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Build a Fort
Leila Chalk • Jun 01, 2020
How to Cope - and build a fort for yourself.
There is a lot of pressure at the moment to crate (and curate!) screen free experiences for children. And yes, those experiences are important, but they are also causing endless anxiety in parents who feel that at the end of the “screen free experience” the child should have some new skill. That there should be Instagram worthy pictures and that each moment should be punctuated with constant laughter and joy. Times of anxiety simply don’t work that way. Instead we are always shifting between the need to just get another little bit of work done and feeling guilty about the things we do to keep the kids entertained (and therefore quiet).
Reflecting back on the last time I felt like the society around me was collapsing has given me some insight into this unique situation we are facing. When I was a kid, back in the 90s, ex Yugoslavia was in the middle of a civil war. As a child, your experience of such a mass sorrow is very different to that of an adult. We, as parents, should embrace that knowledge – the certainty that their point of view is different to ours- and adapt how we feel about our parenting through a pandemic. I call this period the fifth trimester.
My four (war tested!) tips for a calmer parenting journey during the fifth trimester and mass isolation are:
Build a Fort
- Sometimes, we should get out the blankets and the sheets and help the kids build a fort. We should sit in that fort with them, and realise that the feelings of wonderment and safety they are experiencing go both ways. They feed them, and in turn, feed us with calm and joy. There are ways to build a fort without going through the effort of actually building a fort, if you have woken up on a day where all you want to do is draw the blanket over your head and cry. If work is hard and money is tight and the line for JobSeeker is never ending then you need to know that building a fort does not always require physical effort (although it sure helps reinforce the idea). Instead, building a fort is about understanding that a sense of physical safety goes a long way to reducing the anxiety of children – and adults – that is caused by mass isolation and these constant shifting goal posts on how we should live our everyday lives. During the war, our Nana would help us build forts to create those safe spaces and moments of calm.
Dress Up
- Sometimes we all want to be someone else. During the war, before we moved into refugee and detention camps, we spent a lot of time creating characters by working out what clothes those people would own and wear. On the days where all you want to do is cry because your laundry pile is taller than your sanity, instead of folding the laundry, encourage the kids to start playing dress up instead. Get them to go through each pile and suggest the kind of adventures their dress up character would have. Get them to pack a suitcase for that dress up character – if they fold the clothes neatly, then all you have to do is put them back in the cupboard. If they leave a mess, well, there has been no change in your laundry dramas.
Plays
- Before the war started, there were many months of tension. As kids, we didn’t know what changed, except suddenly the radio and the TV were no go zones for our parents and caregivers. Instead, Nana would make us recite scenes from plays. And while it is easy to find plays online (or hunt down your copy of the Cursed Child) and get your kids to start acting, some days it feels too hard to get started. For those days, we know that watching a show, pausing the scene, and suggesting to the kids to show us what happens next, results in many effortless giggles. The chance to be silly is nice for them (and for you) and may get your creative juices flowing.
Cooking
- Food is essential and focusing on it during uncertainty can make people feel better. These days, there is a lot of pressure to cook things from scratch, and if you can push through that guilt you can find that there is something therapeutic about Pinteresting meals that you never plan on cooking. Don’t get me wrong, if you can cook with your kids and walk away unscathed, power to you. I do it sometimes when I feel like I have the mental capacity for mess. On days I don’t have that time (or the will), I reflect back on how we played with food even when it was scarce. In the camps when no more than half a slice of bread was guaranteed that day, the kids spent time designing our perfect meal. We made songs. We drew pictures.
- In Australia, we are mostly lucky enough not to have that kind of reverence for a meal you don’t get to eat. But the excitement about food is human and innate. I recommend you get your kids to play restaurant or café games. Encourage them to design menus, draw advertisements, make jingles, and if they are old enough to do so, get started on crafting the perfect hipster smashed avo.
Leila Chalk is the principal solicitor at Forty Four Degrees and the author of the Isolation Journal
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Earlier last month, over at Forty Four Degrees , we got all the lawyers together on Teams over a number of afternoons to just chat and create different LEGO masterpieces. It started, like anything in life, from a little inspiration and a little desperation. Talk of mindfulness is everywhere, the benefits are debated strongly, but it is one of those things that we can see working for ourselves - and it is never as obvious as right now, during lockdown. Melbourne lockdown feels like it is never ending. Everyone is tired, and that tiredness snowballs, so that each interaction in each day means that we are endlessly collecting little bit of sadness from each other. From our clients, and from the lawyers on the other side, and from our families and from the media. It multiplies and snowballs. One sleepless night, I thought it would be important to start the conversation about how mindfulness and positivity can also snowball. (I'm not talking about all the toxic positivity bullshit, but simply the attempt to connect and talk about the things that are working in keeping us sane). The next morning, I reached out to my team at work, I spoke to my friends, and I asked people to share one thing that had recently inspired them. My inspiration had come from my daughter, who would busily sit under my desk with her buckets of LEGO, finding calm in the daily task. That day, I also ordered boxes and boxes of LEGO to be delivered to each of my staff, and that is how our Brick mindfulness has begun. We hope all to see each other sooner rather than later, but at the latest, we are looking forward to our LEGO themed Christmas Party. If you have kids or adults in your life who are struggling, maybe journaling isn't their thing. Maybe yoga isn't their thing. But we keep trying, just in case little tiny bricks are their thing. The most exciting Harry Potter sets can be found here . Leila Chalk is a lawyer and founder of Forty Four Degrees , a boutique Melbourne law firm. She is the author of the Isolation Journal. *This blog post contains affiliate links.
Every lawyer has a different experience, but those of us who work for boutique practices and own our firms have an added layer of flexibility that makes work interesting. Sometimes that means that I am able to take off a morning for brunch, other times it means I am negotiating a dispute while dressed in a ballgown ready for a masquerade. I wanted to share this picture (and others) with other working mothers who may be considering starting their own business so that I can show them the real life examples of what the "working for yourself" lifestyle brings you. Some pictures are missing, of course. The ones where I was taking phone calls while breastfeeding, the ones where I was giving a presentation while eight months pregnant and in labour. Why are they missing? Because let us be honest here, my hair probably wasn't that great in them. And yes, there are moments that I have missed out on, but that is the reality of work (and not necessarily the reality of running your own business). I have been focusing recently on what it is that running the business means separately to what it means to work as a parent so that I can hunt down which moments are responsible for all my mothering guilt. The realisation: Working for myself gives me the freedom to offset the unfortunate reality of working as a mother. So, what are the major differences? Some people think that working for yourself is going to be more stressful because you care more. To that, I say, that everyone who works at my firm cares a lot about their work and their files. Yes, emotional boundaries are hard and finding ways to be off the clock is necessary. I am not sure I believe that those emotional boundaries are easier as an employee. Instead, they are either something you do, or something you do not do. What's more it is something you can learn to do. Is your journey going to be different? I think that really depends on what you actually find important and worthwhile, what you prioritise, and whether those priorities are things that bring you joy. I take great pleasure in the things that I do and the clients that I can help. When you are ready to take your business journey, check out my 10 minute business plan link over at Forty Four Degrees. Leila Chalk is the author of the Lost Chef, Kyoto with Kids, and the Isolation Journal. She runs Forty Four Degrees , a boutique Victorian law firm.