Pandemic Parenting: How to Find the Silver Lining

5-minute read

Even with the stress of the last 12 months, you can still find a silver lining. Rashelle Chase, Content Architect on KinderCare’s Education and Innovation team, is sharing her top three tips to keep focusing on the positive things at home.

Appreciate the little things, like impromptu dance parties and fun cat filters. These joys will sustain you through tough moments.
Take every opportunity to celebrate events, large and small, that have meaning to your family or community.
Document what you want future generations to know about what’s happening right now by creating something together, like a scrapbook or no-sew quilt.

For many families, this year has been stressful, to say the least-but along the way, we have found some silver linings. In KinderCare’s second annual Parent Confidence Report, many families have found that they are becoming closer, appreciating the smaller things in life, and 56% say they are developing stronger relationships with their children. Plus, 77% have shown incredible resiliency and still feel confident in their parenting skills. To help your family meet this moment, Rashelle Chase, Content Architect on KinderCare’s Education team, is sharing her top three tips on how to keep focusing on hope and positive things at home.

Harris Poll

1. Appreciate the little things.
Days at home can be long and hard, but there are new opportunities to appreciate the small things. Impromptu dance parties with your toddler, sharing your favorite childhood books with your kids, and laughing your face off over those hilarious cat filters—finding these joys will sustain you through tough moments and keep your spirits high.

2. Celebrate all the things.
If we've learned anything over the last year, it's how to get creative in acknowledging holidays, special occasions, birthdays, anniversaries, the first lost tooth, and first steps. Even in the hardest times, there are things worth celebrating if we look for them. Take every opportunity to celebrate events, large and small, that have meaning to your family or community—you might even start a new tradition or two!
56% of parents

3. Document important things.
This is a historic moment that someday our kids will tell their children and grandchildren about. What do you want future generations to know about what’s happening right now? As a family, create scrapbooks, blogs, artwork, oral histories, or other creative means to capture your family’s thoughts and feelings about these crazy days. Working together on a project, like this no-sew commemorative quilt, will bring your family closer together as you work and create. Plus, it may also help you all process the highs and lows in a healthy, creative, constructive way.

You are doing it! You are not only surviving, but thriving. You are inspiring happiness, confidence, and resilience at home every single day. Keep it up-hope and good moods are contagious, so when you focus on the positive, it affects your whole family and transforms moments that once would have been stressful into hopeful ones instead.