It’s helpful to remember that in times of chaos, the dogged search for certainty can itself lead to distress. Dr. Pearson pointed out that the goal is not to guarantee that your child will never be exposed to a virus particle. That is impossible. The goal is to make a realistic plan that will holistically keep teachers, families and children as safe as possible.
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Distinguish between productive and unproductive worries
Spending time considering how you will navigate the logistics of blended learning come fall is productive if you are engaged in problem solving and making concrete decisions. Ruminating about the social distancing precautions each family in your kid’s school is taking is less productive, for you don’t have any control there. Especially in times of uncertainty, it’s seductive to believe that if you worry about something for long enough, you can affect the outcome, but this is a fallacy.
Stop fighting with your feelings
Many of my patients are coming to me asking how they can get rid of that nagging feeling that they aren’t make the right choice for their kids. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but that’s not how feelings work. You can’t just turn them off.
To be a parent during a pandemic is to be worried and uncomfortable. But the good news is that it’s not the worry itself that’s the problem, it’s what you do with it. When those unproductive worries or overwhelming feelings arise, do you let them drag you down into doomscrolling or reassurance seeking? If you fall into these habits, practice getting space by doing daily exercises to create psychological distance.
One strategy for distancing is called defusion. The goal is to avoid being “hooked” by any one thought or feeling, and instead to view yourself as an observer of your mind. You can imagine that your thoughts are like leaves, floating down a stream, or like plates of sushi, moving along a conveyor belt. When your mind starts moving into the slippery slope of unproductive worries, try naming them: “There goes my mind again.” This highlights the difference between “having a thought” and “buying a thought.” When unproductive worries strike, you don’t have to go down that rabbit hole of trying to disprove them or reassure yourself, you can just let them be. It’s not bad feelings or thoughts that are the problem. It’s what we do with them that causes more suffering.
Cultivate compassion
Instead of spending time chasing certainty and second-guessing your decisions, work on being self-compassionate; nurture a sense of good will toward yourself for facing this hard decision. Monitoring your self-talk is a key component of self-compassion. Are you holding yourself to an impossible standard by trying to predict the future? Are you blaming yourself for a situation that is completely out of your control? Let go of self-judgment and try developing some positive self-talk, such as: “I’m making the best choice for my family with the information I have” or “this decision works for us and our level of risk tolerance.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Updated July 27, 2020
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Should I refinance my mortgage?
- It could be a good idea, because mortgage rates have never been lower. Refinancing requests have pushed mortgage applications to some of the highest levels since 2008, so be prepared to get in line. But defaults are also up, so if you’re thinking about buying a home, be aware that some lenders have tightened their standards.
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What is school going to look like in September?
- It is unlikely that many schools will return to a normal schedule this fall, requiring the grind of online learning, makeshift child care and stunted workdays to continue. California’s two largest public school districts — Los Angeles and San Diego — said on July 13, that instruction will be remote-only in the fall, citing concerns that surging coronavirus infections in their areas pose too dire a risk for students and teachers. Together, the two districts enroll some 825,000 students. They are the largest in the country so far to abandon plans for even a partial physical return to classrooms when they reopen in August. For other districts, the solution won’t be an all-or-nothing approach. Many systems, including the nation’s largest, New York City, are devising hybrid plans that involve spending some days in classrooms and other days online. There’s no national policy on this yet, so check with your municipal school system regularly to see what is happening in your community.
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- The coronavirus can stay aloft for hours in tiny droplets in stagnant air, infecting people as they inhale, mounting scientific evidence suggests. This risk is highest in crowded indoor spaces with poor ventilation, and may help explain super-spreading events reported in meatpacking plants, churches and restaurants. It’s unclear how often the virus is spread via these tiny droplets, or aerosols, compared with larger droplets that are expelled when a sick person coughs or sneezes, or transmitted through contact with contaminated surfaces, said Linsey Marr, an aerosol expert at Virginia Tech. Aerosols are released even when a person without symptoms exhales, talks or sings, according to Dr. Marr and more than 200 other experts, who have outlined the evidence in an open letter to the World Health Organization.
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Does asymptomatic transmission of Covid-19 happen?
- So far, the evidence seems to show it does. A widely cited paper published in April suggests that people are most infectious about two days before the onset of coronavirus symptoms and estimated that 44 percent of new infections were a result of transmission from people who were not yet showing symptoms. Recently, a top expert at the World Health Organization stated that transmission of the coronavirus by people who did not have symptoms was “very rare,” but she later walked back that statement.
Pay attention to grief
For some parents, their grief and guilt around a lost school year has morphed into obsessive researching or catastrophizing. It can be less confronting to rage over the prospect of more home-schooling than to let yourself feel the sadness of your child not getting to have a full kindergarten experience. Recently, one of my patients broke down crying because she wouldn’t be able to see her son’s pre-K classroom, and that he wasn’t allowed to decorate his cubby. We realized that her grief was masquerading as anxiety, and once she let herself feel that sadness she felt some relief.