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The Next Right Thing Eastern Iowa parents reflect on a year of pandemic parenting and, with some hope, look to the future. BY SHARON FALDUTO
“I
will Venmo you to keep my kids an hour longer.” “I became the only socialization. You can only play Candy Land so many times.” Speaking with local parents about their experiences over the last year, a few themes resonated: resilience, struggle, anxiety and an intense desire for some kind of return to normalcy. Also a determination to simply do “the next right thing,” as Anna sings in Frozen II. It’s been over a year since most area schools shut down. When the kids went home for spring break on March 16, 2020, many of them didn’t return to the school building
LaTasha DeLoach and her twins, Nathan and Lauren. Chad Rhym / Little Village
until the following August, or even later. Parents struggled to keep the kids occupied, engaged and educated, while attending to their own jobs and responsibilities.
:
I’m sorry you have to be 12. That’s what LaTasha DeLoach thought as she set her 6-yearold twins, Lauren and Nathan, up in their virtual school studio. Although it may not have felt age appropriate, she needed to depend on her kids to get themselves to their school lessons while she worked on another floor of their home. DeLoach is the director of the Iowa City Senior Center,
20 April 2021 LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/LV293
and she was busy making sure the center was fully operational during historic building renovations, not to
family lives several hours away and can’t really help with her kids. At the beginning of the pandemic last
HER HOUSE IS NOT A SCHOOL, OF COURSE, BUT SHE HAS DONE WHAT SHE CAN. FOR P.E., THE KIDS ROLLER-SKATE IN HER BASEMENT. HER LIVING ROOM IS AN ART SPACE WITH AN UNEXPLAINED HOT GLUE STAIN ON THE CARPET. mention a historic pandemic, while her kids were busy learning how to navigate first grade. LaTasha summed up parenting during the pandemic as “I wanted to cry, to scream, to just laugh.” Her
March, she had the mindset that they could do this for a while. It would be like summer vacation—a trying time for many parents, but one with a definitive end. Unfortunately, what began as a
