Parenting During a Pandemic and Other Tough Times

 Kara Hoppe, MA, MFT

PACT Level 2

PACT Note to Parents: For guided practice and more skills to bring to your partnership, register for Kara’s Win-Win Parenting: Better Partners Make Better Parents, a new PACT workshop for couples, Saturdays online, April 23–May 21. 


When I read articles such as “Parenting in 2021? ‘Not Great, Bob!’” (Grose, 2021) and “Every Parent I know Wants to Walk into the Sea Now” (McCombs, 2022), I feel seen. Even “Parents are losing their minds. Time to watch ‘Encanto’ again” (Niazi, 2022) makes my soul laugh. As a pregnant person parenting a small boy during the pandemic and struggling to maintain my sanity — let alone balance — knowing I’m not alone is like having a warm cup of milk for my sleepless nights. 

Some days our son Jude is safe enough at preschool, and my husband Charlie and I are able to work, catch up on folding the laundry, do a little...

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Collaboration in the Co-Parenting Partnership

By Aurisha Smolarski, MA, LMFT 

PACT Level 2 Therapist
www.aurishasmolarski.com


 No one said parenting was easy, let alone co-parenting with an ex.

Learning how to co-parent is complicated. It’s a partnership full of emotional undertones and adjustments. Being divorced or separated and having to juggle the co-parenting realities adds layers of coordination and factors to consider.  

Personal and romantic priorities shift, as do the feelings and perceptions about your parenting partner. One thing remains unchanged: a responsibility to ensure that each of your children feels safe and can thrive within the changes and new situations they encounter. 

Experiencing divorce and living in two homes are difficult enough for a child, but it’s the way in which the parents handle their divorce and work together on behalf of the child that creates long-term impact.

A break in the family structure can be incredibly destabilizing for a child. The transition...

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Joysticks and Controllers: Using PACT With Kids Who Use Video Games Obsessively

Jason Brand, LCSW
PACT Level II
Berkeley, CA
www.jasonbrand.com

Video games used to have joysticks—simple black boxes with a red trigger button and a stick for movement. Today they have controllers that are multi-buttoned, provide sensory feedback, and obey spoken commands. In many families, I see a longing to return to the joyful days of the joystick. In these families, the controller has become far more than just a way to manipulate video games on the digital screen; it is the nexus of a power struggle for healthy development in the child.

Michael, age fourteen, was caught up in this kind of family drama. Unlike kids who act out and do dangerous things outside the home, Michael was “acting in” by refusing to do anything away from the digital screen. His parents had lost control. They swung between desperate extremes. In one moment, they were gently delivering dinner to the computer because he refused to come to the table and eat. In the next, they were violently...

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The Making of a Third

Sara Slater, MSW, LICSW

Seattle, WA

PACT Level III candidate

[email protected]

 

Apparently the pregnant couple in my office didn’t want to talk about preparing for baby at all. Instead, in the first minutes of their first session, Meg launched into her frustrations about their house and the dog and Rob’s work and their finances. Her hands were folded protectively over her belly, while Rob remained silent, leaning back in his chair, arms folded behind his head. The more she escalated, the calmer he appeared. Neither looked much at the other; both frequently turned to me, with a look that said, “See what I’m dealing with?” No one mentioned the baby, except to answer that she was due in about six weeks.

So, what was happening here? Instead of nestling into their couple bubble, joyfully anticipating the baby to be, or supporting each other through fluctuating anxieties and preparations, they were retreating into attacking, blaming, and...

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Find Your Mentor Couple

by Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT,
stantatkin.com

One of my mentors, Marion Solomon, introduced me to the brilliant idea of mentor couples. Also known as marriage mentors and sponsor couples, this concept originated in the church setting but is becoming increasingly popular. Basically, a mentor couple is one you admire and and look to for guidance. I was impressed that Matt and Marion Solomon have at least one mentor couple. Tracey and I proudly claim two mentor couples. One of course is Matt and Marion. Their relationship is the epitome of secure-functioning. They protect each other in private and public; they most definitely maintain a secure couple bubble; they tell each other everything; neither would ever threaten the relationship or be threatening to the other; they take one another’s distress seriously and provide prompt relief to each other; they know each other and most definitely have each other’s owners manual; and they are a lighthouse to other couples....

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