Those who know me know I spent time working as a special education advocate after working like crazy to help pull my three kids through school. Specifically our middle child whose needs were never met by a rigid high performance school district. Although now a father and a professor he spent more time out of school than in school from 8th grade until his high school graduation.
I recently read a NYTimes op-ed piece by Joseph Allen, who is an associate professor at Harvard’s Chan school of public health. It was all about how we needed to work hard to make the upcoming school year as close to what it was pre-pandemic. Well if you have read past entries in this blog you know that I do not agree with this position. School had problems before the pandemic. Plenty of problems. And initially I had hoped that the pandemic might help us re-think how we approach educating our children. I imagined children exploring outdoors and learning about nature. What better excuse to get children outdoors and into the natural world than the need to be in fresh air because of a pandemic. With the bonus that our children need to learn about nature if they are going to survive the growing climate emergency.
There is a tendency to blame the pandemic on the rising number of children with mental health issues. But mental health among children was suffering before the word “covid” was part of our vocabulary. Why? Well I could probably fill a book with my thoughts on this one. I will start with one thing I have observed as an ex La Leche League Leader, special education advocate and grandmother. We fail parents right from the beginning. Limited maternity and parental leave results in parents having to return to work before they have even adjusted to life as new parents. Limited sick time and family leave time mean parents are stressed as they try to balance the duty as a caregiver with the demands of their job. Parents do not have the resources to pay for extra therapy, tutoring or activities to support a vulnerable child. Schools do not have the resources to provide nearly enough special education, therapy, tutoring and activities to meet vulnerable children’s needs. Health care costs mean that many families are one health care crises away from financial disaster. Food deserts and disparities mean many families do not have access to the healthy food options. Safe access to nature is not always available.
If parents are stressed and anxious then children will be stressed and anxious. We treat children like they are these little “pets'“ that we can send to school and feed information in hopes they morph into healthy workers. It is insane given how much is known about child development that this overarching belief is still so prevalent even among associate professors of public health. One can not expect a child to be excited about learning and reading if their parents simply do not have the energy to read to them or spend time counting out cheerios, toes and kisses. And we can’t blame parents because surviving in this economy means always being on a tread mill with the fear you might fall off. Without any safety net most parents are living in constant fear for their future and the future of their children.
I know of many families whose children actually thrived during the school shut down. They were privilaged upper middle class families whose parents were highly educated. For them school shutting down gave them the gift of time to spend with each other and explore those things that interest them. These kids had healthy meals and parents who were emotionally available to them. They had houses filled with books, access to broadband and green spaces to play in. Their parents had the emotional energy to limit screen time, play board games, go on hikes, pause to look at a honeybee and more.
It is wrong to blame the shutting down of school for the problems our children are suffering and assume that returning children to closed poorly ventilated buildings that feel like prisons will somehow fix the problem. Instead we should have used the pandemic as an opportunity to reorganize and rethink how we want to prioritize our economy so that it works for families and not against them. And we could start by simply valuing caregivers in their roles and maybe making policies that give them the time and space and emotional bandwidth to be caregivers.