Thanks to my friend Sophie for sharing this on the Facebook...
It's Day 95,365 of quarantine. It's become the norm for our family to remember our masks if we leave the house; we have to turn around to go back home to get them far less than we did a couple of weeks ago. My children are 12 and 15 and are trying to figure out how this is actually summer and, I think, really long for being in the school cafeteria with their people. I've been wandering aimlessly in an undefined muck of late and it finally hit me yesterday what it is I have been slogging through. I'm struggling with the incongruent nature of the world today - especially with children as my business, literally. I direct a preschool where we strive to teach little humans how to grow into kind, good, productive big humans and yet we're living in a time when some of the most basic lessons we teach at preschool are now off limits. It is exhausting and daunting to suddenly feel like what I do and what I take great pride in doing has, in some ways, been made irrelevant by the current state of the world. I don't really know what to do with that.
First - and I want to be clear on this point - I am NOT saying that what people are doing to help keep themselves and others safe is wrong. I am not saying that I think closing schools was a bad decision or that encouraging people to stay home for awhile is bad. I am not advocating opening anything too soon or going against medical advice. I DO think this whole situation is brand new and that we're learning a lot of lessons along the way that will inform how we move forward should, God forbid, this happen again. Personally, I am in the process of figuring out what it looks like to eventually reopen a preschool and I am passionate about the importance of early childhood education; currently, I find myself wondering how, and if, I (we) have really thought about how this situation will effect our children in the long term. What I think I've really been slogging through is the fact that the fallout from Covid 19 is just beginning for our children and we haven't seen anything yet.
Let's begin with language. Language development begins in utero as we read books to our developing humans, and it progresses most rapidly from infancy through about age 5. Our children need conversation, interaction with peers and read aloud books ad infinitum - they come to know their world by hearing their parents and trusted adults speak to them and name things. They also learn emotional cues by physically seeing us express ourselves facially. In short, words and seeing mouths move matter. Consider the words permeating their world right now: facts not fear, pandemic, crisis, unprecedented, virus, death, etc. These words are creeping into their vocabulary even if we are trying to protect them from the reality that we're marinating in right now. They're on the radio, discussed among friends and on television. They're words that don't feel warm and fuzzy and their permanent fixture in our lives at the moment means our children are growing up faster than ever in some ways. I'd suggest our little ones have a broader worldview than we ever did at their age and I wonder how or if they are equipped to process it.
I'm nearly 44 years old and I don't know that I'm equipped to process our current reality. A friend recently posted a Huffington Post article titled "10 Sneaky Ways Your Coronavirus Anxiety is Coming Out" (click here to read it). I love this sort of thing, and I really thought I'd been handling this bizarre time quite well, so I clicked and fully expected to feel affirmed in my adaptability and crisis management skills. However, as I read, I realized that 8 out of the 10 sneaky ways were bang on in describing what I'm experiencing right now! I read the list to Philip and he said 9 out of 10 were bang on for him! Turns out we may not be as "good" at living in perma-crisis mode as I thought - and we have fully developed frontal lobes. My teenagers have had times of struggle during this weird time - they deeply miss connection with their friends and our family - and I do too. But, my children, my husband and I are all able to think in the realm of the abstract. We have grown beyond the literal, concrete thought processes that our young children are experiencing developmentally.
Think about this pandemic time in the concrete terms that our children understand:
- I can't go to school because I may get sick or I may make someone else sick
- I can't share toys because toys may have germs that will make me or someone else sick
- I can't hug grandma/grandpa because I may make them sick
- I have to wear a mask when we go places so I don't make other people sick
- Right now, we show care for other people by not hugging them and not being around them
These are heavy burdens to bear and big, hairy concepts to understand.
Now consider what we typically want our children learn (at home, in preschool, at church):
- School is a fun, safe place where we play and learn
- Good friends share their toys with each other
- Grandma and Grandpa are the literal equivalent to Disney World and they give the best hugs
- Masks are for costumes
- Friendships are important and I love play dates
These are the lessons our children still need to learn, regardless of what the world is experiencing.
This complete flip of context and definition of how the world works is jarring to adults, and we can reason through the logic. Imagine how confusing this is to the youngest among us! And then, what will feel like suddenly to our little people, we will be asking them to shift again to some sort of hybrid of hugging our mask wearing grandparents while waving at our friends but not being able to share the same toy. When this hit me, it was as if scales fell from my eyes! It's no wonder why I've been feeling like I'm trying to jog in peanut butter of late - trying to welcome children back into our preschool when their world has been upside down and all of their time has been spent with their parents is going to be HARD! And to do it in a time where we check everyone's temperatures upon arrival and require parents to drop them off in carpool even if they've never been to school? That feels barbaric on some level. But - to not welcome people back in a safe and timely way will most assuredly cause possibly irreparable harm to the school I love so dearly and possibly to early childhood education as a whole.
So, yes. I'm experiencing 8 out of 10 ways that my Coronavirus anxiety is creeping into my life...and, frankly, probably more if I think about how work anxiety plays out in my personal relationships. Another friend posted Forbes Magazine article that detailed some of the unintended consequences that are happening as a result of the shutdowns. That article named some of the mental health effects this bizarre time is having on people (here's the article). This is dark, heavy news, but I get it! And I do not want to be the one who decides what the best course of action is - it feels like loss of life is all around us and there is no one answer that can make it stop. This is a most adult phase in the history of the world and I wonder what our decisions and actions are teaching our children.
I wonder if the children who are born in 2020 will grow to be the next generation of world changers simply because they marinated in the muck of Covid 19 and know they can pick themselves up out of said muck and survive. I wonder if the preschoolers of today will grow into fearful elementary students or if they'll be more confident because of how we parents shepherded them through this time. I wonder if middle and high school students will grow into people who think they don't need people because we've had such a time of isolation or if maybe they'll be more connected because they know its power. I wonder if recent college graduates will grow into the next generation of socially conscious twenty somethings who bring about real change in the world. I wonder how we grown ups who have seen our world shift in an accelerated way will figure out how to keep the goodness that is growing out of this time or if we will get lazy and revert back to the 'way we'd always done it' when we move past this immediate crisis. Oh...I wonder...and that's probably why I'm tired. But once I take a breath and maybe a wee nap, I begin to wonder anew. I wonder how I can model for my own children how to re-enter the world intelligently and confidently, choosing to be a helper without being fearful. I wonder how I can raise my voice to advocate for those who are so often forgotten or considered less than. I wonder how I can re-frame whatever the next iteration of normal develops in such a way that young children find it accessible and safe. I wonder, oh I wonder, what are we teaching our children?
These are dense days friends - emotional to the core, overwhelming, crossing our fingers we're getting something right days. And what rocks me most is the idea that we might be forgetting how to equip the youngest among us to navigate these days with us. My hope, my prayer, is that we'll all have a voice or a person help us remember that little people need help with their big emotions too and that we all remember our children's anxiety is as real as our own. And, at the end of the day, I hope I look back on this 2020 year knowing that I put more hope into the world than fear, more joy into the world than despair and more love into the world than anxiety.
