View this post on Instagram

 

{*Did you know you can write on Elephant? Here’s how—big changes: How to Write & Make Money or at least Be of Benefit on Elephant. ~ Waylon}

The 15-minute timer went off.

I haven’t been so scared to count the lines on a test since I was in my 20s.

Finally I steeled myself to look. There were two lines. The test was positive.

I had Covid-19.

Nobody wants to get Covid (at least I assume nobody wants to feel sick and have to stay away from the people they love).

As a single, self-employed mama, there’s never a convenient time for me to quarantine with my daughter at home.

But this time? Two days into our trip to see family for Christmas is definitely not convenient or ideal.

First, I felt the gripping terror that I had already infected my grandparents. They’re in their 80s and have nearly every health condition that would make Covid a deadly event for them.

Thus began the waiting game to see if I gave it to them. I was compartmentalizing hard to keep my mind from hitting the panic button every few seconds on that front.

Second, there was the reality of quarantining with my six-year-old daughter…without our home.

If we were home, quarantining would be fairly easy. We’d hit the backyard when weather permitted. Our art closet practically rivals a Michaels store; she’s got toys and books for days, plus an indoor gymnastics set up. Within the walls of our home and backyard, we could easily quarantine for a week without a case of the “I’m bored.”

But we weren’t at home.

We were in a two-bedroom vacation rental. It had been torrentially down-pouring outside for most of the day. We couldn’t leave (because where would we go?) and we couldn’t see any of our friends and family.

Our options for entertainment were as follows: One coloring kit featuring a wooden cutout and markers, one small, nearly finished workbook, a baby doll, and a felt Christmas tree with little ornaments my aunt dropped off earlier.

The ingredients are lined up pretty clearly:

Sick mama. Six-year-old with boundless energy.

All the anticipation of what should have been a fun-and-family-packed week boiled down to the two of us staring at one another across the duvet cover.

It seemed like the recipe for either hours of screen time or a terrible day.

Somehow, it ended up being neither of those.

The day probably should have sucked.

It had all the ingredients to cook up a fine suck-soup.

But it didn’t. Here’s why:

I do not believe my daughter’s entertainment is one of my areas of parental responsibility.

I never appointed myself as her Chief Entertainment Officer or CEO. She is, and always has been, her own CEO.

As a result, my daughter has spent her life being exposed to situations in which she wasn’t passively entertained.

She has practiced waiting.

She has experienced not being the center of attention.

She has spent hundreds of meals connecting with other humans in conversation.

She has wiled away thousands of hours with imaginative play from turning her hands into characters to chasing unicorns across the backyard to building fairy houses out of sticks.

She does not view adults as unlimited entertainment vending machines.

She may not like that I was prone and blowing my nose most of the day, but she doesn’t have the unrealistic expectation I was put on this planet to amuse her.

The gorgeous result of this is the litany of traits she has developed—self-reliance, curiosity, creativity, problem-solving, and storytelling.

The outcome for me is that I have more space to be the human I am, one with finite resources and energy. A human who sometimes gets sick and has the space to show up with less—even as a single mom.

Because my daughter is her own CEO, there was no backlash when I contributed almost nothing to her entertainment today.

She asked to watch TV, and we watched one show.

(Because being Screen Freed, not screen-free, is flexible like that.)

We managed a short walk in between downpours.

She asked for more TV. I said no. She accepted it.

She colored; she danced around; she told stories and sang to me.

She arranged the flowers we picked on our walk, and she perplexingly managed to go through three pairs of socks and then string all of them across the condo.

Most of the day, we did nothing noteworthy.

What a relief it is to be able to have an off-day as a single parent.

What a joy it is to feel confident about my daughter’s ability to entertain herself with relatively few inputs. To know her curious mind and the deep well of her imagination are all the company she needs to enjoy life.

Sh*t hit the metaphorical fan with our vacation plans and with my health, and my daughter rose to the occasion beautifully.

This isn’t because she is special or unique. Self-entertainment is available to all neurotypical kids and plenty of neurodivergent children as well.

The ability to self-entertain is built through practice. The chance to practice it is dependent on parental expectations.

We can expect our kids to be easily bored. We can decide they need us to lead play or plan activities.

Or we can observe that play and imagination are their birthright.

Babies and toddlers are entertained by everything and nothing.

They are naturally fascinated, interested, and present humans.

They come into this world with the tools to explore the world and entertain themselves in that pursuit.

Unfortunately, we often train them out of this.

We live in a “more is better” society. Ultimately, parents and the world sometimes teach children to be dissatisfied with simple, intrinsically derived entertainment.

We burn them out with flashy toys and video games and passive entertainment.

In doing so, we make it harder on ourselves as their caregivers.

So, before sh*t hits the fan and we need our kids to “figure it out,” can we practice giving them space to learn how?

Space to just be.

Space to feel the sensation of boredom and beautiful space to find out what they choose to do about it.

That way, on the days when we have less to give, our children are okay. Because they have the confidence of knowing what they’re capable of giving to themselves.

As for us? We make space within parenting for our humanity.

~