Meet Libbie and Chris! The dynamic duo and long-time Plinkit Superfans that captured our hearts with their beaming smiles and honesty about life during the pandemic. Their thoughtful self-reflection and adoring love for family grounded our own perspective and priorities. Their Words of Wisdom, raw and timeless, will echo in your soul. From struggling to get out the door in the morning, to raising children of color in America, to acknowledging privileges, they candidly share the breadth and depth of their parenting journey. And despite life’s roller coaster, we think they’re ‘acing’ it!
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On Parenting in a Pandemic
3 things you’ve learned about your children and your family during this pandemic:
- Appreciating our privileges. As a family, we are deeply aware of our privileges over the past year. We’ve been able to spend some great quality time and during those moments, we always acknowledge how lucky we are.
- During the pandemic, we were fortunate to keep our jobs, work from home, and even reduce our hours with minimal impact to our salaries. We know that many families weren’t so lucky. So we have really invested in talking about this as a family, and have empowered our kids with ways to give back. For example, each child got to donate the money we saved from cancelled after-school activities and summer camps to issues they cared about (one picked snake rescue and the other picked COVID-support for indigenous peoples).
- Parenting as a partnership. We’ve been so grateful for each other as parents throughout the last year. When the pandemic hit, we both leaned in: we each reduced our hours in our work day to cover childcare and we kept our shared priority on our kids.
- It hasn’t always been easy though. It’s a constant negotiation about how to adjust schedules and whose job commitment takes priority when. But because we approach our relationship as a partnership with a strong foundation of love and support, we’ve been able to do what’s best for our family and still enjoy each other’s company!
- The importance of helping others. A priority for us during the pandemic was keeping Libbie’s mother and sister and our 89-year-old neighbor in our COVID bubble. Sadly, Libbie’s mother’s house burned down in one of the Northern California wildfires, and our elderly neighbor suffered a few strokes and needed support around the house.
- Our bubble meant that our kids didn’t get to do some things their friends were doing, like going to in-person school until the older adults had their vaccines. But the trade-off for us was well worth it. Our children learned what it tangibly meant to respect and care for others, and they now have a very unique relationship with each of these women.
Advice you’d give to:
- Pre-pandemic self: An over-scheduled life does not bring great meaning.
- Pre-pandemic children: Nature is your playground and the trees and rocks are your play structures.
Learnings from quarantine – daily habits or routines you’re going to:
- Keep: Books, books, books! We doubled down on books in all forms because we were determined to keep screen time to a minimum when the pandemic hit. We signed up for an app through our local library and listened to hundreds of hours of audiobooks (a favorite has been the How to Train your Dragon series).
- We also got much more proactive about ordering children’s books from the library — library curbside pickup became our late-night stress shopping alternative!
- We had always wanted to get organized about reading chapter books with our kids but never found the time to do it pre-pandemic. The pandemic taught us to slow down and now we read as a family every night. It’s THE BEST.
- Miss: Downtime. We have so savored the precious time we’ve had as a family this year. The lack of after-school activities, weekend sports, birthday parties and long commutes has just given us so much more time together.
- We did a whole bunch of projects we never thought we’d get to; the kids got that precious unstructured time that Plinkit told us was important (let them be bored!) and then found creative ways to fill that boredom; we spent a ton of time in nature…it’s been glorious.
- Make no mistake, we are exhausted and are craving five minutes to have an uninterrupted independent thought. But, we will always treasure this time and are committed to not returning to the packed schedule we used to have.
- Add: Friends. It’s been so hard to see our kids away from their friends. We’ve been pretty conservative throughout COVID, so our kids really didn’t interact with many kids over the past year. While we’re so grateful that they had each other – and our hearts melt that their relationship is stronger as a result – we can see them craving interaction with their peers. We’re really looking forward to letting them spend more time with their friends as the world opens up a bit.
- Let go of: Online grocery shopping. We’ve tried to be as COVID conservative as possible, but nothing beats walking the aisles of the store and picking out our own food.
