The Right Answer

Spoiler: There isn't one right answer in parenting.

I just came from a classroom Valentine’s party and it was incredibly heartwarming to see all these elementary students get excited about making paper heart ornaments and playing Valentine’s bingo. The care and joy they showed while distributing the goodies and cards they put together for each other stood out against the backdrop of conflict and animosity that is running rampant in our larger world. I found myself lingering in the room, reluctant to leave, knowing that there was likely some new devastating piece of information waiting for me in the real world beyond those doors.

I keep saying, everything is happening too fast; it is all too much and too overwhelming. Which is, of course, the point. Being inundated with terrifying update after terrifying update results in my brain (and yours too if you’re paying attention) feeling frazzled and fractured. There are a whole host of reasons why this is the result. One of them is something that shows up in childhood and parenting – the concepts of Assimilation and Accommodation. Jean Piaget conceptualized these as ways to understand how children learn new material and why that process doesn’t go smoothly at times. Essentially in order to learn something new, it must be close enough to something you already know so as to allow your brain to assimilate it into the existing framework and the correlating stretching of our mind is where the accommodation comes in. In its most simplistic terms assimilation and accommodation are the psychological terms for ‘baby steps’ in the context of taking on a big task. So long as the learning is gradual enough our brains feel confident and comfortable absorbing it. It makes sense given what we already know. The challenge with managing situations like we find ourselves in currently, is that the steps are gigantic leaps which, for many people, activate cognitive dissonance (the distress that arises when two thoughts are contradictory yet occur simultaneously), and for others trigger outright fear for safety. It is because things have been happening at lightning speed that we feel disoriented. Surreal feelings typically show up here as a cue that the space between what is and what is about to be is too big to accommodate in one fell swoop.

So now imagine parenting in the midst of this; well, you don’t have to because you’ve been trying to do it too! Clearly, staying focused on the core values that are meaningful for you is important. But so is determining how, when, or if to break the protective bubble of childhood. There isn’t one right answer to this. If we look to history and consider how other parents have navigated equally fraught times, there hasn’t been a single answer, nor is there one now. What I do know is that my primary goal of raising strong, capable, feisty women remains a priority, perhaps even more so. That helps me decide where strategic cracks in the protective bubble of childhood fortify them for what they are likely to face in the coming years. It also reassures me for when I determine maintaining the outlines of normalcy is a priority. I have no idea if I am getting it right. Honestly, I won’t know until it is far too late to change course. All I can do is stand up for what is right and protect my family.

Parenting is hard. Particularly during chaotic times. Knowing there is more than one right answer can give you hope.