Be Careful What You Say, Your Kids Are Listening | Conversations With the Browns

The conversations you should and should not be having with your kids about the 2020/2021 school year 

This is a follow-up episode to our podcast “4 Tips To Help Parents Navigate the 2020/2021 School Year.” In normal circumstances, kids pick up on every juicy tidbit we talk about in front of them. Especially now with the stress and angst of the school year unknowns, it can be easy to express our fears, doubts, and bad feelings out loud and not realize that our kids are hearing every word we say. They are hearing our words and taking on those stresses and attitudes as well. This episode is about how we can best communicate our feelings about the 2020/2021 school year without affecting our kids negatively.  

Have you ever heard the phrase, “More is caught than is taught?” Kids may be terrible listeners when you ask them to clean their rooms, but they can be great listeners when you don’t really want them to be listening at all. Kids may be catching the wrong intentions from the conversations you have around them. 

There are more than a few uncertainties about the 2020/2021 school year. As adults who have kids going to school this year, there is a lot to process, and a lot you may be having trouble processing. It is important and totally acceptable to process your fears and feelings out loud, but should you be processing these things in front of your kids?

The different ways adults and kids will process the challenges

It’s important to have open conversations with your kids about the realities of the 2020/2021 school year. No matter what they are doing for school, there will likely be a lot of changes. It will even look a lot different from the distance learning that happened at the end of the last school year. We can’t be dishonest about these changes. Kids are smart, but it will be more beneficial to prepare them as much as possible. 

But as adults who need to process the hard choices that need to be made for the 2020/2021 school year, it can be easy to let your feelings flow from you to your kids. You may know that you can get through the struggle ahead, but you just need to vent your frustrations about it in order to process it. It might not be helpful for kids to see you be out of control with your feelings though. 

You may need commiseration with other adults in the same situation. You need the ability to talk to other adults without impacting kids with a negative view that you did not intend them to have about school. Kids need the truth, but you need to engage with kids in a responsible way. You can express your fears in a healthy way with kids around. Processing hard things can be done in different spaces and in different ways with consideration of who is listening. 

Asking for help, so you can help your kids

It’s okay to take time to process away from the kids in your life. Value the process you need to go through. You will probably need to ask for help. You may need to ask another adult in your life to watch your kids, so you can have time to process your feelings away from them. You may need to choose a time when your kids are not in your space to hear you process your feelings about the school year. 

Some processing in front of your kids is okay. It’s okay for kids to know that adults don’t know it all and that they also have hard times. Kids need to know that they can do hard things too. But it will be harder for them to believe that they are capable of doing hard things if they hear from you that going back to school this year will be terrible. Think about the person who is going back to school. It’s not you.  

Kids are a driver of who your family is and your family values. They can contribute. Listen to your kids. They may be scared and confused about the 2020/2021 school year too. But do your hard processing away from little ears. Do the work of processing where you’re at, so you can be present for your kids. Be intentional about taking care of yourself, so that you can show up as the responsible grown person your kids need. This is a powerful way to help your kids learn how to cope when life is out of their control.  

We want to hear from you. Do you find this episode helpful for you? Do you have ideas and tips that can help other parents process the challenges of the 2020/2021 school year? 

 Send us your questions and your thoughts. Let’s continue this conversation.   

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