Has Lockdown Made Me A Better Parent?

I’ve never been particularly fussed about the “stay at home” part of “stay at home mother”.

Museums, playgrounds, cafés, sandpits, singing groups, forest schools, playdates, swimming lessons, bike rides; these were what I thought made you a good parent. Happy children were grown, I thought, out of a social compost. The busier you were, the more novel and varied your activities, the better. And yet, as I enter my third week of isolation, I’ve had to swallow the goose egg of my own misunderstanding. It turns out, all those people who whispered about bonding, about being present, about being led by your child, about paying attention may have been barking up a slightly better tree. Because, wary as I am to put it in writing, my son seems to be happy.

When my son was still just months old, a health visitor warned me not to let him spend too much time in a buggy, that he needed to move about, that it was good for him to be out of the house and around other children. She suggested I went to my local children’s centre, went for walks, met up with other parents. Rarely has one woman’s advice so radically influenced my life. From that moment on, I was on the move.

Which is why, as unlikely as it sounds, I am grateful for what lockdown has shown me. That spending time with your child, at home, for hours on end, with no distraction, is a huge privilege. We should value, thank, protect and pay properly all those who make it possible.

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