This Winter Has Ruined My Parenting
Lessons learned while stuck in a Pennsylvania escape room
Over the past few months, the universe has hurled a seemingly endless supply of garbage our way. It’s been one thing after another, from political catastrophes to natural disasters to gnarly winter illnesses. We’ve been hit with:
The devastating California wildfires
The inauguration of a racist, misogynistic, narcissistic President and the confirmation of an alcohol-abusing military leader and an anti-science health secretary
Mass shut down of programs designed to reduce systemic barriers and promote inclusion for trans individuals; women; Black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American people; and people with disabilities
Unconstitutional attacks on birthright citizenship
The acquisition of our sensitive personal and financial information by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency
A dramatic shift in U.S. foreign policy that includes the dissolution of USAID, the alienation of key allies, and closer alignment with Russia
Threats to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education
A completely unprecedented seasonal flu season (and bonus… BIRD FLU!)
Four terrifying U.S. airplane disasters
I’m not listing these out to make you panic (yet again) — but, rather, to emphasize that we have all been dealing with a lot. Even if you haven’t been directly affected by these issues (yet!!), it’s been a whole lot to process. Perhaps the worst of it is the uncertainty: What will all of this mean for our country, our communities, our friends, our families, our kids? What will the downstream effects ultimately be, and how long will they last? Nobody knows, but the possibilities are terrifying.
During Covid, I said that the uncertainty was one of the hardest things to manage. We didn’t know how long the pandemic would last, how long kids would be out of school, how long it would take to get vaccines and if they would even work. The lack of information was horrifying and paralyzing. And everything was also changing so fast.
This winter feels similar — so much uncertainty, and so much rapid change. We’re all getting emotional whiplash, yet many of us also feel hopeless and impotent. I’m willing to bet you’ve had other bad things happen this winter on top of what’s on that list, too — many of my friends and loved ones are dealing with new chronic illnesses, deaths in the family, and other difficult experiences.
And yet on top of all of this, we still have to continue to parent. We must continue to do the hardest, most relentless job in the world. Somehow.
I don’t know about you, but I have not been doing it particularly well. The emotional reserve that I tap into when I need a little extra patience is just….. nonexistent right now. I’ve been snapping at my kids more than I’d like to admit. My brain and body feel frayed, like ropes that are about to unravel and split in half.
Earlier this week, though, I had a helpful epiphany, thanks to a somewhat mortifying escape room experience. My kids are off school for “winter break” (yayyyy) and on Monday, I took them to a massive resort in rural Pennsylvania with an indoor water park. While there, the kids begged me to do an escape room. I loved the idea of an escape room, so I said yes.
$75 dollars later — yes, that’s how you have to pay to be trapped inside a series of tiny rooms for thirty minutes with your children — we found ourselves in what was ominously called the “Wrath of Anubis.” We were supposedly trapped in a tomb and had to crack a series of hieroglyphic codes in order to escape and survive.
This would be an adventure, I said. This would be fun, I said.
It was not fun. It was weird and stressful. But the worst part was observing my parenting as it rapidly unraveled. Readers, I became an awful parent in those 30 minutes. I didn’t know how to solve the puzzles, so instead of helping, I stood around yelling at my kids. I instructed them to try various things and got mad when those things didn’t work. At one point my kids tried pressing a series of buttons in a specific order, but they kept messing up (I mean, of course they did, it was hard!) and I found myself loudly sighing each time they failed.
To be fair, I did have PMS, I was on day seven of a long solo parenting stretch, and I had a bad headache. BUT STILL. I was shocked and embarrassed by how poorly I handled myself in that escape room. And it was just a stupid escape room. It was supposed to entertain me, not spark an existential crisis.
Yet the experience did do something useful. It reminded me of what can stress can do to parenting. It reminded me that when we feel overwhelmed, hopeless, or confused, our reserves of patience and clearheadedness get depleted. We may start yelling more, being inconsistent, or not even really knowing what to do. That’s normal. That’s to be expected. I realized then that instead of judging myself, it would be far better to try to be compassionate with myself when this happened.
