Last Updated on January 14, 2022 by Sarah Gallagher
I’ve been honored to write a guest post for a wonderful website called MindSpeaks. They reached out asking for a piece on mental health – I decided to take the current situation at hand: my kids’ mental health during covid. This post is where I talk about the pro’s and con’s of sending your child back to school.
Kids’ Mental Health During Covid Is The Highest Priority
Oh my goodness, it’s been an extraordinarily difficult two years, with no end in sight! I originally wrote this post in 2021, yet here I am again at this difficult crossroads: should my kids attend classes in person this year? There are pros and cons to each point, and yet no matter what each parent chooses what is best for their family, there’s still the condemnation that they’re not being the best parent they can be. There’s no right answer. Making choice to allow your child to attend school should not be a life or death decision! Everything we do, every decision we make is made on the information known at the time – which changes on a literal daily basis!
Knowing that this is an ever evolving crisis, it’s likely we’re all going to have to make this decision more than once this school year.
Solo Parenting During Isolation Is Hard
Parents’ Mental Dance
If you’re also weighing your options, remember that your kids’ mental health is as, if not more, important than their physical health. There’s a great post from MindSpeaks that breaks down the key points for why I decided to let me kids get back into the classroom as soon as they opened up again. Maybe it can help you in your decision making.
Here’s a snippet, “There are a lot of things a parent has to consider when contemplating whether their children will return to public education. Once again, it’s a mental dance between the lesser of two risks. Let’s break them down into separate lists……..”
Go read the entire article here.
It really is a fantastic piece that I highly recommend you read. Comment below with what you got from it!
Your Mental Health Matters Too
Listen, I know this pandemic is exhausting and it’s so hard to find resilience when there’s no end in sight. Which is why it’s so very important to check in with yourself and ensure that YOU are mentally healthy too. Especially if you’re a solo parent, and ever more so if you’re also grieving. Being a widowed, solo parent is unbelievably isolating during a pandemic-enforced lock-down.
In 2021, the schools were locked down so my kids were online learning at home. For weeks. Months. It was so hard for all of us. Warrior was in JK, and just trying to get her to attend the first half an hour was always a fight. She’d rather run around in circles and jump off the couch. Not be on a screen for hours.
Knight was in an even worse state. He was in Grade 4, when academia really ramps up. The bar for learning all of a sudden skyrockets, and there’s so much to cover there isn’t enough time in class to cover it all. Which meant that he had homework every night. So…being online all day, trying to understand the teacher’s requirements, with all the other kids asking “Ms. S? What are we doing again?” over and over…it was exhausting. He couldn’t keep up, which for an emotionally sensitive boy with ADD and anxiety was torture. I needed to take a leave from work in order to sit beside him and help him recover from crying panic attacks, and then try to get him to do his work. The extra homework just exaggerated the problem as it felt like school never ended!
Being Isolated With Kids Nearly Broke Me
Trying to keep my patience, and my own emotions under control was trying (to say the least). Plus, once school was done, and homework was somewhat tackled, I only had maybe half an hour before I had to start making dinner and then bedtime routines. My day was a never-ending stress test with no break from responsibilities, no break from the kids, no break from being in the same four rooms day in and day out. For months.
It wasn’t until restrictions lifted enough for my mother to come over and take them for the afternoon that I had my first real break. Doing the math, I realized that I had been doing this alone, isolated, for 100 days. As I walked outside, alone, and sat in a park with a book in hand, the first time I could do absolutely nothing in forever, it struck me how close to a nervous breakdown I was. Truly. I’m surprised (and grateful) that I didn’t snap.
So this time around (deja-vu anyone?) I’m absolutely going to get my kids back into the classroom next week when they open up again. It’s only been two weeks here in the winter of 2022, but we’re already starting to feel it, and I refuse to be in the same mental state that I was last year.
Oxygen mask on first, solo parents. Your mental health matters too.
I really liked this post. I had such a tough time deciding on whether or not I should send my son back to school or keep him virtual. They started off virtual for the first few weeks and then we had to make a decision for the rest of the semester. It kind of felt like neither was a good choice. We ended up sending him back because we could tell his mental health was suffering. He is so much happier being back at school. We can see the changes in him. I still worry, don’t get me wrong, but I think as moms, we will always worry no matter what decision we make!
Being at school is so important for their mental health. And mine! Win, win, win!