This is Ask Lisa, a podcast to help people understand the psychology of parenting, now in the midst of a pandemic.

Psychologist Dr. Lisa DeMore, author of two New York Times best-selling parenting books, takes your questions.

And I'm co-host Rina Ninan a journalist and

mom of two some of what we talk about comes from raising children ourselves most

of the time I'll be getting answers to your parenting questions so send your

questions to ask Lisa at dr. Lisa demour. this episode, we're going to cover dealing with conflict.

So, Lisa, I noticed back in March in Wuhan as they opened up, divorce rates skyrocketed. I saw that too. Did you see that? Like,

people coming out of COVID suddenly realized they didn't like their spouse as much as they did at

the beginning of this. They like them better when they go places. It is hard, though, right?

We're not meant to spend this much time alone together with our children or our partners.

No, I mean, it really is one of those things. Like, we all want more family time, but this is a lot of family time. There is no question about it. No question about it.

So how do you deal with this? Because, I mean, I think there are a lot of people who are even co-parenting, who might not even be living in the same house, but are forced to interact more closely than ever before.

And then you've got relationships of people who have been together a long time, not doing so well in the start of COVID and have just deteriorated.

What's your advice for dealing with people who are trying to cope with their children, whether they're young adults or elementary

age kids, and partners, spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, people realize a lot about the other

person in the midst of quarantine.

All right, so let's think of this in two categories.

One is where the conditions of living in a pandemic become fault finders, right?

Where, you know, if there was a crack, the pressure on that crack

really causes it to, you know, open wide open. So maybe a relationship that was not in such

good shape before, either between adults or between parents and children, the strain of living

through this pandemic is definitely making whatever wasn't working well before,

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