I know, I know — easier said than done. Self-compassion is a tough skill, and one I discuss a lot in my upcoming book Hello, Cruel World!. But one thing that can help is to take a step back and observe your feelings, as well as the kinds of situations that push your buttons. The goal is to turn your attention away from your mistakes, and instead acknowledge that you’re having a hard time. And when you consider all that 2025 has thrown at us so far, well, no wonder we have not been managing everything perfectly.
My escape room experience was, in a way, a microcosm of my broader winter 2025 parenting experience. I’ve been having a hard time, so I haven’t always made ideal parenting choices. The stress of the world is crushing right now; we are all human beings, and we can only handle so much.
So if you’ve had a tough parenting winter, please know that you’re not alone. It is really hard to parent calmly in a crisis. It’s really hard to manage all the little things when so many bigger things are overwhelming our bodies and our brains. None of us has an endless reserve of emotional regulation or patience.
So — and please be honest — how are you doing? How’s everything going? What’s helping you find some self-compassion in these tough moments? What’s making you lose your mind? Share in the comments — and remember that this is a judgment-free zone, as always.
I really appreciate this piece. Thank you. Can't wait to read your new book. <3
In answer to your question (how are you?): I'm exhuasted. Because I live in SW Michigan and in the 15 years I've lived here, I've never seen this much snow and cold. Yes also, the political onslaught. Yes also, mother of 4 kids who live at home. Yes also, economic stress due to my field of employment (DEI) being under attack and my income, as a result, being 1/4 of what it was this time last year. But seriously: winter.
Last week I listened to a podcast that was about surviving winter. I found the social psychologist interviewed in that episode quite lovely. She'd loathed winter all her life, but then moved to some incredibly cold nordic region to do anthropological analysis. The basic take-away of the podcast, for me, was this: these places actually do cultural adaptation during the winter that improves their wellness; therefore, if we can learn from them, shift our mindsets along similar lines, we too can experience enhanced wellness in winter.
Here's my beef: when it comes to power, causality and consequence (of any kind) there's just no comparing cultural adaptation and individual mindset shift. I know they're not entirely separate, like one can lead to the other and vice versa. And when it comes to winter, I can only do some many mind hacks to try to beat back my body's natural response to the season it's in. Same with my kids. They need more rest and sleep, not the same things. My middle kids (11 and 12) have missed a TON of school this winter; yes it's sickness but also, they just can't wake up in the morning. My youngest (4) has to be physically forced (i feel like an entire hypocrite re: values of bodily consent) out of the car and into preschool every day. I feel like I've run a marathon after leaving him with his teachers and walking down the hall toward the exit. I keep asking myself, as I hear him screaming and crying, is this the way a child's nervous system is supposed to orient to a new day at the threshold of an institution/social group?
There are social contracts I have as a parent: I keep my kids attending the institutions that steward their learning and growth and those institutions do the stuff of learning and growth with/for my kids. And I gotta say: those institutions, when they're not culturally adaptating to the seasons BECAUSE THERE'S NO MANDATE FROM THE CULTURE TO DO SO, make it incredibly hard for me to keep my side of the contract.
I don't want my children to learn that they've got to hack their bodies and minds natural responses to the seasons in order to be functioning citizens. Seriously fuck that. Like at what point do we realize that putting capitalism's rhythms over and against the planet's is choosing to be and stay in an escape room that's really just hell on earth?
I spent like 15 years doing politics as my job, and I developed an immense ability to compartmentalize. I'm so grateful I'm not required to think about politics 45-50 hours a week anymore, because my ability to keep my feelings about politics separate from my feelings about my life is now *almost* enough to hold it together as I read a more normal amount of news.
I'm more impatient with the adults in my life when they do want to talk about what's going on in the world and I kind of grit my teeth and nod and respond appropriately but mostly I want to say "I do not need to be taking on your emotions about this right now!"