During this unprecedented time for our children, it's so important that we step back from our normal parenting routines and consider how some of how we've "always done it" might have very different impact on our kids right now, especially in terms of discipline and rewards.

For example: it's pretty common to take away things like texting or online gaming from our kids as a consequence, or use those things as incentives that can be earned by meeting certain expectations around the house.

But consider for a moment how much those digital connections to our kids social networks are some of the *only* connections they have to people outside our homes right now.

What may have been a very reasonable low-level consequence a year ago, may now be equivalent to something like pulling your child from school, church, and every other social activity in their life and telling them they are not allowed to speak to anyone outside their family.

Does that sound extreme? Because in the time of corona, that's what taking away access to devices can be like for some of our kids now.

For younger kids, consider something like sending them to bed early. We've had tro *really* reconsider this with Jack.

During the day, Bobby and I can't really spend much time playing with or hanging out with Jack the way he wants, so the time between dinner and bedtime is really when he gets the most one-on-one attention from us.

While sending him to bed early may have been more than reasonable a year ago, we found that since home isolating it was actually trapping him a pretty cruel cycle:

He misses social interaction w/ other kids, so he'd often end up acting out to get the attention he's missing, so when we put him to bed early we were removing even MORE attention from our attention-starved boy, only inflaming this cycle rather than helping to meet his valid need

There just isn't any sort of guide for corona parenting. We truly have nothing to compare it to right now. But I post some of what we're working through just to say: it's ok to change the rules. It's ok to come up with a totally new way of doing things.

And yes, it's OK to let them seemingly "get away with things" or "let our standards slide." If this pandemic has been this traumatizing and difficult for us as adults, imagine how much harder this is for our kids.

Processing trauma in kids will often look like "bad behavior." It may seem like throwing a fit about being asked to empty the dishwasher has absolutely nothing to do w/ their feelings about corona & is just a bad attitude - but that's not how trauma works, especially in kids.

Those feelings come out where we least expect them, in seemingly unrelated ways. So in the same way we as adults are being told to consider our mental health right now and find ways to seek self care? Our kids need an extra dose of grace and understanding right now too.

So maybe we send them to the rooms less and "reward" bad behavior with more of the personalized attention they crave.

Maybe we take their devices away less and seek to set up recurring zoom parties or online gaming meet ups with their friends.

Maybe we respond to a seemingly disrespectful attitude by apologizing that this pandemic has been so hard for them and asking if there is more we can do to help them cope.

Maybe we throw out the parenting rule book a bit, ditch our assumptions about what has always worked with our kids, and reevaluare what consequences are "reasonable."

This isn't going to be over any time soon, so we're all going to need to shift our mindset away from trying to maintain "consistency" through a short term crisis, and look instead to adapt to a totally new normal.