This has been a hard year.\u00a0 Fortunately, I am still employed, however, I am struggling being separated from extended family, friends and social outlets like my Friday soccer league. Remote work and school are hard, and it has been challenging to focus on video calls, while going through a pandemic, recession and wildfires affecting Northern California. Our day to day reality is much different from 6 months ago.\u00a0 Many people are going through worse however, and we are lucky.\u00a0 We have identified 4 Cs as succesful strategies for resilience; control, coping, connections, and contributions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our three children were on multiple sports teams, and our weekends were incredibly full with sports and social activities.\u00a0 Last spring and summer we were out of town 12 weekends in a row. All that came to a halt with shelter-in-place restrictions.\u00a0 Working from home, along with online school has many challenges. We battled over space, over computer access, and for wireless bandwidth.\u00a0 We all are tired of each other; though my daughters had the biggest battles. Sharing a room was fine when we were barely home, now the fighting was nonstop. ‘Get out of my space!’\u00a0 ‘Do not touch my stuff!’\u00a0 ‘Stop singing!\u00a0‘\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then a close family member was diagnosed with lung cancer. Metastasized through his body, it is treatable, however incurable.  This person is incredibly important to me, and the diagnosis is a devastating blow.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resilience is adapting to adversity and making it through.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a family, we made plans to readjust our lives to meet the new reality.  We set some priorities, such as dinner together every night, and focusing on keeping ourselves safe from COVID 19.  Another is for my wife and I to show our children how to develop strategies to meet life where it finds us.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the strategies we use are identifying what each one of us as an individual needs to take control<\/strong> of our situation, and use coping<\/strong> strategies to adjust to our new realities. Other people are incredibly important to build resilience, through social connections<\/strong> to get us through until the next day, as well as contributing<\/strong> to others to help them get through theirs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each one of us took a different strategy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For my son, he runs, every day, for 5- 10 miles.  It is his release and coping strategy.  He is on his school\u2019s track team, which is also his connection to a larger social network. He will be ready when sports start again, someday<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My youngest daughter has scheduled her day to the minute, making sure she can get in her reading, exercises and of course her HGTV time.  She uses her daily schedule to control her time and make sure she gets all her work completed everyday. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For my middle daughter, she needed more independence and to take control of her space. Towards this end we renovated the basement so she could have her own room. A true extrovert, she regularly has social distance meetups with her friends, and does a lot of facetime calls to keep her social connections. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I took on many house projects and baking more, and my wife is deeply involved in contributing to causes she feels strongly about through her work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through taking control of our situations, we are making a difficult situation better.  This year has been hard, and is not over yet.  As parents, our job is to support our children to become functioning adults who can make a positive contribution to society. Through this Shelter-In Place We might be losing opportunities to learn, missing out on going to events, and not seeing those most important to us other than on video calls, however through this we can build up our character, adapt to our new circumstances and learn what resilience is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This has been a hard year, however I am grateful for the lessons our family have learned to get through it.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This has been a hard year.\u00a0 Fortunately, I am still employed, however, I am struggling being separated from extended family, friends and social outlets like my Friday soccer league. Remote work and school are hard, and it has been challenging to focus on video calls, while going through a pandemic, recession and wildfires affecting Northern … <\/p>\n

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