On Parenting in General
Biggest parenting challenge right now:
- Executive function. Our kids may be smart and kind, but their ability to get out of the house in the morning with a backpack and shoes on is a STRUGGLE. We have scoured Plinkit articles on how to build executive functioning skills and we’re trying several strategies, but it’s a constant work-in-progress with our kids. It’s a huge priority for us because we know it’s even more important for them to be able to self-regulate and self-advocate than it is to be academically ‘smart’.
What’s something that worries you about raising children?
- Raising kids of color in America is terrifying. We look down at the sweet faces of our babies and realize that over time they will have to navigate a world where they are seen, both implicitly and explicitly, as threats. We talk a lot about race in our home – both to celebrate and appreciate diversity in its many forms and to help prepare them for a world where they will encounter bias and racism. We have to teach them what to expect and how to behave to best protect themselves.
- The thing that is most frustrating to us is that we don’t see many of the white families around us having the same conversations at home. They say that their kids are too young to be burdened with discussions about bias and race. At ages 5 and 6, our kids are already hearing things like “I don’t want to play with you because you’re Black.” If our kids are burdened already with having to navigate bias and racism, shouldn’t all kids be working to make it go away?
On Work
What would you tell employers about what working parents need right now?
- From Libbie: I’m really loving the ‘humans’ I’m seeing on the other end of video conference calls these days! I have loved getting to know my colleagues better as humans (meeting their dogs, having their seven-year-olds pop-up in the background, talking about their houseplant care strategy, etc.).
- The pandemic forced some cracks in the professional walls many of us have put up between our work and home life, and I’m hoping we don’t patch those cracks! It makes us better able to support each other in our work, to understand each other when we disagree, and to lower the stress on needing to show-up as perfect and put-together all the time.
How has the combination of juggling working-from-home, the pandemic and distance learning all at the same time changed your outlook on raising children?
- From Chris: I realized how much time I spent just sitting on a bus or boat away from my family. We’ve now filled those times with lovely breakfasts and dinners together, and the kids have gained a deeper respect and understanding for how hard we work.
- We’ve all seen snippets of each other’s lives and it’s opened up a whole new perspective on what we all used to do when we were away from one another.
On Your Wisdom
Words you’d like to share with your children’s teachers:
- While you may not recall every child you’ve taught, you will become a permanent memory in our children’s live and experiences. I hope you give our children at least one unforgettable moment where your words and actions make a positive difference in their lives.
Words of wisdom you’d share with a new parent:
- From Libbie: The biggest thing I’ve had to learn as a parent is “This is what you can be good at right now”. I’ve been an overachiever my whole life: I defined my self-worth by my grades in school, my performance evaluations at work, words of affirmation by my family and friends, and my ability to check things off the to-do list. When I became a parent, I realized there wasn’t any way to ‘ace’ the Mom job.
- Just when I would think I had nailed something (like getting them to sleep in their own beds or not pee in their pants), my kids would go through a new phase or give me a new challenge that would start us back at square one.
- I had to reframe achievement not as ‘solving the problem’ or ‘completing the task’ but by smaller things like: “Do my children feel loved in this moment?” “Are they safe?” “Are we learning and growing together?”
- Giving myself the grace to not always have the right answer has been a huge growth moment for me.
- From Chris: I see a lot of new parents living for the next moment: when their kids will reach those first milestones, first words, first steps, learning to read and write; wondering what kind of grown-up they’ll be, how tall they’ll grow, how they’ll do in school, what they will seek to become. It took me a while to finally just be in-the-moment.
- When I was a kid, things seemed to last forever – sometimes time stood still. Now, as a parent, I’m taken aback on a daily basis on how quickly my kids are growing up. And to them, it must be going slowly. So, I would say to stop living for what may be next and just slow down with them and take in every moment.
- I’ve heard the saying that the days are long and the years are short, but time seems to be moving faster than I ever imagined. My advice is to take it all in. Embrace every detail and savor it.
*Plinkit is proud to share these parent profiles as they authentically represent the diverse voices of our Plinkit readership. The views and opinions expressed in these parent profiles are those of the authors and may not necessarily reflect those of Plinkit Pte. Ltd.
