At CTWPS we specialize in working with a diverse group of women, and have witnessed that mothering as a COVID Mom is a particularly unique challenge. At this point there are countless think pieces and memes about the experience of parenting during the pandemic. The prevailing themes we see in media are of overstretched, barely-hanging-on mothers who have taken on a new level of responsibility and stress during this time. In this post I will review some of the typical stressors faced by Covid Moms in different stages of child-rearing, the cognitive distortions that we see manifest, and the coping strategies we help our clients employ to tackle Covid parenting effectively.
The childbirth experience.
For those new mothers who had the unique challenge of delivering a baby during the pandemic, one challenge we see is the difficulty of coping with unmet expectations. A client may have held certain hopes or expectations of how her childbirth experience would go - in some cases spending months pre-Covid planning for it - but then had things go very differently due to the pandemic. Covid Moms have delivered without a partner present, labored in a surgical mask, and been restricted to few or no hospital visitors. To help these mothers process their experiences, we first want to validate and explore the impact of these unexpected events on her emotional state. We also work to incorporate them into her broader narrative of herself, her baby, and her motherhood. A distortion we might see here is that of mental filters, in which one component of an experience colors the whole thing. A woman may have the thought: “My childbirth experience, and my first months of being a mother, have been destroyed by the pandemic. I’m not able to have any of the special early moments of sharing my baby with others than I hoped to have.” With this woman, we would validate the kernel of truth at the center of her thought, which is that things are indeed different than expected, and that can be very upsetting. We would also challenge her to identify how a ‘mental filters’ distortion may be hindering her from enjoying the aspects of her baby’s early months that have been as expected, or maybe even better than planned. Our goal is to balance the unexpected with a healthy focus on mindfulness for the rest of the picture.
Toddlers and preschool kids.
For mothers of children in this age range, a big challenge has been the sense of responsibility for keeping kids occupied and stimulated while social distancing. Mothers may have worries about social development, the experience of having a young child masked, and how changes to childcare and routine may impact her child in the future. A common distortion we see with these mothers is that of fortune telling, in which one predicts a specific outcome, and emotionally responds as if that outcome is inevitable. In this case, a woman may have the thought: “My three-year-old is going to be totally messed up by this pandemic. He’s missed precious socialization experiences, and he is going to be permanently scarred by that.” With this client we would point out the assumption of inevitability in her thinking style, and challenge her to balance that with other possibilities. For example, it is also possible that kids will bounce back, that her child benefits from the extra time at home with family, and that as all kids are going through this, her child will be no more adversely affected than any other child his age. We play with these possibilities not to try to predict the future - just the opposite: to demonstrate that we can only predict so much. With moms struggling with fortune telling distortions, we would point out the emotional costs of fortune telling, and focus our energy on bringing her back to the present and what is within her control right now.
Kids in school.
Oh, the dreaded Zoom. While stimulation and socialization concerns also exist in mothers of school aged children, a distinct challenge for mothers of kids in this age group is how to manage remote schooling. The massive time demand of organizing, motivating, and focusing one’s child to engage in remote schooling requires a great deal of emotional energy from parents. Often things don’t go exactly as planned, a big challenge particularly as parents simultaneously juggle other children and their own job responsibilities. With these clients, the distortion of shoulds thinking is often present. Shoulds thinking occurs when one puts unreasonable pressure and demands on oneself to act and feel a certain way, without wiggle room. The outcome of a ‘shoulds distortion’ is the feeling of failure. A mother with a child in school during the pandemic may have the thought: “I should be better about managing my daughter’s schoolwork. She gets bored and frustrated and it’s my job to keep her motivated and focused. I’m failing her and failing as a parent.” In therapy we would examine the ‘shoulds thinking’ at play and begin to generate alternative narratives about the situation that are more in line with reality; for example, “I’m expecting myself to take on the full time job of schooling my child, on top of other responsibilities I have, and expecting it to go perfectly.” We would challenge this client to be more flexible in her expectations and standards for herself. Rather than going to distortions of failure, we would work toward helping her acknowledge that an imperfect, emergency set-up in the midst of a pandemic is not going to go smoothly all the time, and that this does not mean something terrible about herself or her child.
Never has the airplane safety measure of “put your own oxygen mask on first” been more critical. The instinct to do everything to ensure “business as usual” for one’s children is completely understandable; however, in many cases it is not sustainable, and mom ends up paying the emotional price. It is always true that mom’s oxygen mask needs to be on in order to most effectively support her kids, but during this year it is that much more important. Cognitive distortions at play in pandemic parenting only serve to deplete us and wastes our precious emotional energy.
If you find that one of the descriptors above fits your experience this year and you are seeking support, we encourage you to reach out. We at CTWPS are here to help you develop the skills and effective coping strategies to guide you through this unprecedented time.