Snow is piling up across Europe and other parts of the Northern Hemisphere. Slippery roads, canceled flights, stuck trains. The perfect movie-like version of parenthood? Building two-meter-high snowmen with our kids, screaming as they ride down hills on sleds while scarves flap in the wind, snowball fights everywhere.

Reality, however, looks a bit different. The thing we are most afraid of is the board at the kindergarten entrance. During this season, kids do not collect and trade Pokémon cards. They collect and trade illnesses.

A short summary from the board in our youngest child’s group during the last two weeks before Christmas: stomach flu (several cases), hand-foot-mouth disease (several cases), scarlet fever (once, yaaay), COVID (a looooot).

The panic sets in and questions start popping up in our heads: How do you, without sounding like a terrible person and scaring them for life, tell your kid that maybe they shouldn't hug and wrestle Paul, whose entire shirt and face are covered in neon-green snot?

How do you deal with the fallout when the kids get sick? And we know it is not IF, it is WHEN. How do you burn down carefully planned schedules and time-boxed calendars your team agreed on weeks ago? How do you tell your team that a deadline that once seemed very achievable might now be a stretch, because your other team, this small human needs us right now.

Starting in November, we hear dozens of stories like this from parents. Some are even painfully funny. Others create an instant sense of solidarity. Sometimes you even hear a genuinely helpful idea about how to cope with all of this. All of them weirdly make us feel better, as we know we are not alone in this.

So what is your story? How do you cope?