From research, a map to explore the landscapes of love
An ongoing conversation around the importance to cultivate psychological flexibility, with a focus on parenting at times of Covid-19.
This post contains an adapted extract from the manuscript in press kindly shared by authors, ACT practitioners and researchers among whom Lisa Coyne and Kelly Wilson (Harvard Medical School, University of Mississippi).
The COVID-19 pandemic has confronted many parents with difficult choices.
"Parents may be dealing with the stress of going back and forth to work and the potential contamination of their home. Some may be dealing with increased demands of homeschooling their children while still trying to meet their own employment requirements. Some may have elderly parents whom they need to care for and ensure their safety. For parents of children with developmental delays, chronic emotional or behavioral difficulties, or other health challenges, the demands are further increased. As demands and parent stress increases and resources dwindle, children may also be placed in increased proximity of domestic abuse (Tolan, 2020).
In sum, parents may be faced with fear and uncertainty about the future and how to keep their families safe, while managing a collision of roles, responsibilities and expectations.
Many families are not only distancing from other people, they are distancing from everything that is familiar.
Psychological flexibility refers to the ability to recognize and adapt to situational demands, and to remain aware and open to the present moment such that one can recognize and shift behavior strategies as required by situational demands, and to engage in actions that are congruent with one’s deeply held values (Hayes et al., 2012; Kashdan & Rottenberg, 2010).
Self-care, as defined by the World Health Organization, refers to the practice of taking action to preserve or improve one's own health, especially during periods of stress; or “the ability of individuals, families and communities to promote health, prevent disease, maintain health, and to cope with illness and disability with or without the support of a healthcare provider” (World Health Organization, 2019).
“Small things matter” is an important principle for action, and informs the study of “kernels,” or fundamental units of behavioral influence that appear to underlie effective prevention and treatment for children, adults, and families (Embry & Biglan, 2008). Larger long term goals such as “Getting in shape,” “eating a healthy diet,” “being a better parent,” can be daunting.
Smaller steps may be more attainable.
Oftentimes, people may attempt to control things that are beyond control. Thus, it is important to help parents focus efforts on things that they can influence within the system of the family. With the understanding that everything interacts, this focus should aim towards those areas that may have the most impact. For example, sleep deprivation can have a troubling impact on appetite, social interactions, emotional response and immune function (Furman et al., 2019). A little bit of improvement in a single thing like sleep can also make a positive impact on these same areas.
Parents do not have to lift it all at once!
One of the obstacles to behavior change is that people become too focused on perfection when most often it is the pattern that matters. A donut on occasion has little health impact. Donuts all day every day, on the other hand, may be problematic. It is possible that parents may be insensitive to the long term effects of unhelpful patterns due to more immediate contingencies dominating their behavior: Patterson (1982 ) illustrated how parents quickly get pulled into coercive cycles with their child, due to the powerful (immediate) effects of punishment and negative reinforcement on parent and child behavior, despite long-term negative effects for both parent and child.
Mindful awareness of triggers to unhelpful patterns opens a space in which parents can choose to do something different, and potentially more helpful, for them and their child. We encourage parents to become aware of their behavioral patterns and to notice how those patterns are working for them, both in the short and long term.
Parents may then have the space to create new patterns of flexible, workable parenting behaviors over time.
When you take a moment with a child, and that moment becomes a pattern of such moments, it says something to the child. It says, “You are worth pausing over. You are interesting. Time with you is valuable. You matter.” Even if you are wildly busy with work or keeping house and home together, these small pauses, small hesitations, speak volumes. The moments of our lives go by in an instant, but what lasts is the stories we tell…
“Even when things got scary, I knew I was loved.”
Human beings survived and multiplied on the planet because we are super-cooperators (or ‘eusocial’; Wilson & Wilson, 2007). This sensibility is in every cultural tradition, though modern times have deemphasized it with the idea that we should be able to do things “on our own”. We encourage parents to seek and to offer help. Two are stronger than one. We encourage parents to care for themselves in their “out-loud voice” and to team up with a friend, even online. This breaks some cultural taboos against seeking help, but if parents adopt it, they give tacit permission for help-seeking and partnership in their social network. Join groups, make groups, foster, enrich, and appreciate the connections you already have. As an incredible bonus, our children learn an enormous amount from observing us.
When we take time to care for ourselves, our children see that and learn.
It may be unhelpful to frame parent self-care as an addition to their to-do list. That list is already too long and parents are already challenged and accountable in a thousand ways. Instead, it may be important to consider self-care as a quality of action: it can be an act of love and kindness.
To help parents see this, we suggest encouraging perspective-taking. It may be useful to encourage a person you know who is a parent to reflect on an act of love towards them by another. Encourage them to pause and recall those times, that person, and their demeanor. Essentially, encourage them to look at themselves through the eyes of a loved one. And you can try to encourage yourself doing the same.
That is the quality of action we are seeking in self-care".
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