CLEVELAND, Ohio – My daughter did a cartwheel in the house.
“Don’t do that,” I said in my mom monotone, just another refrain I toss out a dozen times a day. Like, “Put that away."
She looked at me and did it again, flinging her feet toward TV.
“What is wrong with you?” I wanted to yell. “Why would you do that?” I did yell. Then I made her sit on her hands on the hardwood floor, the go-to punishment of my childhood.
My daughter is 7. And never in her life have I been the cool mom who lets her do cartwheels in the house.
But after nearly three months of the coronavirus, of staying home together 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, everything is a battle these days.
It’s not just my family, either. My mom friends agree; our elementary-age kids are fighting us over brushing their teeth, wearing sunscreen, even wearing underwear.
As the weather turns hot, kids are finishing school and we’re looking at a wide-open summer without baseball games and for many communities, swimming pools. And while we’re excited to ditch homeschooling, policing our kids as they try to sneak on YouTube instead of Google Classroom, we’re not sure how we’ll survive the season.
Related: 10 family fun summer activities amid the coronavirus pandemic
“I think everybody’s a little frazzled,” said Dr. Gina Robinson, a Cleveland Clinic pediatrician.
She blames kids’ misbehavior on anxiety – about the coronavirus and all the changes it’s caused.
Whatever the reason, family tension right now has nowhere to go. And parents may feel pressure to create some kind of storybook summer to make up for activities being canceled. Even if they’re trying to work from home.
Experts urge parents to relax our expectations and allow our kids to get bored.
“Parents are going to get into that trap. If their kid’s saying they’re bored, we feel like we need to tell them something to do, said child psychologist Meghan Barlow, of Meghan Barlow & Associates in Rocky River. “You’re going to keep trying and get frustrated when they shoot those ideas down. You need to get comfortable with less structure.”
If that means allowing your kids more screen time than you’d like, that’s probably OK, Barlow said. But there’s nothing wrong with shooing your kids outside to make up their own game.
Quiet time can be helpful for everyone, too, where you all separate to a corner of the house or yard to regain a little peace and perspective.
“Looking at summer, we don’t know what to expect. We’re anticipating some challenges, I guess I think that’s because none of us really know what this is going to be like,” Barlow said.
Some families have gotten a pool or a puppy. (We got both.) One family Barlow knows got an RV.
Whatever your family decides to do, here are some ideas on how to make your family summer more fun than frustrating.
Keep a bedtime and a morning routine, so you’re not yelling at your kids to stop watching TV and brush their teeth at 11 a.m. Setting a kitchen timer can help, so the kids know how much time they have to complete their tasks.
Or maybe you have a hard rule that there’s no screen time until they’ve read for a half hour. If you’re consistent, the kids won’t whine as much.
“Listing all the things we can do sometimes takes the sting out of what we can’t do,” Robinson said. And making kids part of the process helps them buy in to the activities.
Everyone can write down activities they like and put them in a jar. Then, one by one, pick them out and do them, whether it’s riding bikes to get ice cream or catching lightning bugs in the backyard.
Also talk about your expectations, and revisit how it’s going. That way you have a valve to relieve pressure and resentment.
Set up a treasure hunt, or give them a scavenger hunt list of things to find. Or give them some supplies and a time limit and tell them to build a fort or put on a play. Maybe you pit them against each other in a bake-off.
Whatever the challenge, it will require upfront organization, but will pay off with free time for parents.
Robinson and Barlow encourage chores for kids, to reduce overall chaos and give them a sense of belonging in the household. That means if you buy a pool, your kids should be responsible for cleaning up the pool toys at the end of the day.
Don’t demand kids do their jobs on your schedule. Instead, give them a calendar or a time frame. Stress that you’ll have more time to do fun activities if you’re not doing all the housework.
“However you can help a kid see how their behavior impacts them and the whole family, that’s how you can get them engaged,” Barlow said.
If you pay your kids for chores, they could bid on them in a chore auction. If you don’t, you could let them know that if they keep up their responsibilities, you’ll keep freezer stocked with Popsicles.
My kids can get along until they don’t. then someone screams or hits or both. That’s normal, Barlow said.
“I usually say, ‘Oh yeah, I guess that does sound like a problem, I’m sure you have the skills to figure that out,’” she said
That’s an empowering statement that treats your kids as a team, as opposed to the “I don’t care” I’ve told my children more than once.
Maybe you’re OK with outdoor, socially distant playdates. Or bike riding. Or maybe you’re not. Just make sure kids who are missing their friends have time and space to talk to them, whether that’s in person or on a screen.
We’d all like someone to talk to outside our family.
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June 01, 2020 at 05:12PM
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How to keep your cool during a coronavirus summer with kids - cleveland.com
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