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Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC and now to our calls from parents, psychotherapist, or anyone else on how you're dealing with the prospect of living with COVID lockdown rules through the winter and through the holidays. 646-435-7280 and Caroline in Fair Lawn. You're on WNYC. Hi, Caroline. Thanks for calling in.

Caroline: Hi, I am so excited. I'm a big fan of your show. Can you hear me?

Brian: I can hear you fine. Are you on speakerphone? If you could pick up a handset, it would be better.

Caroline: I'm on with my speaker-- No, I'm not on speaker.

Brian: Proving that you are in one of the categories that we explicitly invited, parents with children at home.

Caroline: Yes. I have three boys age eight, six, and three. My plan for the winter is to be ready to go outside and to be properly dressed and we're very [unintelligible 00:01:06] . We live in the part of New Jersey that we have access to parks and wonderful neighbors. I'm very thankful for that. I think the biggest question for my family is whether or not together will go to the grandparents' for the upcoming holidays because they're quite elderly and quite frail. That's where we're at the moment. Thank you so much for your show and all that you do for so many listeners.

Brian: You're going to have as many winter play dates as you can. You're going to bundle them up.

Caroline: Yes, outside. That'd be outside because I think that being out in the fresh air and being able to be very active with three boys is essential for my survival and their survival.

Brian: How are you going to decide on your parents, do you think?

Caroline: I don't know. Whether we're able to find a place where they can say and we just gather outside for-- maybe get us heating lamps or if they quarantine before coming and we quarantine before coming-- We have two sets of grandparents. I don't want to upset any side either.

Brian: Right. Just in case they're listening. Grandparents, Caroline loves you. She got your best interests at heart. Thank you for calling in and starting us off and good luck to every generation in your family. She mentioned the heating lamps, listeners. Maybe you're one of the many people who've bought a fire pit. Have you seen that those are selling? I know somebody in Brooklyn who has a fire pit in the backyard, they have a little backyard living in Brooklyn, a fire pit grows in Brooklyn. Are you planning on hosting backyard bonfires even if you live in the city? We know that restaurants are buying outdoor heating units. They're hard to get for individuals probably because restaurants are buying them up so outdoor dining can continue and some restaurants won't have to go out of business as a result. That's a whole other technical fix to some of the coping here. Ann in Fairfield, you're on WNYC. Hi, Ann. Thanks for calling.

Ann: Hi, I am both a psychotherapist and a mother of two children and I'm living this experience personally and clinically in my own private practice. I work with children and young adults and some parents of young children and luckily we live in a place where people can go outside whenever they want even on lockdown but I think that psychologically, especially for mothers who are-- this is a conversation we've all been having now, who are not working full-time and providing benefits yet we are working a lot, we are the ones that stay home with the children and have to provide the entertainment, so it's tough. I also need my own playtime. I need my neighbor visits and glasses of wine. It is a daunting feeling that just come this winter, it's going to be less conducive to sitting outside of enjoying that time with neighbors and friends. I think that we can all accept together that it's anxiety-provoking, but even five, 10 minutes here and there, walking around the block with your dog, with the neighbor, with a friend, is worthwhile.

Brian: There's one psychotherapist coping mechanism. Even if you can't be out for hours, like maybe you could in the warmer months, if you go outside, even for a short period of time, it could be psychologically good for you.

Ann: Yes.

Brian: What about for yourself and your kids? I don't know what age your child or children are. Are you figuring out Halloween? Are you figuring out Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, whatever you celebrate?

Ann: Yes. We've been talking about Halloween probably for the last six weeks. I have a seven-year-old and a four-year-old and we have decided that if virus count continues to be low, which it is in Connecticut, we can keep it really local on the block, run up and down the street together. Maybe have some pre-packaged trick or treating bags for each kid on the block. If in the next few weeks we see a surge, we're going to do a indoor or our house backyard family candy scavenger hunt, that's our plan.

Brian: Nice.

Ann: Then for Hanukkah, luckily we are-- I shouldn't say luckily, but being that we celebrate Hanukkah that time of the year is less fraught for us and we have some family very locally, so we'll just play it by ear.

Brian: I guess the one thing about Halloween is everybody's already used to wearing masks.

Ann: Wow. If you read the guidelines, our Halloween mask does not account for-- it's not a replacement of a face mask.

Brian: That's a good point. Then you have to tell your kids to wear a mask under their mask.

Ann: Exactly, right.

Brian: Ann, thank you so much. Good advice for others and thanks for sharing what you're doing with yourself and your own family. Anthony in Suffolk County. You're on WNYC. Hi, Anthony.

Anthony: Good morning. How are you today?

Brian: Good. How are you doing? Thanks for calling.

Anthony: I'm doing great. I fall into the everyone else category. I'm not a parent of young kids. I have children, but they're grown. I'm lucky enough that one of them is living at home with us right now. We had both of them for the summer, which was really nice. For the holidays that you're talking about, that's an important topic. Right now what we're working on is waking up a system so that we can have kids come to the house and get candy for Halloween and maintain social distancing. That's the project that we're focusing on right now just to go through one holiday at a time.

