5 Things I Want Our Kids to Learn During Social Distancing

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During this time when our nation has come together to help fight COVID-19 through practicing social distancing, here’s what I want our kids to walk away learning.

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Let’s be real here: things are weird right now.

It’s like we are living the movie Groundhog Day and most days I’m not really sure what day it is at all. One day just seems to flow right into the next and as productive I’m trying to be during these times – I’m being far from it. My typically never-ending to-do lists for each day have shrunk in size by leaps and bounds. For instance, my only goals for today are to write this blog post and to go through Blake’s drawers and sort clothes so that we know what to keep and what needs to be donated to the Salvation Army. I might jump on the treadmill if I’m feeling up to it.

Oh – and catchng up on Good Girls and possibly the lasted episode of Little Fires Everywhere – if I can stay up late enough.

Branden is doing his Google Classroom work, so he doesn’t need too much over-seeing and Blake needs constantly entertained, as usual. Being a WAHM mom, I feel like I’ve prepared for these new interworkings of our household my whole life. But we are bored. We’re running low on shows to binge. We’re getting on each others nerves. And I have some major COVID-19 anxiety.

5 Things I Want Our Kids to Learn During Social Distancing

But when do we ever have this solid alone time as a family? Never. So during these weeks off of school while we are all here spending many, many hours with one another, there are some things I’m hoping our kids will walk away learning.

1. Realize how important family time is. For real.

We actually had a vacation planned during this time and cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak. So we’re all at home together for these weeks, Chris still taking his vacation days and we’re using them as wisely as we can and doing things together. These are prescious moments, you guys!

2. How to approach the world with a much more grateful heart.

Our kids are kind and grateful, however, sometimes I think that they don’t realize how lucky they are to have the things that they do. I know this is a tough thing to understand as a kid, though.

Earlier this week, someone posted a picture in our local town Facebook group of all the cars that were lined up to get free meals at the school. Our school district is doing this one day a week and families can take up to 5 days worth of meals per child at a time. This really opened my eyes to the reality of what is actually happening locally and how fortunate we are to be able to afford groceries for our family. I used this as an opportunity talk to Branden about this and I think because its something happening locally, he was able to understand in a simpler more relatable way.

3. How and why to really, truly, keep things clean.

We moved from a tiny NYC apartment to a big house in Ohio and at the start of week 2 of social distancing, things started to feel really small all over again. We’re trying to make sure that during this time our kiddos learn the art of cleaning up after themselves once and for all. #prayerhands

4. The importance of affection whenever you’re married.

I’ll admit that I’m not the most affectionate person. I’ve always talked to my husband about how important I think it is that the kids seeing us hugging and gasp – kissing sometimes. However, these past few years I’ve kinda been anything but. Daily life has caught up with me and I needed to be called out, which I was, and I’m super thankful for. Moving forward, our kids will see more of this and I hope it’s something that trickles forward into their own marriages someday.

5. How we keep things on a budget and that we actually have one.

I think that our kids have this idea that we have endless money. We do not, if you were wondering. Nope, there’s no money tree in our backyard, so we keep to a budget. And right now with things like our water, grocery and electric bill going through the roof from everyone being at home, we started speaking more aloud about how we’re keeping to a budget to get us through this time.