“Last year, I joked that the most eligible bachelor of 2020 was a canister of these guys,” Gellar, gesturing at a container of Lysol, told Parade.com in a recent sitdown. She’s partnered with Lysol, in fact, to help promote their “Buy One, Donate One” program: Through September 26, whenever a pack of Lysol Disinfecting Wipes is purchased, another pack will automatically be donated to an under-resourced school through the Kids In Need Foundation. Keep reading to find out what conversations Sarah Michelle Gellar is having with her kids, 11-year-old daughter Charlotte and 8-year-old son Rocky, to keep them happy, healthy and safe.
How did back-to-school prep look different for your family this year?
It was much more than the normal “let’s get some binders, let’s get some new clothing.” While I do believe that kids need to be in school—not even just for the education, but for their wellbeing and socialization—this year the main difference was how much introspection it actually took. I had to get over the excitement of, “Yay, I’m not their at-home teacher anymore!” and take opportunities to be educated properly about the risks this year. It’s also about weighing the different kinds of anxiety you have about sending them back vs. their safety and their wellbeing—and then understanding that the two can co-exist. You can be excited while still taking precautions.
Did you find that the disruption to your kids’ daily lives, their inability to be around other kids for so long because of the pandemic, changed them at all?
I think we all noticed changes. I think the addiction to the screen has been a really hard balance for all of us. You can’t deny them that, it was the only way for so long kids could see their friends and be together and it was also a companion during all of this—but at the same time, how do you balance that? I think that some kids have developed a lot of anxiety; I’ve seen a lot of PTSD in kids from just not wanting to be separated from their parents, feeling unsure about being in another environment. My daughter is never nervous about going back to school; this time, she was really nervous and there was real anxiety. It was also middle school, but I think the excitement would have outweighed the nerves, wherein this case, the nerves outweighed the excitement.
Especially for parents with kids who are too young to receive vaccinations, it feels like there’s not a lot of good guidance out there as far as what is and isn’t safe, what can and can’t your kids do. How are you figuring your way through things these days?
You know, not to sound like a spokesperson, but one of my favorite parts of the Here For Healthy Schools campaign—which we actually launched back in 2019—was bringing the conversation about healthy habits to the forefront. We’d gotten lazy about our kids; habits. Were they really washing their hands for 30 seconds? Probably not. If they did 15 seconds, were we thrilled? Yes! You know what I mean? And that’s what this campaign started as: utilizing Lysol as a way to help protect against germs and viruses. So when they came back to me and said, “We want to come back with this campaign, but we want to go bigger and we’re going to do a buy-one-donate-one to kids in need to be able to help underserved schools,” I was like, “This is amazing.” The other conversation I’ve had with a lot of parents is being flexible right now because the guidance does change. What’s OK today might not be OK tomorrow and it’s not because somebody’s not working hard, it’s because this is all developing in real-time. Someone said to me the other day, “Well, you know COVID is not a touch disease.” And I’m like, OK fine, I don’t know that, but there are so many touch diseases that we have to think about now, too. Because my kid didn’t have a common cold last year because he was at home; I could control that. I can’t control that in a school environment, the surfaces that they’re touching, doors they’re opening, you know? We’re going back to that now.
For many parents, besides reinforcing healthy habits, the pandemic has also felt like an opportunity to reinforce why it’s important to care about others—not just family and friends, but people you’ll never meet. Is that a conversation you’ve had with your kids?
It’s a big communication between us. We’ve talked a lot about the masks and what they’re for. It’s not just about protecting you; it’s about protecting everybody around you and your community, being a good citizen and being a kind and considerate person. The other conversation with being a good citizen is, it’s also about sacrifice. We were supposed to go away last year for spring break and I said to the kids, “Now we can’t, but one day we’ll do that and guess what, when we do go, we’re going to appreciate it so much more because this will not be expected. This will be, ‘Wow, we finally got to do this.’ I do have a lot of conversations with my kids like that.
Every mom has reached her breaking point many times during this pandemic. I’m wondering what you do as a mom when you need to regroup during those moments?
I have to take a moment and I have to say, “This is hard for my kids, this is hard for me, but they don’t have the emotional intelligence that I have.” They’re 8 and 11 and I need to take a break and understand sometimes that they may not comprehend all of this. Sometimes my son will just turn to me and say, “I hate COVID.” And I’ll be like, “You know what, I hate it too.” And we don’t use the “h” word in our house, “hate.” But sometimes you just have to use it and I have to understand that and let them have their emotions and let me have my emotions, too. Next,Sarah Michelle Gellar Talks Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Legacy, a Possible Reboot and How She Uses the Show to Teach Her Son About Gender Equality
