The Fangs Come Out

My kids are lovely people but, as of late, they turn into monsters at the drop of a hat. One second they’re hugging and laughing, Norman Rockwell style, and all of a sudden the F-A-N-Gs come out. 

My husband and I are sometimes targets of their wrath, but more often these days they turn on each other. Here are a few of the inane things they argued about within the last 24 hours:

• Was one sticking his tongue out under his mask?
• Who’s taller? (it’s not even close)
• Who dropped the noodle on the floor and has to pick it up?
• Whose gets “the good seat” during the movie? (I rue the day I called it this because I haven’t gotten it since)

These are just a few examples to give the gist that these are spats-- super petty and thankfully short-lived...but they bring tears, and ramp up the volume in a house that’s already filled with really loud people (all of us!). I know I’m not the only one dealing with this, nor am I the first or millionth to write about parent burnout as ambient love turns to war at any particular moment. I’m in good company and overall have it really good.

Given that we’re in the middle of a global pandemic, there are so many obvious and reasonable explanations for the attitude uptick. Namely, the kids:

• are in the house...so, so, so much of the time.
• are each other’s only non-adult company that doesn’t require wifi.
• are confused and mad about what’s going on, so take it out on each other.
• are afraid, and don’t know how to talk about it.
• don’t know how long this will be “the new normal.”

So yeah, it all makes sense, but it doesn’t make it easier that we, as their parents, are dealing with these same circumstances. To deal with it (or attempt to), we’ve had to revert to the “Chill the F*** Out” strategies that had been fading out of our repertoire for quite a while-- count backward from 10; take a time out; bore them with talking it out until they forget to be upset. Here are some more carefully-described approaches to incorporating social-emotional learning into our days.

I hold out hope that our kids’ fangs will recede as soon as normalcy returns to our lives (which can’t be soon enough). But it does make me wonder what school reentry will look like for kids more broadly, and what sorts of supports might be needed. Will schools’ efforts to address the inevitable academic setbacks (the COVID-19 Slide) overshadow efforts to address kids’ inevitable social-emotional slides? Given that learning and social-emotional health are so intertwined, a smart approach (not to mention an empathetic and long-term thinking approach) will be to put both issues on equal footing...but as someone who’s been immersed in the education world for a long time, I know that this dual emphasis requires a whole lot of funding, and evidence-based programs, and trained staff, and rubrics to know that such investments are worthwhile in the short- and long-term.

Issues like this keep me up at night, for sure. During the day, my husband and I are doing all we can to keep the kids sane and stay sane ourselves. When the daily spats arise, I try to remember that “this too shall pass,” and that before long our kids will be cracking their usual jokes and rooting for each other again...and that noodle on the floor will make it to the garbage one way or another!