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What’s a parent to do during a pandemic? Give up.

(Eugene & Louise for The Washington Post)
By

Lenore Skenazy is president of the nonprofit Let Grow and author of “Free-Range Kids: How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry).”

“How do you not helicopter parent in this environment? Ideas????”

This email from a friend said it all. With so many schools closed, playgrounds off-limits and parents working at home — or wishing they were working — we really are in four-question-mark territory these days. We’re living through a global pandemic. What is a parent to do?

Here’s a thought: Give up!!!!

Yes, even smushed together with the kids 24/7, there is simply no way a parent can be hovering, helping or doing that “High five, little buddy!” thing all day long. And the good news is: Children don’t need it.

The idea that parents have to enrich every second of their kids’ lives was a crazy lie even before the coronavirus. Kids never needed all that parental stimulation and all those teachable moments. You know how Einstein spent much of his time as a kid?

He made houses of cards.

Just imagine young Albert, the little loser, balancing cards and learning absolutely nothing. Except … well … patience … and concentration … and physics.

The point being not that you should run out and get your offspring a deck of cards so they can win the Nobel Prize before school starts up again. (Don’t run out for anything!) The point being that kids have always been bored, and they’ve always come up with things that seem like a total waste of time to adults — I’m looking at you, slime! — but maybe aren’t.

Many are the parents right now who are worried their kids are turning into “Call of Duty” fanatics. Okay, perhaps I am worried one of my sons is turning into a “Call of Duty” fanatic now that his college classes have switched to pass/fail. But is that terrible? Nothing is interesting to kids — or any of us — if it’s not at least a little challenging. So even if a kid is working on his “kill/death ratio” (sigh), he is learning focus, frustration tolerance and how to make alliances. Those are transferable skills — not wasted hours. Video games are absorbing because they turn kids on, not off.

So don’t worry about those.

Don’t worry, either, if a child seems to be slacking off in the homework department. Think back on how much you loved summer vacation. Wasn’t it a huge relief to finally not worry about grades and tests?

Before covid-19, childhood anxiety levels were going through the roof. In a 2018 Pew Research Center survey, 70 percent of teens said anxiety and depression were “major problems among their peers.”

Now children have, basically, a long, strange, twisted vacation. Yes, for many, school is continuing, but it’s not taking the same number of hours, and all their after-school activities are off, too. This opens up a vast swath of free time that many children and teens have never had before. It can turn into a period of growth — mentally and emotionally.

Though not every youngster will become an Einstein while quarantining, many seem to be turning into the kids they would have been if they’d grown up a generation or two earlier, with more time to discover their real interests and hobbies (remember those days?), before childhood got so structured and busy.

So, don’t worry that everyone else’s children are making fabulous “Les Misérables” parodies while yours is hitting his brother with the webcam. You can shower your child with construction paper and glue sticks, but if she hates arts and crafts, she probably won’t emerge from quarantine an artistic genius. (Just like I stocked up on lentils. Why? I am not suddenly a vegan. I should have stocked up on chicken thighs.)

What I mean is: It’s all okay. Our kids are not going to seed even if they are sleeping, gaming and bingeing on YouTube. In fact, they’re growing, simply because kids are always growing and learning from everything — houses of cards, Nerf guns, Barbies, baths, videos, but most of all from that vital resource more rare and precious than toilet paper: free time.

My advice for would-be coronavirus helicopters? Think of the quarantine as an AP class in chilling. You can help your kids ace it by stepping back.

Read more:

Michael J. Petrilli: Schools should consider keeping kids in the same grade this fall

David Von Drehle: This is the way sickness has shrunk my world

David Platt: These days I preach to an empty room. But I see my church clearer than ever.

’10 days later, he was gone:’ Readers share their personal stories about covid-19

‘We need help to make it’: As the coronavirus spreads, readers face layoffs and isolation

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