How to Write During a Pandemic with a Toddler
Jessica McCaughey
Keywords: parenting
Categories: Parenting and Possibility in Impossible Times; (De)Constructing Writing
Figure 1: Small child in pajamas playing next to a dresser covered in jewelry.
Allow your child to try on every piece of jewelry you have ever owned. Ask how many fingers she can fit into your biggest rings. Show her how to hook earrings into her tangled hair. Urge her to run down the hall to the mirror over and over. Sit on the bed behind her drafting and respond, “So beautiful, as usual,” every time she asks how she looks.
Figure 2: The back of a child’s head as she sits in bed watching a cartoon on a laptop.
Stream educational programming. Then when she doesn’t like that, stream whatever will buy you time in eight-minute chunks. Learn to compose on your phone in the Notes app even though you hate it. Dictate quietly using the voice-to-text feature until the smaller voice in your lap says, “I can’t hear the bear, Mama.”
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Figure 3: Small child in pajamas snacking in a living room.
Commit the cardinal sin of feeding toddlers: let her watch TV during meals. Sit a few feet away, frantically trying to find that article in Zotero, and only get up to fetch her more hummus.
Figure 4: Toddler in diaper scribbling on a chalk wall.
Hastily paint a chalkboard wall in the dining room and sit on the floor beside it, reading the submission requirements of a journal. Decide the chalk is probably non-toxic so it’s not that big a deal that her tongue is white when you look up.
Figure 5: Small child standing on a ladder in a garage while an older man smiles and steadies her.
If at all possible, send the child away for a day or two at a time to her grandparents’ house. In every photo you receive, she will either be eating an ice cream sundae or balancing treacherously on a ladder. Write back, “Looks like fun!” and then stay up all night making notes toward the chapter that is due in two days.
Figure 6: Toddler in pajamas face-down on a rug.
Be sure to count reading (and crying) as productive activities toward writing.
Figure 7: Toddler on a deck playing with toys and other items covered in wet sand and mud.
Accept messy play in a way that never seemed possible before, as you learn that all of the activities that last more than five minutes apparently require a bath afterward. Assume it’s not a problem that there is now dirt (and yogurt and applesauce and granola bar crumbs and a very small amount of vomit) between the keys of your university-issued laptop.
Figure 8: Toddler laying in lap of an adult on a couch.
At some point, just kind of stop limiting screen time all together. Stop cleaning too.
Figure 9: Facetime screenshot of woman in glasses in small frame and a bearded man cringing as a diapered child in a tutu climbs onto his head.
When it’s your turn to work, sequester yourself upstairs in one-hour blocks. No one will bother you up there.
Figure 10: Small child’s legs extending from large purple clothes hamper on the floor.
Be sure to take some alone time to recharge and reflect.
Figure 11: Small child drawing in marker on a purple cast of an adult leg.
Be creative in finding new ways for your child to develop fine motor skills while you Facetime with your collaborator.
Figure 12: Small child in pajamas smiling in a bed and holding a Clifford book.
Hand your child a favorite book and pretend she will look at it for more than 15 seconds while you try to make it through a dense chapter about grounded theory.
Figure 13: Adult man with beard laying next to a toddler in pajamas, both asleep.
When the pandemic affects your child such that she stops being able to sleep unless you or your partner is physically touching her, order a floor mattress and take shifts. Instead of sleeping alone in bed when it is his turn with the child, stare blankly at Reviewer Two’s comments.
Figure 14: Dark bathtub with glow sticks floating around a small child’s shadowed legs.
Look to Instagram Moms for activities, like glow stick baths! It might buy you some time, or you might spend 20 minutes yelling, “Shit, shit, shit, stop splashing the computer!”
Figure 15: Small child in pajamas scribbling on paper with a purple marker.
When your child says to you, “I’m sorry, but I have to work. I’m very busy,” laugh-cry but also be grateful for the six minutes of proofreading you get done.
Figure 16: Small child climbing from the back seat to the trunk of a car.
If you’re afraid your child will be coughed on at the playground and ultimately catch COVID and die, turn your 2012 Honda into a jungle gym, and try to cut 653 words from your article from the passenger’s seat.
Figure 17: Small child in pajamas sprawled across the lap of an adult, watching television.
Eventually, stop writing, or rather, stop attempting to write and just watch Frozen with her over and over again. And The Aristocats. And Bluey and Clifford and Mira, Royal Detective.
Figure 18: Small child grinning while eating a pink popsicle in a backyard.
Eat popsicles out back. Pray and hope and try to manifest that next year will be better. When it seems as though it really will not be, sob and then go back online for more activities, more hot takes on how it’s okay that your house is so gross right now, and more healthy snack ideas that you can make in the shape of a snowman that will require at least six minutes of her time to place the eyes on and eat while you try and try and try to be “productive.”
Bio
Jessica McCaughey is an Assistant Professor in the University Writing Program at George Washington University, where she teaches academic and professional writing. Her research focuses on the transfer of writing skills from the academic to the professional realm. She lives in Vienna, Virginia, with her husband and their now-four-year-old daughter.