Remote school is stressing parents out. Here’s how to tame the anxiety.
Witnessing and reliving
The tone or style of a teacher’s approach to correcting students can be stressful for parents to overhear, says Regine Galanti, a psychologist and the author of “Anxiety Relief for Teens.” One of her children’s teachers “would randomly call on someone in Zoom and expect them to know the answer, and if they didn’t know the answer, she wouldn’t repeat the question,” says Galanti, who overheard this as she was working nearby. “As a therapist, my response was: Don’t you realize this was not an appropriate way to talk to children?”
Galanti says that “thankfully,” most of what she has overheard in remote school has been “supportive, encouraging teaching. … But that one experience was eye-opening.”
Witnessing our kids’ experiences can be jarring for a parent, and that can make it more difficult to be patient and supportive with our children.
“We’re a fly on the wall in a room we were never meant to be in,” said Robyn Silverman, a child-development specialist and host of the “How to Talk to Kids About Anything Parenting Podcast.” When parents overhear a teacher calling on their child when they are unprepared, or when they overhear a negative social interaction with a classmate, “you can’t help but put yourself right back there” to your own school days, said Silverman, who has a son in fifth grade and a daughter in sixth grade who are learning at home.
Hearing a teacher call your child out for not paying attention might make you feel doubly shamed — on behalf of your kid and yourself. When your child isn’t prepared, you may feel as if you are in trouble. That is true even if the teacher is trying to be helpful.
Being the grown-up our kids need
“As much as possible, we need to separate our kid’s experience from our own,” says Tina Payne Bryson, a psychotherapist and co-author of “The Power of Showing Up.” If you find yourself flooded with emotion, or your heart races when you see emails from your kid’s teacher, you can try to center yourself and separate your experience from your child’s, Bryson says.
But parents need to be aware when their own school experiences taint how they react to their children’s.
“With an explicit memory, we know consciously that there is an association,” Bryson says. So a mother who was shy as a child might be especially frustrated listening to her daughter quietly raise her hand on Zoom and repeatedly not get called on. Parents might make the connection, then understand that their own experience is contributing to frustration. Implicit memory, Bryson says, is trickier. That’s where “we get triggered, but we’re not aware that’s what’s happening.”
According to Bryson, expressing curiosity about children’s experiences can foster a strong connection with them, while keeping your memories and emotions from taking over. Then, we can ask: “Do you have any ideas about how to make that not feel so bad to you?” This helps them to be more resilient and empowered.
Bryson has other methods for parents who feel anxiety when overhearing classroom interactions. One centering technique she likes is: “Name it to tame it.” Try to accurately name what your child is experiencing, which can soothe the anxiety. For instance, she says, parents can say to their children: “I noticed today that you were wanting to be called on, and you weren’t. What’s that like for you?”
Once that is in the open, a child and parent can discuss the situation (even if it’s just for a moment), which can help tame the concern.
She also suggests that parents work in another room or get headphones for their children: “Ideally, if a parent is getting activated, it may be better for that parent to not be so intimately involved.”
And, she cautions, don’t email the teacher or talk to your child while you’re feeling reactive or stirred up.
Resist identifying with failure
While witnessing children flounder, parents may bristle at any sound of frustration in a teacher’s voice and wonder: “Is my child in the hot seat?” Intellectually, we know the teacher may just be exhausted from the overwhelming demands of remote school, but we still may have a powerful response.
Galanti described seeing parents identify with the difficulties so many students are experiencing right now. Some parents have taken the remote-school situation head on and act as an assistant to the teacher, setting up schedules and goals, and feel good about being on top of it all, Galanti says.
But other parents “may feel defeated by remote school and think, ‘I’m not going to do well at this. Now, I’m on my child’s team of not doing well at high school. Again,’ ” Galanti says. This cycle of defensiveness and shame can make it harder to parent in that moment.
Galanti suggests we all recognize that remote school is putting an “impossible burden” on parents and that self-compassion is needed.
Navigating the barrage of email and updates
Feeling chided by all the communications coming from schools can increase caregivers’ stress. School leaders and teachers are trying to keep parents in the loop. But when we see a note from school in our inbox, many parents tense up.
Leigh Honeywell, chief executive of Tall Poppy, which helps companies protect their staff members from online harassment, offers a few tips on navigating all the updates amid the intensity of working and pandemic parenting.
Honeywell says if the barrage of texts or email is upsetting or undermining your focus, “you can make a special account for school communication and send it all there.”
“Alternatively,” Honeywell says, “can you segment your current inbox to send those notifications to a specific folder?”
Finally, Honeywell suggests outsourcing the first read to a trusted co-parent or friend and having them share with you only on a need-to-know basis. “Even trading off each week with a co-parent could reduce stress,” Honeywell says.
Just acknowledging the emotional labor and time that goes into navigating remote school is an important step. In my community, sharing the ups and downs of remote school with friends who are also living the experience has been a validating and crucial reinforcement for getting through this time.
Bryson reminds parents that kids are not supposed to be so constantly “under a parental microscope,” and, ultimately, “we shouldn’t be watching it all.”
For better or worse, remote school is bringing our children’s classroom experience home. We want to use this window to inform us and support our kids, but we also need compassion for ourselves and support from others to stay grounded — so we can be the supportive adult our kids need right now.
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/02/08/parent-stress-pandemic-distance-learning/?wpisrc=nl_sb_smartbrief
