Pull The Plug

By HATTIE FOOTE

My kids will ALWAYS eat organic food; my kids will NEVER have screen time, and my kids will ONLY play with wood blocks that I whittled myself. Blah. Blah. Blah. I am confident most parents have set wildly unrealistic parenting expectations for themselves at some point in the parenthood journey, and I am no exception. Obviously, it all comes from a place of love and trying to be the best parent you can be, and if you do all these things, good for you. I can only speak from my experience (which includes chicken nuggets and iPads).

I feel like the pandemic really sent my parenting into a tailspin. I went too hard. I had our days planned out, complete with a 30-day Lego challenge, which, spoiler alert, we didn’t even make it to day seven. We got burned out fast. We relied heavily on YouTube for art lessons and dance breaks, which was great at the time. But the flip side is the kids fell into a YouTube black hole, it became part of their daily viewing even after the end of the pandemic. I thought it was innocent enough, silly videos like pranks or gaming. Then, all of a sudden, it felt like every time I turned around, there was Mr. Beast (a popular YouTube personality) yelling about chocolate and money in my living room. It started to give me an uncomfortable physical reaction, like my skin was crawling. I realized I, too, had fallen into a YouTube black hole; I got used to it being a babysitter while I got things done. I felt so disappointed in myself, I was lazy parenting. So, on a random Tuesday night after the kids went to bed, I went and deleted YouTube from our TV and devices. It felt SO good. The next day, I notified everyone, and guess what? They could not have cared less; in fact, they almost seemed relieved, too. I didn’t take away screen time altogether; let’s not get too crazy!

With that lesson learned, I feel another situation brewing in my future. One that scares me ten times more than YouTube. I was lucky enough to grow up without social media; I wasn’t even introduced to it until the middle of college. Myspace and Facebook, or Spacebook as my grandmother thought it was called, were where we went to update our very exciting statuses like “What should I have for dinner?” or “I don’t like homework.” Really riveting conversations were being had those days. But for the most part, it was simple, nothing like what it is today. So, this moment feels like what I was talking about earlier: I don’t want my kids to have social media like ever, or at least until they can fully understand its power, good and bad. Is this another unrealistic expectation? And don’t get me started on how I fully feel like a hypocrite being active on social media. I use it a ton for work, keeping in touch with friends, and saving thousands of recipes I will never make! Sigh. I don’t know; I’m just yelling into the void, and the thing is, at the end of the day, we each just must follow our gut as parents and hope we are doing what’s right for our family.

A hill I was ready to die on was that my kids didn’t need Apple watches until they were in high school, and boy did I hear about it. My daughter argued with me that kindergarteners had them, and I would argue that “back in my day, I got a pager when I was in high school.” That wasn’t a strong argument on my end; it just led to confusion about what a pager was. I didn’t even get to tell her that not once did I receive a page, and I looked like an on-call surgeon or a drug dealer. After lots of discussions, my husband and I decided to get her one for her tenth birthday, which, trust me, the privilege is not lost on me. But it has been life-changing in that it gives her a little more freedom while giving me peace of mind. And the text messages are so cute from her. Just no social media, nope, not happening.

Sending all of you parents strength and love as we navigate this wild adventure, and just remember to go easy on yourself and others because we are all trying the best we can. Even my parents when they allowed me to step out of the house with a pager attached to my waistband!