My kids aren’t going back to school this year. I knew this announcement was coming, but not being surprised by it doesn’t make it land any softer. I’m sure some people are tired of listening to the mamas bemoaning the fact that our kids aren’t in school and are driving us crazy. If hearing that has gotten old—imagine how weary we are of having them stuck at home… It’s not just the constant demands for snacks or the fact that they use every cup and fork in the house by noon that wear us out. It’s not even the never-ending laundry needs—well, it might be the laundry.
It’s that it’s easier to complain about those things than to talk about how clueless we all are regarding raising kids during a pandemic that is completely reshaping what friendship looks like. Good parenting in this COVID-19 world means making our kids scared to get close to their friends. We don’t phrase it like that; we try to explain about germs and soap, but toddlers and preschoolers don’t understand virology and only hear, ‘Don’t touch anybody—it’s not safe.’
When we get a chance to talk to another adult—from a safe distance—it’s less intense to say, ‘Ohmygosh, if I step on one more Goldfish cracker or hear one more request for chips or have to tell these people one more time to sweep the floor then I will lose my mind!’ than if we said, ‘My heart broke a little when my three-year-old told his church buddy in a video message that he misses him and can’t wait to be allowed to touch him again.’
It scares me how quickly all of this is becoming normal to them. Unlike adults, they don’t have decades of lived experience in a world where hugs aren’t dangerous to use as a frame of reference. None of us know how this type of early childhood will manifest itself in the personalities and values and culture of this generation of kids. It’s just no joke trying to figure out how to parent in a pandemic. It’s like learning a new language after being dropped into a foreign country without an interpreter.
While we may have seen the school year cancellation coming, it’s still hard to accept. Not just because of all the reasons this is inconvenient to me—but because of all the ways it could be harmful to my children. I am 99.9% sure my children’s teachers have never said through gritted teeth, ‘Just finish the math or there will be consequences.’ It seems my kids are not accustomed to learning under threat—they aren’t responding well to it. My three-year-old has learned a lot during his older sisters’ distance learning time—from YouTube. One of his favorites is ‘Brave Wilderness’ where some guy seeks out the most dangerous animals and intentionally gets himself stung by the ant with the most painful sting on earth. We’re calling it ‘educational’ and not counting it as screen time—and we’re stocked up on Benadryl, just in case. I’m not sure if he learned this from YouTube or not, but yesterday I found him, in the garage, under my car shoving cherry tomatoes in his mouth. When I asked him what he was doing, he said, ‘Stay outta my business.’ So, there’s that.
My oldest has discovered she can burn holes in leaves with a magnifying glass. She hasn’t caught anything valuable or dangerous on fire, so far. I found my second oldest daughter stripping all the bark off a crepe myrtle tree, and the third child (who already screams ‘Never!’ like a pirate when she doesn’t like what we tell her) has gone completely feral—she’s basically raising herself in the brush of the empty lot next door, except for when she needs snacks.
In many ways, my kids are living a childhood more like mine, or maybe just more like their summer lives when they’re grubby and smelly and nobody cares because they don’t have to go to school the next day. They’re barefoot most of the time and have new freckles on their cheeks from being outside so much. I’ve seen more experiments executed and ‘clubs’ created and plays produced than ever before—it’s like 1989 all over again.
One of my friends said this is serving as a reset button for her family; they’ve realized they like not having somewhere to be all the time and won’t take on as many activities when those are an option again. It has been nice not living and dying by the calendar; I just wish I didn’t have to trade some of their security for all of this freedom. I wish they didn’t have to give up hanging out with their grandparents and hugging their church friends to ride bikes more and learn what to do without a screen when they get bored. I know most of life is give and take; I just really prefer getting to choose what I give up. Turns out—life isn’t an a la carte menu.
I had the idea of summing this article up by saying, ‘Turns out that living in a foreign country without an interpreter is the best way to become fluent in the language, too.’ Then I was going to say how all of us trying to learn the new language of doing life in this weird new time will get it figured out better because we are fully immersed in it, and so on. But it actually turns out—that’s not true. Or it’s not the whole truth. I went to Google to back up my theory (as one does) and found some people saying the best way to learn a language is to live in a country that speaks that language; but many people also pointed out that you shouldn’t expect to become fluent just because you live there. There’s a difference in learning a language and becoming fluent in a language. One article pointed out that you have to study and practice to learn to use correct grammar—even in your native language. Being fully immersed in a new language may mean you quickly get good at getting by in order to survive; but you have to really want it to become fluent.
Right now, I am getting by in this new world. I can order a coffee, but I can’t get fancy with my order yet. I can let the kids run wild outside and come in late with dirty hands and pink noses; but I haven’t figured out how to teach them to trust others in a world where friends might make you sick. I can appreciate the forced slow-down and not having to coordinate sports practice carpool schedules; but I don’t know how to make up for the good stuff they’ll miss by losing all of those things. I don’t need super fancy coffee, but I do like a little creamer. I don’t want to have to be fluent in the language of parenting in quarantine; but, like all the other parents I know, I’ll keep practicing.
Elizabeth Quinn makes her home in Northeast Jackson with her husband Percy and four children.
