It’s the last day of my paternity leave - we had our second child in July, and I’ve been enjoying a very, very generous 16 week leave that our company instituted this year. This means that I’ve been spending a serious amount of time at playgrounds recently. But, because 2020 is the year that it is, planning out our visits has required a lot more thought than normal.

Our oldest child is 2 1/2 now. As she started to become more mobile last year she became very comfortable climbing to the top of jungle gyms and sliding back down. She was in a daycare class with nine other one-year-olds and she loved her outdoor time with them (we received a daily dose of photos showing it). On a family vacation in Berlin last summer, we visited playgrounds at least once a day (and I can say, they really know how to build them there). One of my favorite photos from the year is on a warm day last November, showing her tearing down a slide, a giant grin on her face and her hair floating in the wind.

You could sum up our rules for playgrounds last year as follows:

Have fun, and be careful not to hurt yourself.

Our biggest concern were the wood chips on the ground of the park closest to our house, as she had a tendency to try to eat them.

This year, needless to say, has been very different. We pulled her from her daycare when the pandemic struck in March and have been keeping her home since then, getting by with help from grandparents at first, and now enjoying family time during our leave. With my wife pregnant and my parents staying with us we were extra cautious at the start of the pandemic. We kept largely to ourselves save for walks with a few close family and friends; playgrounds were taboo through the spring and summer. Our new rules were:

Playgrounds are dangerous germ factories! Avoid them.

When our son was born in July and my paternity leave started, my wife and I started to practice “parallel parenting”: she took care of our little one and I spent my days with our daughter. We kept ourselves busy with lots of walks, bike rides and time outside, but still avoided contact with other kids. When we’d pass by our neighborhood parks, she’d look wistfully at kids playing there and ask if she could join them, and I’d gently explain that we couldn’t at the moment. Gradually though, we started to relax a bit. Our son got his first round of shots and my wife started to feel strong again. We began to see a few people socially for food and drinks in our back yard. Going into shops started to feel safer as we saw our community begin to open up again. And in September, we relaxed our rules:

Playgrounds are okay, but do your best to keep your distance from other kids!

I began to take our daughter back to the neighborhood park, but continued to steer her away from other kids as best I could. We’d try to go during off-hours when the parks were less crowded, and stick to the parts that were unoccupied. But it’s pretty difficult to keep a curious, chatty five year old away from your kid in a polite way, and contact was inevitable. I also noticed that our cautious attitude had started to rub off on our daughter. That confident little girl who flew down the slides last year had been replaced by a much more careful person who would only go down them if she could sit on my lap. Surrounded by other little friends at daycare, she now took a cue from me and shied away from other kids, preferring to keep to herself if at all possible.

This all made me sad. I know kids change and that she might very well have hit this period of shyness in normal times, but I couldn’t help but feel that the isolation we’d been enforcing on our family had started to impact her personality and sense of self-confidence. Fortunately, as we were starting to wrestle with this, it began to feel safer to relax. Cases were falling in Denver, the weather was still nice, and it began to feel a bit less crazy to spend time around others. We made friends with other families in our neighborhood and began to have outdoor playdates. I visited playgrounds with our daughter more often, and even brought our little son, who’d sleep happily in his stroller in the shade. Our new rules were:

Have fun again! Mom and dad should keep their masks on, but it’s okay to play with strangers.

I watched as our daughter started to open up. She now flies down slides without needing a hand. She’s still a bit shy around other kids (this is probably just who she is). But I’ve noticed that I can lead the way and show that it’s safe to talk to others. She tends to relax after I do this and lets herself enjoy other people’s company. We’ve avoided saying “Oh, our daughter is shy”, and just gently nudged her towards having more interactions. This has all translated into more confidence, and more moments where the fun, outgoing little girl we know at home shows her face outdoors.

Of course, within weeks of implementing these new rules, she came down with her first fever since March. Fortunately it only lasted a day and no one else in the house got sick. But it was a little reminder that our isolation had been working, and we were opening ourselves up to more risk with our new attitude. And just as we started to confront that, the weather started to turn cold, and cases of COVID started to climb rapidly again in Denver.

We’re all trying to figure out what “normal” should look like during these crazy times. Something my wife and I have found helpful is to avoid judging others who seem to be taking more (or fewer) risks than us. We’re also trying to remember that, as long as this may last, it’s still temporary. And, while our safety is most important, we do need to continue living our lives and help our children live theirs. With that in mind, we have some new favorite images of this year!