Modern Mishpocha: Surviving a federal election without alienating your kids

By Shirlee Press

My husband and I both work in roles that ramp up during election campaigns as we try to stay on top of every twist, promise, pledge, and tidbit of information our respective clients hunger to consume.

Much like parenting, it is all-encompassing, which is where we run into issues at home.

Though we have hired a babysitter to help out with dinner and bedtime during this difficult period, our toddler has so far refused to interact with her.

There goes my brilliant plan to finish up work when I get home while the kids are entertained.

Though our four-year-old loves the babysitter, the second she leaves, the battles begin. Acting up before bedtime is now a nightly thing. As she watches her parents pass each other like ships in the night in a thick fog, she has become more clingy, emotional and demanding.

Just the other night, she emerged from her room at almost 10 pm to declare she couldn’t sleep; no amount of counting sheep or any other animal would help. We agreed to let her lie in our bed for one minute as long as she promised to go back to her room without crying.

She agreed.

The minute passed and the meltdown ensued.

What followed was a serious talk about the importance of keeping promises to ensure people trust you. For a moment I thought about all the candidates vying for our votes and my anger at her completely disregarding the promise she made softened. Start ‘em young, I thought.

If only it were that simple.

Parenting is challenging at the best of times when you’re already on the edge of exhaustion. It’s doubly challenging when you’re exhausted before you even get home and have to find a way to parent and work at night, prep for the morning and somehow get enough sleep to wake up and do it all over again.

Our work responsibilities are so demanding that we don’t get to spend a lot of time with our daughters during the week. In the morning, my husband gets the girls up, fed, dressed, and shipped off to daycare while I work, seeing them only briefly before they leave. We reverse roles in the evening, with my husband often missing the youngest before bedtime.

Then we both get sucked into our laptops, email and Slack messages.

So what is a parent to do when pulled to extreme ends of the work-life balance?

It starts with setting boundaries and trying to be present without devices for time with our children. We have desperately tried to do that, and I’m not sure we’ll get better at it as the days roll on. From now on, if our eldest asks for an extra minute of snuggle time in bed, she gets it to let her know she remains the most important person in our lives.

It also includes trusting that our four-year-old in particular can understand why we’re as busy as we are. We have talked with her, in her own terms and on her time, about what we as her parents are doing for work. We talk about how there are people who are hoping we will choose them to be in charge or important – language from one of her favourite books, John Oliver’s The Adventures of Marlon Bundo (a must-read for kids!). We explain that we are trying to make sure voters have information to help them choose who they want to vote for, which makes our work important, but not more important than her.

Sometimes my husband will let her cuddle up while he’s typing away to show her what he’s doing and make her feel part of things.

We will keep working on work-life balance during this campaign because, to paraphrase a Portland father, it’s too late to start finding that balance if you’ve already lost it.

J.R. Storemont’s LinkedIn post in early September put this issue in stark terms for us. He spent so much time at work that he barely saw his twin boys. Then one day, during a meeting, he got a call from his wife that one of his eight-year-old boys had died in his sleep. I won’t go into the heart-wrenching details, but will note this one thought he had: Work can help us grow and offer something to the world, “but that work needs a balance,” he wrote, adding “it’s a balance that lets us offer our gifts to the world but not at the cost of self and family.”

It’s a good reminder, not only for our household, but for any parent struggling to leave work behind and be truly present with their kids.

October 21 can’t come soon enough.

Modern Mishpocha: The double-edged sword of independence

Shirlee Press

By Shirlee Press

It started small, as most things do, when my daughter insisted on brushing her teeth by herself.

Only three months shy of her fourth birthday, she began flexing her “big girl” muscles more and more, which forced my husband and I to start setting limits around her newfound independence.

We have been adjusting those limits by necessity; having a busy and very mobile one-year-old means we can’t always be there for the big sister. So she now goes to the bathroom, picks her clothes, gets dressed, brushes her teeth, and washes her hands, all by herself.

She has also been given more leeway at her daycare to work on those “big girl” abilities and comes home to test the limits. This is where the friction kicks in.

“I can do whatever I want.”

“You have to listen to my words.”

“You can’t tell me what to do.”

“Oh, yes I can. I’m the mommy and I get to make the rules. When you’re a mommy you can make the rules.”

As I quickly found out, telling her how things work just doesn’t… work.

So what is a parent to do?

I really struggled with this at first and still do. I’m a stubborn person and I have (perhaps I deserve) two equally-stubborn daughters. How can I look myself in the mirror as a mother when my four-year-old can outsmart me in an argument?

Learning to pick my battles has been humbling.

The other night she tried to get me to put back a stool she used to reach the light switch by herself. I dug in – trying to teach her to put away things she takes out – but it quickly spiralled out of control. The next thing I knew, I was holding the door shut while she screamed and smashed the stool against the door on the other side. #parentingfail

What my husband and I have found most helpful is reframing the situation. We tell her to use her “nice words” to see how we respond. We give her choices for meals, which means we have to respect her decision even if we don’t like it (unless she asks for chocolate).

We are really trying to explain why we need to do something she may not like and offer her an activity she will like later on. And we find new ways to make her feel in charge or give her small responsibilities, such as keeping an eye on her younger sister while they play, even if we are watching over her shoulder.

And let’s face it: old-fashioned bribery works perfectly in a pinch. After all, we can’t be perfect.

It comes down to giving her a feeling of being in control as much as possible. That doesn’t mean an end to tantrums, but limits the impossible-to-win situations we find ourselves in.

But all this independence is a double-edged sword.

Our girls are young and clingy, and that means I often find myself feeling guilty about craving some space. The guilt comes from knowing this time is so short, and as their independence grows, their need for their parents will begin to diminish.

“Just wait until they’re teenagers,” our parents often remind us.

Yes, I try not to think about that.

After the stool incident, my husband told me a story his mother likes to tell in these situations. When he was about four years old, he wanted to walk into daycare by himself. She followed, remaining a few steps back to give him the space and independence he sought.

“So, what’s your point?” I asked, feeling deflated.

“I kept looking over my shoulder,” he replied, “to make sure my mom was still there.”

It was a good reminder that our children will be constantly looking over their shoulders, even when they get old enough to roll their eyes and say, “Mom, can you give me some space?”

Hopefully they will at least say please.