How to Survive This Plague – 10 How Lower the Parenting Bar

I’VE WORKED FROM HOME since 2009 when the economy collapsed and my kids were only 3 and 5.

- By Kimberly Harrington

Staring down the barrel of weeks if not months with my kids out of school while I both work and write a book—let’s just say this is the kind of déjà vu I do not enjoy. But now is the perfect moment to pause and send up a prayer of gratitude to your god, your Antichrist, or at the very least your boss, that you have the option to earn money while inside your house. For those of us who find ourselves in this fortunate (yet still potentially hellish) position, this is what I can tell you: I know panic, I know what it’s like to try to figure out your universe from scratch, and here’s another thing I know—you can do this. You just aren’t going to do it well. But that’s okay, none of us is.

I’m tempted to tell my kids to do what I did when I was a teenager: Take up smoking and head into the woods to hit things with sticks but be back in time for a dinner of Minute Rice and butter in front of the TV around six. Although those are not the times we’re currently living in (but are a fantastic way to get me arrested), there’s one thing we can all take away from the benevolently negligent heroes who raised Gen X:

Set the bar low.
Lower.
Keep going.
Right there.

Hello, we’re in the middle of a global pandemic with a global workforce with kids who’ve been raised to communicate with their friends via 15-second videos posted on global platforms. This isn’t a situation that lends itself to instantaneous platinum-level Little House on the Prairie–ing.