Lockdown prompts showdown
Q What do I do when my adult daughter thinks COVID-19 is political, not based in medical facts? She feels that businesses should be opened — the sooner the better. Help!
A Concerned Parent A Your daughter is either involved in a business and wants to get back to it, or she’s restless for the life she knew pre-COVID-19, when businesses were open for her convenience.
I get it, and at some level, you probably do, too. We could all use a proper haircut, and would prefer to shop for food whenever and wherever we so desire.
For owners of businesses that are shuttered without a defined end to losses in income to cover rents; and also for non-essential workers stuck at home with no money arriving to pay their bills, “sequestering ” in this lockdown has felt like a financial nightmare.
Ask your daughter what she believes is “political” about the situation. Would government leaders and civic officials decide to extend unnecessary periods of economic pain for citizens without urgent reasons for it?
Ask your daughter about the numbers of coronavirus infections, many of which were touch-and-go as to whether the patient would survive?
(I write this column at least two weeks ahead, so even if the COVID-19 curve has flattened, the number of illnesses over time also overwhelmed entire health-care systems wherever the virus struck.)
What about the number of deaths? Were those helpless humans who succumbed dispensable? Did they no longer matter because so many were seniors and/ or disabled in nursing and long-term care homes where the virus had particularly bad effects?
Your daughter’s attitude (she’s not alone in it) and your concern are what makes this a relationship question.
She may not even read/ listen to the medical facts directing much of the virus response. She prefers to argue her point with you.
Your role as a parent of an adult child is to simply offer your own informed view, once.
You can also send her solid medical information, but you can’t make her swallow it.
However, this is a situation wherein agreeing to disagree is not enough. She must respect your “stay-home” rules, or your extending reliance on them, because you believe it’s safer. And she cannot break those rules if staying in your home. If she visits, she must keep the appropriate distance that you’re observing.
This disagreement doesn’t need to create an irresolvable issue between you two, unless it’s typical of a strain that already exists and emerges in full-blown disagreement at every opportunity.
If so, consider finding a therapist who specializes in mother-daughter conflicts and is currently helping clients during the pandemic through online contact.
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