The parenting pandemic in summer is making headlines – especially in our household. And never before has our family resilience and my ability to bounce back from difficult parenting scenarios has been so wildly tested.

My six-year-old daughter has been fortunate to start a local day camp for a few hours a day and the silence during the day is golden. She has the more active energy and she expresses it through art, her dolls, magnatiles, going through my makeup (which I don’t wear anymore) and most recently, my new phone.

But my fifteen-year-old son, more subdued, – his entire world, pre-Covid world has dissolved. He hasn’t met up with a friend since March in a socially distanced way. Instead, he has turned into a strong health and wellness advocate teaching me things I didn’t even know like which superfoods have the most protein.  He’s turned our home into a gym. I’m wondering at this point that maybe I should start charging membership.

Every day I tell him how much I love him. Sometimes three to four times a day. Not just because he’s my son and he’s got a beautiful soul, but because my heart aches for him. I want him to know that love, in the end, will carry him through. Words. One of our secret powers.

Family resilience at its best

For him, there is no sleepaway camp. And there are very few places for him to go so he’s been using my bike to escape from his world which he refers to as “temporary.” Most of his friends have disappeared to other states with their families. We are not risking it by getting on an airplane anytime soon despite my longing for Israel and my 13-year-old struggle with Reverse Culture Shock.

 

I know my love cannot fix any of this. And yet love is my inner GPS during these very tough times. When my son broke down today in tears from a stressful day of doing test after test for an online summer math course, I knew there was more to the equation. He quickly said, he’s not having any fun and I knew that work was causing fierce overwhelm. In the bathroom, he sobbed. He almost never cries. He’s very resilient. I’ll admit firsthand how hard it was to witness his tear but in a way I was grateful for the breakdown. The emotions of that moment opened the door to another way.

We are both bouncing back from adversity 

I too was a resilient proud teenager. But my mother mistook my introvertedness as independence and when I sobbed over school pressure like my son did today, she didn’t quite know what to do with me, referring me to a psychologist. When my son cried today, I saw that lonely teenager whose world has disappeared and I wanted to bridge the gaps in time, sorrow, and pain. I wanted to be there for him in the way that my mother could never do for me. What I do today in my parenting will create a new narrative.

 

So when he cried I sprung into action knowing that the parenting was on me, not a psychologist. (Who would have thought such a thing?) I listened, talked, and listened some more. That’s another component of family resilience and bouncing back from adversity – learning to just listen and not respond. Now, just a few hours after our talk, we’ve devised a plan that will get him out of the house and with friends in a socially distanced way. I think he is slowly processing the loss. And he’s already come up with ideas. I am proud of him for that. Very proud.

Perhaps that is what family resilience during a parenting pandemic really is. Being there for our kids and especially for our teenagers who often pretend that everything in their world is okay by hiding behind their screens.

We can bounce back together – phones will not help this very vulnerable group of kids bounce back. We have to reel from this loss for a very long time. We were not born to live this way. And the best way in, I’m learning is to feel our way through this family resilience together.