Will winter break feel like 2020 ALL OVER AGAIN?

I was talking to a parent at a social gathering and she asked the question I’ve been thinking about for a while. During winter break, we’re going to be stuck inside together again: is it going to feel like remote school and 2020 ALL OVER AGAIN?

I’m worried it might for me. I’m worried we’ll slip into our routine of having no routine, of thinking the lack of our regular schedule means we’ll somehow magically be sleeping in, cleaning our home and organizing our closets, exploring nature, embarking on multi-hour cooking projects. But that didn’t actually happen in 2020 and it’s pretty unlikely to happen in the next two weeks.

I know that people have had very different experiences of the pandemic. There’s been plenty written on the people who have thrived through lockdown and Zoom school and on those who have survived and suffered huge losses. But one of the experiences that has been universal is the not knowing. The not knowing what’s safe, the not knowing what we “should” do or “should absolutely-not-under-no-circumstance” do, and the not knowing when this ends.

Not knowing is an uncomfortable feeling. And not knowing when something ends, specifically, is one that shows up a lot for little kids, especially because time itself doesn’t have a whole lot of meaning. How helpful is it for me to tell you that we’ll see each other at the end of the school day in 6 hours or when we wake up again in 11 hours when you can’t tell time? Why would I want to go to sleep when I don’t know when I’ll get to wake up again?

And what does it mean for a parent to say, “I’ll come play with you in 20 minutes” or “5 more minutes of screen time”? Those times can feel so different depending on what you’re doing: how can I ever know when something is actually going to end? [For a great picture book depicting how different 5 minutes can feel, check out Five Minutes (That’s a Lot of Time) (No, It’s Not) (Yes, It Is) by Audrey Vernick and Liz Garton Scanlon]

To help with a sense of knowing when things will end, in our house we’ve used TV shows as a guidepost. “When will you come and check on me?” “In 10 minutes: that’s 2 Peppa Pigs.” Or “How much longer until we get there?” “15 minutes: that’s about 2 Blueys.” Songs are another good one. The point is not that these things always say exactly how long something will last, after all, song lengths can be sped up quite a bit, as anyone who has ever watched a kindergartener singing happy birthday while washing their hands can tell you. Instead, we do this because connecting one unknown (or lesser known) activity of some length to another that we have a lot of experience with beginning and ending gives a child greater comfort in knowing that the unknown activity will also end.

The discomfort around uncertain endings isn’t only on the part of the kids, of course: parenting young children is full of these questions too. When will this phase be over? When will they finally sleep through the night? How long is this walk? Are we there yet? “If I could know that this sleep regression (teething, biting, separation anxiety) really only lasts for 2 weeks and then we’ll be back to sleeping more or less through the night, I could tolerate it, but right now, I don’t know how long it will go on and it feels like it’ll never end!”

If you consider that so often the “comfort” offered to parents is “it’s just a phase” or “your child won’t go to college wearing diapers,” it’s easier to see how this reassurance is steeped in reminding parents that it will end, even if we don’t know exactly when. Because the most uncomfortable part of not knowing when it will end is the fear that it never will.

And I think in the end, the hope that the hard things will end at some point in the future is what we’re all kind of counting on.

For me, right now, I may not know exactly what the next two weeks hold in store or what omicron means for the pandemic, but there is at least one thing I do know: I know when winter break ends. In my case, that date is January 4th, 2022. Or for those keeping track, that’s approximately 7 seasons of the Great British Baking Show, 7 seasons of The West Wing, 7 seasons of Parks and Recreation, 5 seasons of The Wire, and 8 seasons of Game of Thrones. And while I haven’t watched all of those, at least not while I’ve been awake, I’m confident they all end.