The Earnheardts: How we “family” in a pandemic

EDITOR'S NOTE — Each week, Adam and Mary Beth Earnheardt will share how their family is coping in the new pandemic reality as they combine life's activities — including work and schooling — under one roof like many families in the Valley.

School breaks are some of the best times for our family. Sure they are a lot of work, but we look forward to spending time together as a family

The big ones for parents like us are winter break and spring break. We cherish the concerts, dinners and other events that make up our holiday traditions, but seasoned parents go into these times with the reassuring thought that it all ends with our little ones heading back to school.

We know that after a week or so at home, we all go back to normal life. The parents head back to YSU for work. The children spend their days at 1 Leopard Way under the watchful eyes of dedicated Liberty Local Schools teachers. Life returns to normal.

Sure, there's a chance for a surprise snow day. We're Ohioans. We can handle that.

The problem with a pandemic, and the resulting order to stay at home, is that we're not prepared to live like this. The "break" model we're used to is carefree with lots of out-of-the-home options to distract us. Now we're trapped and with many more responsibilities than a normal break requires. We're now our kids' teachers, entertainment, caretakers and disciplinarians.

Sure, we've been doing some of these jobs part-time all along. Now we're full time.

We're unprepared as parents to spend this much time together as a family, and so are our four children. We used to think we're pretty good at the whole parenting thing. Now we're forced to face the fact that we may be kind of bad at it. We need to get better at it — and fast.

Adam likes to post funny little family conversations on his social media accounts. He starts each post with "Overheard at the Earnheardts." The day we found out the kids were going to have remote schooling for at least the next three weeks, he posted, "Think two weeks over Christmas and New Years is rough? It's about to get all Lord of the Flies up in here."

For those unfamiliar with Lord of the Flies, it's a reference to William Golding's book about a group of boys who crashland on a deserted island. They attempt to govern themselves with horrific results.

It was a funny little one-off meant to reflect the chaos we anticipate. The truth is, it won't be Lord of the Flies because our kids won't be left to fend for themselves.

Lord of the Flies is a fantasy. Getting stranded with them on a shelter-in-place island is a reality.

Going to work and school can be stressful, but we also use those places as a sort of escape. Now, we're all working from home. At least in Lord of the Flies, no one was trying to video conference with colleagues on WebEx while a 7-year-old tried to ride the dog like a bull, the 9-year-old ate Fruit Loops off the floor, and the 14- and 12-year-old were sleeping in until noon.

In spite of these challenges, we're starting to see some positive developments. We've never heard our kids laugh together this much. Dinner time used to be a rushed event so we could get all the evening chores done, drive kids to dance and music and art lessons. Parenting used to be a constant negotiation about who-takes-or-picks-up-which-kid-from-which-thing.

Now we're spending more time at the dinner table. We're building 1000-piece puzzles. The kids are teaching Adam how to play Minecraft. We sit around and tell stories. We're learning to work as a team and be respectful of each others' needs--including needs for time and space.

Our busy lives have been paused, but we're more present than ever and we kind of like it. We also understand that these are the early days of being together all day and that the real struggle lies ahead with no promised end date in sight. The real struggle will be maintaining our sanity when repetition stifles creativity. The real struggle will be patience when we've been stuck in the same space together in weeks two, three, and possibly more.

It's not perfect. Pandemic perfection is a fool's errand. But as long as we give up on the idea that we're going to be the best parents ever and just take each day at a time, there's an opportunity to make some new magic in the lives of our children, and lots of lasting memories along the way.

— Adam and Mary Beth Earnheardt are professors at Youngstown State University. Mary Beth is director of the Anderson Program in Journalism. Adam is chair of the Department of Communication. You can follow Mary Beth on Twitter at @mbexoxo and Adam at @adamearn.

This story was originally published March 23, 2020 at 4:52 AM with the headline "The Earnheardts: How we “family” in a pandemic."