Recently, my 6-year-old had a homework assignment about creating a chain reaction. We drafted our plan using sketches of how we would set up dominoes to fall over, tap a ball, the ball would roll down an incline and tap the remaining dominoes as they split into a fork. We spent hours setting up dominoes, knocking them down by accident, and starting over. Finally, everything was in position and still standing despite two younger siblings "helping."
My 6-year-old got into position and gently tipped the first domino. We watched them fall, hearing a satisfying clink as each domino made contact with the one in front of it.
The last domino in the row fell, tapped the ball, and perfectly launched it down the incline. The ball tapped the next set of dominoes, a few fell and then...
...nothing.
Hours of trying to make it work and it didn't.
We were all a little bummed, and honestly, we might have been overly ambitious.
That experiment got me thinking about our current struggles as parents.
Like many of you, I'm currently staying home with my entire family until everything corona blows over. With that, comes a number of struggles.
This is not like summer vacation.
At all.
It's a completely different beast of a struggle that many of us aren't familiar with.
Summer vacation gives us the chance to swap kid duty with a neighbor, send the kids outside to play, or sign our kids up for summer camp or other activities to give them social time and fun away from us (the parents).
But now?
There's no social playtime.
School activities have been canceled. Heck, even school is closed for the remainder of the school year for many kids.
My service member can't go to work. Many spouses can't either.
So here we all are, spending a whole lot of social time in small spaces with nothing but our family members, trying to entertain, teach, mold, develop, entice, and interact with our kids.
All. Day. Long.
We're painstakingly placing the dominoes every day, trying not to accidentally nudge one and make the entire thing collapse.
Are you feeling exhausted?
Are you a week into schooling at home and already handed out three lunch detentions and threatened expulsion? I'm kidding. Sort of.
Are you waiting for the chance to step into your service member's combat boots and kick them out the door for some separation?
Do you feel horrible for even thinking that way (after all, we never know how long we have them home)?
Are you trying to grocery shop for your family only to feel like a contestant on the show Chopped?
You aren't alone.
Because really, most of us are dealing with the same thing.
I'm struggling to understand what addends are, teach my oldest child how to form complete sentences and use proper punctuation, and keep my kids focused and engaged enough to complete their daily hour-long school session.
Listen, over the next six months (yeah, I heard you gasp. It's going to be six months until my kids are back in school), we're going to get it wrong sometimes. We're going to knock down a lot of dominoes.
Because I'm not a perfect parent. And neither are you.
To read the rest of the post, go here.
No one is perfect