Reply to Anyone else lose their groove during Covid with young kids and still not have it back?

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Reply to "Anyone else lose their groove during Covid with young kids and still not have it back?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As a mom of older kids, I'm confused why everyone things the pandemic told them something new. Yes the pandemic sucked but we weren't supported before the pandemic either. [/quote]

Yeah but the pandemic shook up the delicate balance we had to manage. My kids’ preschool closed for a while and then drastically cut hours to put kids in cohorts when they reopened. Then instead of the usual burning through PTO for routine illnesses, we were all hemorrhaging leave for 10 day quarantines often while our kids were perfectly healthy. Or if we were “lucky” told we could catch up on work at night, which isn’t really sustainable. The icing on the cake was the total shutdown of places like playgrounds so we were truly stuck at home going crazy, no play dates, no mom group meetups, etc.

So not only did we not have support, but we also had societal factors coming together to make things even harder. [/quote]

Some of you act like you were uniquely affected by the pandemic. Talk to families with teens and high school teachers…rampant mental health issues amongst that age group. High school and college years derailed.
Or talk to nursing home personnel (I volunteer at one)….the isolation and feelings of abandonment for many elderly, including people approaching death with no access to loved ones was horrible. I get that many of you are not in a good place, but so are other people. Please stop acting as if you were uniquely victimized by the pandemic. Some of you have no fricken clue.[/quote]

Please stop telling people how to feel, or rather how they’re allowed to feel, based on the fact that others may have had it worse. (And you truly have no idea the extent to what ANY posters have gone through.) Please try to have a little empathy.

I think that’s what saddens me the most about covid.  What a missed opportunity for self-reflection and the development of a more [b]functional, loving, supportive society.  [/b]Instead, hypercapitalism has run amok and nobody knows how to function “normally” anymore, because it seems there’s no baseline anymore.  It’s awful.[/quote]

What does this actually mean and look like IRL for your average working parent?   Free daycares?  Relatives babysitting your kids?  Long maternity leaves?

I don’t quite get the “support” everyone is saying that they need.  Raising kids is hard work and I don’t see how support can make it all that easier.  Maternity leave has to eventually end and even a free daycare has its many challenges.

If you want an easier life, be a SAHM but that comes with its own set of challenges.

[/quote]

Did you really just say that you don't understand why people want "support" or how it would make anything easier? WTF?[/quote]

Yes, I did and I notice you didn’t respond to my specific question.

What does this support look like?  My assumption is you want others to provide you with *free labor.*. By others I mean mostly women.  You want the government to provide you childcare, grandparents to babysit, neighbors to pitch in, other employees to pick up your slack at work, etc. 
[/quote]

DP.  No, what I think we need is a return to community.  This could be organized by community centers or by neighborhoods or by organizations.  There are already groups who do this, including schools, local businesses, civic centers, and other groups - but while this used to be a mainstay of American life, it no longer is and people are insular, isolated, and unhappy.

In order to implement this, it requires two things: organizers and organizees - people need to be show up, attend, in order to be part of the group.  We're all very independent-minded but it's hurting us.  We need to become a bit more community-minded.  [/quote]

No one is gonna give you a community. You have to build it. It takes time and effort. You have to give of yourself to receive something back. If you want a community then make one. [/quote]

This is false. Or like a half truth.

You can actually just sort of be handed community. Some people with certain kinds of family have community in their family and it's not something they built, they were born to it. There are similar things with be invited/accepted into certain existing communities, by virtue of where you go to school or where you live or having certain qualities or abilities. You don't have to build those communities, they already exist. But you do have to earn admission, which sometimes is a fair process and sometimes is more about luck.

You can also put effort into building community and have it not happen. Sometimes you just don't have the right personality or skills. You can't build a community on your own if people just aren't drawn to you or you just don't have certain people skills. I've watched people try to do this and it's painful.

Anyway, I think better advice is to seek out community, whether it's an existing community you can join or maybe people in your life who could be gathered together to form community somehow. Or changing your idea of what it looks like -- maybe it's more of a loose coalition of neighbors, maybe it's the parents from school who you'll never be best friends with but who could be a parenting community. But the idea that the only way to have community is to build it yourself from scratch is actually really awful advice, because that is simply not achievable for many people and it's not necessary for others.[/quote]

Point is, they aren't going to knock on your door. And if you can't find one that already exists, you can complain or you can make one. Every existing community has people who decided to make it so. It seems many posters just want to complain and blame covid rather than sorting their own situation. [/quote]

I don't know what makes you think that people who are complaining about lack of community and support here are doing nothing but posting a couple comments on an online message board. I work at building community all the time, which is specifically why I feel frustrated because Covid has absolutely made this harder. Compared to pre-Covid, it's been so hard to form parent communities at our elementary school. I thought last year was going to be the big shift but it's still really hard. And I say that as someone who is on the PTA, organizes events, reaches out to other families, etc. Teachers are burned out and we've lost several due administration turn over out of our control (old principal retired). We still have a large contingent of families at our school who will not attend in person events of any kind, even outdoors, due to Covid. There are still tensions around masking and other issues.

Am I not allowed to vent about that? I'm doing exactly what you suggest (building my own community) but it's honestly not going that well and one reason is Covid. There are other reasons too. Why are you so obsessed with the idea that no one should ever say "X has been harder since Covid, I'm struggling." It's like weird magical thinking.[/quote]

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