Brian: Can I ask how you're doing that? Are you setting up some kind of no touch system where you leave things outside? How are you doing that?

Anthony: Yes, I've discovered many times in my life that I'm not a builder. I can't construct the catapults or the Rube Goldberg thing that I would like to construct in my head. What we're going to do is something simple that people can follow. It's just parking a car in the driveway with the trunk facing out and that's where the decorations are and the candy and everything is in the trunk. When people come up, we hit the remote, the trunk pops open. They take what they're going to take and there's a little sign that'll ask them to close the trunk till the next family comes along.

Brian: That's pretty good, nice little technical fix. Then you have the honor system like, okay, we hope they really only take two.

Anthony: Yes, the honor system. We'll go check on it periodically to make sure that isn't wiped out and there's nothing left after the first five minutes. The people in our neighborhood are good people, so I'm sure that's not going to be too much of a problem.

Brian: You wanted to go on then from Halloween to the next holidays, right?

Anthony: Thanksgiving, that's going to be a remote Zoom type of meal. We take Dr. Fauci seriously. When he comes on and says he's not seeing his family for the holidays, that weighs pretty heavily. That's how we're going to play it. We've got elderly grandparents that we're just not seeing these days and that's going to have to continue for a while.

Brian: How about for yourself with your own friends, especially since you're not raising kids anymore, it sounds like? Are you [unintelligible 00:09:08] partnering up with certain friends, asking a few friends to commit not to seeing any other friends, and hanging out indoors with a select few or anything like that?

Anthony: No. I don't know if it's my own paranoia or if it's legitimate concern, but I don't think that we are able to rely on people's promises that, "Oh, I'm safe. I don't go anywhere so it's safe for me to come over." I'm not buying it. I think that's one of the problems is why it's still spreading the way it is. People think, "Oh, the people I know are okay." Then those social gatherings are literally are being the death of us. The deaths keep racking up and somehow the message still isn't sinking in to the level that I think it should.

Brian: Anthony, thank you very much. Anthony raises an interesting issue of trusting your friends who say, they're only potting up with you. There was a great piece on Kai Wright Show and I recommend you to the Sunday night, six o'clock hour on WNYC where we have another live talk show now, The United States of Anxiety with Kai Wright. Kai had a piece that was-- some of it was a confessional by this woman about how she has potted up with her friends. They've got their bubble. We're not going to see other friend's in-person so we know at least we can hang out and it's going to be safe and then they violate it and then they feel guilty and then they confess or they don't confess to the people who they're potting up with and weren't supposed to be exposing themselves to anyone. Then they feel guilty and they go back to the good behavior and then they do it again because the temptation is so great just to be with somebody else. Go listen online to Kai Wright, The United States of Anxiety from this past Sunday night, if you want to hear that, but it's an example of the complexities that Anthony there was afraid of, of potting up with certain friends on the condition that they don't pot up with other people who are outside your bubble. Dr. Ellen in Manhattan, calling in. Hello, Dr. Ellen, you're on WNYC.

Dr. Ellen: Hi, Brian, how are you?

Brian: Good, how are you?

Dr. Ellen: It's good to speak with you. I'm doing great. I love this topic. I am the founder of an organization called Motherhood Association. We've been buzzing about your topic a lot. We have two name suggestions that we're telling our clients about. One is, think about what work, don't keep focusing about what you can't do for Halloween, but we have a lot of suggestions on what you can do. The suggestion is as parents, we usually focus primarily on what we can do to make our kids happy, but in order to get through the winter and the holidays and life, I keep reminding the parents, we also have to think about what makes the parents happy. For Halloween, for example, we usually think about what costumes the kids want to be or what characters they want to be. I tell them, our parents, what makes you happy for Halloween? Do you like costumes or do you like decorations or are there art projects that you can do? We have some recommendations that parents can do with their kids. Really the goal is not just to focus on making the kids happy, which all parents want to do, but we have to remember that we need to be happy as parents as well. In fact, at Motherhood Association, we have a sheet that we're preparing, a fun sheet for Halloween, that when our website servicing is done, we'll be offering that if you want us to make that available to you. I think that, again, the focus is on art projects, decorations. By now, we're experts in virtual activities. We can have virtual parties with kids and their friends and give everybody a chance to show what's their costume and express their fun, their joy of Halloween.

Brian: Nice. Do you have one more concrete example you want to give maybe of self-care for parents while they're taking care of their kids?

Dr. Ellen: Absolutely. We easily get stressed and exhausted. Think about the things that really bring the calm to you. Does meditation or yoga or gratitude practice or journaling, even if its five minutes at a time or taking three minutes for deep breaths, just to bring some calm to you.

Brian: Dr. Ellen, thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Great input. Alma in Montclair. You're on WNYC. Hi, Alma.

Alma: Hi. Thanks for your show. Love it.

Brian: Thank you.

