suffer over a non-crisis), and empathy (what can we do to help those who are hurting because of this?).

As a parent, the greatest threat to undermining our teachings of morals, values and beliefs to our kids (which is a key part of parenting) is adults behaving badly. And what we’ve seen during this shutdown is adults do just that and in the worst way — digging in and abusing their power for their own gain (saving face, pride or an insatiable desire to win at literally any cost). It is sickening to me when I see other adults do this (no less on such a grand scale) and hard to explain to my kids.

“Why are they doing this? Don’t they know they’re really hurting good people?” One son asked. “That’s a great question,” I replied, “Sometimes people make threats to get others to do something they want. People are fighting against the threat, but the way those that shut the government down are fighting — by not paying people — is actually making our country more vulnerable. As a citizen it’s really frustrating to see what’s happened. Even though mom and dad travel for work, I wish the TSA workers would have stopped showing up right from the beginning. I wouldn’t have liked being stuck in another city, but at least the shutdown would have ended sooner and the tactic the leadership was hoping to use to get their way wouldn’t have worked sooner.”

Yes, I probably over explained but I wanted my sons to better understand the situation.

They seemed to understand what I was saying, but I know that it’s doesn’t help my cause as a parent — every time an adult behaves badly, it tells a child that an ideal we ask of our children to strive for, from a behavioral standpoint, is to be questioned. Why do I need to behave when those much older than I who should be setting the example, and are our supposed leaders no less, do not? And so now my sons have a truer sense for how the real world works. Sad.

How are you helping your child understand the shutdown? How do you help them understand a situation better when they see adults behaving badly?

Silence = Acceptance

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I was recently flipping through the December issue of O Magazine when I came across an article capturing Oprah interviewing a Sandy Hook family that had lost a child. At first, I was uneasy reading the article. I have cried many times thinking about what occurred and what difficulty the families left behind have gone through. The article made the feelings fresh again.

Not long after the Sandy Hook shootings occurred, I was part of an audience that was encouraged not to be the silent majority any more, but to speak out to our government and school leaders and have our voices be heard in regards to violence and gun safety. I believe most of us in this country agree that there are measures we can and should take to make school environments safer and provide more assistance to those suffering from mental illness. I certainly don’t have the answers, but I cannot allow myself to do nothing. Silence = Acceptance. And while there is a part of me that is still working on gaining my confidence in finding my voice, I have great motivation to do so…my children. I certainly don’t want them asking me later in life, “Why didn’t you take a stand?” or “Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you try?” If I expect my children to find their voice and make a difference in the world, working with others to solve big problems, it starts with me as their parent.

While I would prefer a gun-free world, I know that’s not possible, and see no benefit in trying to pursue that as an avenue to solve this issue. Guns exist and will continue to do so. I am suggesting that we, as parents and as a country, have an opportunity to discuss these really important issues that we are not talking about because we are divided and or fear there is no middle ground. To me, gun safety isn’t an us versus them discussion. We collectively have to figure out how to address this issue.

The Sandy Hook families are not slipping into silence. In fact, they are leading the way in how we solve this problem together by forming a community around the discussion The Sandy Hook Promise: Parent Together to Prevent Gun Violence in Our Communities. It’s simple to join the community and be part of the conversation. Participate and let your voice be heard. Let’s figure out how we solve this problem together.

Silence = Acceptance. I won’t accept silence anymore.

How are you making your voice heard? How do you take action when it may be uncomfortable or not easy to do?

A House Divided, a House United

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Raise your hand if you are glad the election is over?

Both my arms would be raised if asked this question. There were a lot of stressful events to watch, read and hear about in recent weeks—the election getting to a fever pitch — what will happen if Romney wins, what will happen if Obama gets re-elected, followed by Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath, followed by the actual election and a country divided.  Doesn’t feel very good, right?

A reprieve from this negativity came in the form of reality came from my niece and son. My niece who was four in 2008 said that she would have voted for John McCain in our last election. When asked why, she simply replied, “Because his hair looks like grandpa’s!”  And she was right it did look like Grandpa’s.  My oldest son said to my husband and I one day in recent weeks, “I would vote for Romney!”  When asked why, he said, “Because I like his hair!”  Wow, I thought, hair has a lot more influence for a kid than I would have expected, and boy I’m glad the voting age is 18! 

Mo Rocco did a recent piece for CBS Sunday Morning where he walks a classroom of kids through the election, electoral process, and the complexity that can arise when the popular vote and electoral votes don’t match. The outcome of the mock election—what is better: colored pencils or markers—didn’t seem very fair to the children participating in the segment. The popular vote in the classroom had been for colored pencils, but markers won the electoral vote. The kids were divided. One side elated, the other felt like it was unfair. It would resonate with anyone who suffered through the 2000 election.

When the election was over and my anxiety succumbed to relief, I took a deep breath. I knew the outcome. It was over. Knowing I could now move on and not have to stress about “what-ifs” made me happy.  The last two years leading up to this felt like a rivalry football game–it felt like one team was winning handily, but being told constantly that the other team was closer to winning than you might think. And instead of “the game” lasting four quarters it felt like 100, maybe 1,000…basically it felt like an entirety, a roller coaster ride that I was glad had ended.

The innocence of a child’s thinking–like my niece and my son’s–can be easily lost in such decisive times. I wish it wasn’t that way. Elections are about winning and losing. It’s a competition played in the dirtiest of ways—half-truths, innuendo and exaggeration. Like the children in the mock election, some of us are elated with the results while others are heartbroken. While we may feel like a country divided I think we can all agree on this—there is much to still fix in our country, and the way we run political campaigns is very, very disappointing.

While I don’t have hope around how our politicians campaign and get elected to office, I do have hope for our country finding more common ground and working together to address our issues.

In my house we can all agree on that.