- in Education , Emotional , WYE Podcast
Advice for a new first responder parent…Global Pandemic or not
Working in the disciplines of police, fire and EMS lets us branch out into our community and serve as a parent or older sibling sometimes. However, at some point in your life you might find yourself going from being a parent to a few thousand people occasionally to being an actual parent, like, all the time.
Listener Nathan sent us a message asking about how to keep his new baby safe from whatever he may bring home (even outside the pandemic) and how to balance work, school, home and now the baby.
While we usually answer questions on our other show, ASK WYE, this answer is just a little more complicated and deserves an entire podcast, not just an episode, but the guys offer what advice they can.
Our experts tell Nathan about:
- Decontamination before even leaving work
- Setting up a washing station inside the home for each return trip from the store and for all the family coming to see baby
- Opening conversations with his spouse about expectations for when the baby arrives
- Being realistic when that list of expectations has to be completely changed after the baby arrives
Parenting isn’t easy. It was the noted philosopher Keanu Reaves, in his award winning role* as Tod Higgins, who observed,
You need a license to buy a dog, drive a car, you even need a license to catch a fish, but they’ll let any (expletive deleted) be a father.
Parenthood, 1989
Point being that both of your hosts have been parents in the first responder community for 14 years now and still don’t think they have it figured out.
BOLO
*Keanu won no awards for this role.
