Parenting From Work During a Pandemic

The Work Well Podcast focuses on the development of healthy work environments, that is why today we want to take a closer look at the implications this pandemic has brought on our work and family lives. How does working from home impact our family dynamics, and how are our children coping with isolation?

We are joined by Dr. Colman Noctor, a child and adolescent psychoanalyst and advanced nurse practitioner at St Patrick's Mental Health Hospital, to discuss the impact of social isolation on our well being and our children's well being. 

Working in the adolescent unit, Dr. Noctor is noticing the impact the current restrictions are having on his patients. From a mental health perspective, getting involved in activities, exercising, engaging with family and friends, having a structure every day is very important. And of course our children (and Dr. Noctor’s patients) haven't been able to do much of that during isolation.  

"We're looking at a physical pandemic at the moment; I think what we might be struggling with after this is a bit of a mental health pandemic in that sense. And I worry about that, to be honest. The longer this goes on, the tougher it's going to be." Dr Noctor says. 

How children's social interactions have been effected by the restrictions

Young children learn about socialising through school, play dates etc. Now that process is being disrupted by the pandemic. They are going weeks without seeing other children which for them is a missed opportunity to interact and learn. Adults have already developed the social skillsets they need to fall back on during these times, but children haven't. They base a lot of their interaction on physical activities; they play together and communicate through toys. 

Reintroducing children to a school/social environment will be a long process: "Pacing your parenting is about introducing something into your child's life when they're ready for it. [...] You're trying to motivate them to be under a degree of pressure so that they're learning, but not at a point where you overwhelm them" But how can parents pace the reintegration of their children in the right way? Dr. Noctor thinks upping the pace over time lessens the risk of them becoming overwhelmed.

The pandemic has pushed us to use technology in different, more constructive ways

Dr. Noctor gives a practical example of how people can use an hour of screen time in two different ways. A person watching a guitar tutorial on YouTube for an hour is a different experience to someone scrolling on Instagram for an hour. 

The restrictions and lack of direct interactions have pushed people to use technology to enhance their relationships. They are now taking control of how they use technology rather than the other way around. So many times, people have reverted to their phones to avoid direct social interactions, whereas now they are using technology to access each other. They are using technology as a point to connect rather than a way to escape.

The parenting triangle and the pressure that comes with homeschooling

"I think one of the major issues with parenting in contemporary parenting is the expectation, in terms of what is expected of us as parents." Dr Noctor says. 

The hyper-competitive culture we live in is at the base of this problem. This culture which has evolved from the excessive use of social media pushes people to evaluate themselves and compare themselves with others daily. 

Working from home while taking care of children and homeschooling them, has put a different kind of pressure on parents. Working with children at home is essentially the same as bringing your children to work with you and trying to do your job. It's an extra task added to a parent's working hours. “We are not working from home, we are parenting from work”.

Dr Colman explains the parenting triangle as the three essential elements to parenting from which you can only choose two. "So it is your sanity, a clean house, and happy children. And what it does is it makes you prioritise what's important to you. Most people will choose to sacrifice the clean house and have their sanity and happy children. But what this means is that if we overstretch, and we want to get it perfect, we're only building ourselves up to feel like failures, because perfection isn't achievable. There's no such thing as a perfect parent."

The myth of multitasking and the formula for happiness

Dr. Noctor sees multitasking as a myth. It’s more like a digital concept, one that allows us to keep seven windows open on our computer and work on six tasks at once. The issue is there's no evidence to suggest we can do six things to the same quality that we can do one. "We live in an economy where our time and attention are limited, and we have to spread them out amongst what we have. Time is not a renewable resource."

There is only so much time in a day, and we have to choose how to allocate it. There is a lovely formula for happiness that says expectation minus reality equals happiness. And we have to focus our energy on what we can change; we can't change reality, but we can improve our expectations. 

We have to accept that we are in an unprecedented time of crisis and we can no longer run things at the high pace we used to before. Dr. Colman thinks the pandemic has given us an excellent opportunity to reevaluate what is important to us. People now have the time to rethink their value system, to realise the importance of reaching out to others, of being able to shake hands, to hug someone. "From my point of view, there may be something we can get out of this and for me, if it's about reevaluating our value system, realigning our priorities, well, that's a hugely useful thing for us to use the time to do."

The most important relationship we form in life is the relationship we have with ourselves

"Over the last number of weeks, we've had a lot of time to get to know ourselves. And we might be finding out things that we are not too proud of about ourselves and maybe things that we didn't want to see." Dr. Noctor says. This is how resilience is built, by knowing our strengths and limitations and designing our expectations accordingly. Because going back to the formula of happiness, it's crucial to be able to adjust our expectations when reality changes as fast as it did during this pandemic. 

"Nobody's going to perfectly manage pandemic, whether it's in work or at home or in any relevance of our lives. Failure is not about falling down, it's about refusing to get back up.” So by picking ourselves back up we're learning from it and doing the best that we can.

You can watch the full video of our conversation with Dr. Colman Noctor here.