You can't have ice cream if you don't finish your pizza.

The new standards of parenting five months into a pandemic.

How do you measure success as a parent?

Is it giving your children everything they need, or everything they want? Is it raising them by a certain moral, ethical or religious code? Is it providing them with food, shelter, warmth and letting them figure the rest out? Perhaps—and I think this is closest to what I feel, but I don’t have to be consistent in my feelings and neither do you—it’s giving them a loving, supportive and safe environment in which to grow into functioning members of society.

Okay, now how do you measure success as a parent when society stops functioning?

Maybe I’m being a little hyperbolic in saying that, but we’re talking a difference of inches and not miles here. Society as we know it started buffering five months ago, and we’ve been waiting for it to start playing again ever since. We’re pawing blindly through our days, trying to keep ours heads above water and not lose control completely. I say this as someone who’s relatively fortunate, all things considered: I st…