Alma: I have four kids so I have a lot of different perspectives about all the different issues that are coming up but I do have one son who has a disability, he's 16 and he's in a special needs school. One of the issues that we're dealing with is that attending school is optional. He is only one of two students who are remote and the rest of the class is in-person. He can't really rationalize and understand why we're keeping him home. It's truly a constant discussion with a lot of upset, a lot of crying. This is an extra challenge that we're dealing with, that it's not everyone doing it, so he doesn't understand it. He feels it's not fair and I know that a lot of other students are feeling this way in the disability community. I also want to speak to children who can't wear masks because of sensory issues and other issues, whether they're very young and especially in the disability community, kids with autism are really struggling because they can't go out at all because they can't abide by all of these important safety rules. The parents are extra isolated because of the children. I just want to give a shout out to the entire population, if someone who has a child with a significant disability to really reach out to them. You may not be able to have social contact with them, but just see what the parents might need, because the doctor was just saying, Ellen, the parents we need help. This is an extra burden for the disability community, the families, because we are more isolated. On that subject, a lot of pods are happening and social. You were just mentioning about the groups that come together. Everybody's in a pod and they commit to being safe, but a lot of people don't want kids with disability in those pods because of hygiene habits with the inability to stay safe and to understand the safety. Again, that's extra isolating for families of kids with disabilities. If you can reach out and help in some other way, if it's not in a way to put them in your pod, to help the parents with shopping or anything at all, that could lighten their load, that would be great. If I could just say one more thing. Gaining weight is a real issue, especially for kids with disabilities. There are a lot of preexisting conditions that make weight gain more common or easy weight gain because of low muscle tone. Being held inside and not getting the exercise, even just walking to school is a really big issue. I have a therapist and I have a company called Take Back the Kitchen, which helps people with their cooking obstacles. I'm finding that this is really an issue for parents, especially again, of kids with disabilities, because we're home all-day and there's a lot of room for snacking and not being distracted and a lot of boredom eating. It's really important to be learning how to cook if you did cook before because when we come out of this, people are joking about the COVID-15 or the COVID-19 that people are gaining. This is going to exacerbate a lot of people's preexisting medical conditions and also for kid's social issues, if they come out of this quarantine weighing 20 more pounds. It's really important to focus on healthy cooking, especially this winter, when we're really locked inside and it's going to be really fun to bake non-stop- [crosstalk]

Brian: I'm glad you brought that up-

Alma: - people aren't thinking about.

Brian: - and brought up the seriousness of it because you're right, people joke about the COVID-15. It's a reference for those of you don't know, like when you go away to college for the first time and you've got these buffets in the dorms to eat at every meal, people gain what they call the Freshman 15. This is the COVID-15 and people joke about it. I actually also know some single people who have lost weight during COVID, because they're not going out to eat as much. They're winding up cooking more for themselves than they used to before. They're eating more healthily than they used to and have actually lost a few pounds. They tend to be single people and without kids who aren't already cooking at home a lot but I'm glad you raised this as the serious issue that it is for parents in general and particularly for kids with certain disabilities that are conducive to weight gain. I'm glad you put that out there, just hearing it. It's probably going to help some people cope with having to deal with it. Thank you for all that you put on the table there, Alma. We really appreciate it.

Alma: Thank you.

Brian: Louisa in Morningside Heights, you're on WNYC. Hi, Louisa.

Louisa: Hi, thanks for taking my call. We're taking a group approach. We have a one-and-a-half year old and a three-and-a-half-year old and really for any of the upcoming holidays that you would normally be surrounded by people for, we're trying to keep it within my older son's school communities. He goes to a nursery school. There are 10 kids there. For Halloween, for example, I just spoke to the head of school and she said, go ahead and organize what I was thinking of which is Saturday's Halloween this year. The families dress up, the kids dress up, and we're just in the field and we can do our trick or treating there. They're three and four years old, they don't necessarily know that that's different. Then for Christmas, we have obtained a Santa suit. My son turns four a week before Christmas. Again, we'll invite the nursery school kids to a field and one of my actor friends will dress up as Santa. Obviously, no one's going to be sitting on his lap, but there's going to be Santa's there. He's going to be having candy and they can write little letters for what they want. We figured out those two things so far, and we're figuring out the rest.

Brian: Yes, you're way ahead of everybody else with that Christmas plan. I think you're way ahead of everybody else anyway. That's pretty good.

Louisa: You never know in New York.

Brian: You never know. Right there in Manhattan, where it's not like some of the other callers who've been in the suburbs and have houses with yards. You've really got to figure out your common spaces, right?

Louisa: Absolutely. In Morningside Heights, we have no shortage of green space. We are very, very lucky up here and we plan on using it to the fullest.

Brian: Louisa, thank you very much for your call, and thanks to all of you who called in. Hopefully, this was helpful to everybody to just have the space to share anxieties and trepidation and a lot of solutions that so many of you have put on the table for living with COVID rules in the winter months. Thanks to all of you who have called in.

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