The kids are not all right. The isolation and the loneliness of the COVID-19 lockdown hasn’t been good for any of us. We’re on edge and angry at each other. A Gallup poll in April found “the percentages of US adults experiencing significant stress and worry on a daily basis have increased in an unprecedented manner.”
But that’s nothing compared to what many kids have been going through and how they have been dismissed by those in charge.
Kids are resilient, true. But it’s been months of this lockdown. Parents I spoke to feel lied to about how long we would be kept indoors. “It was supposed to be two weeks to stop the spread,” one mom told me. “My kid is getting weird,” three separate parents commented to me.
With no interaction with other kids and no idea when their lives will return to normal, many of the nation’s children are suffering through this lockdown.
Whether their parents are working and shushing them or not working and worrying about when they will again, kids sense their parents’ stress. We can’t pretend it’s not happening.
It doesn’t help that we flipped a switch from “screen time is bad” to “screen time all the time” with hardly any conversation about it. We’ve also done insane things like close green spaces but open streets. In Park Slope, Brooklyn, the turf field at Washington Park remains closed while a street has been opened alongside it. How does this make sense?
More than two weeks ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that, unlike previously thought, the coronavirus actually doesn’t spread easily from surfaces after all. Yet playgrounds remain closed indefinitely.
It’s June, and public pools are closed in many states. This despite the fact that CDC experts say chlorinated water kills the virus. A video of a crowded Memorial Day pool party in Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks circulated online a few weeks ago. It was meant to terrify us about the COVID spread.
Last week, a Missouri health official announced there were no new coronavirus cases from that pool party. Yet other pools remain shut. For all the talk of following the science, the rules seem arbitrary and not related to science at all.
Meanwhile, in support of the George Floyd protests, epidemiologists like Jennifer Nuzzo make it seem as if staying home was necessary only if you didn’t have a good enough reason for being out. Nuzzo tweeted: “We should always evaluate the risks and benefits of efforts to control the virus. In this moment, the public-health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus.”
Any discussion of risks and benefits is brand new. A month ago, if a parent were to wonder if the lockdown was worth it, they would be accused of wanting to “kill Grandma.” But as the protests proceeded, with little if any social distancing, the conversation shifted. Racial justice is important, yes — but other things are important, too.
Kids with special needs have been particularly forgotten during this crisis.
A Queens mom told me her daughter has been getting teletherapy for in lieu of real occupational and physical therapy. “These therapies are very technical. People went to school to learn how to do them, and they’re trying to explain it to me over a computer. It’s like a doctor telling you how to operate … while the patient is running around!”
A mom in Brooklyn told me her son with special needs has not had one instance of live instruction from his teacher. That family is planning to leave New York because they feel so let down by the education system failing their child.
On Friday, Gov. Cuomo finally OK’d in-person special-ed instruction this summer. It’s not enough.
The lockdown has to end and kids need to regain a sense of normalcy before it’s too late.
Studies have already shown that the lockdown has worsened childhood obesity and opened a wider education gap between poor and rich students. A Save the Children survey of 6,000 children in a number of COVID-affected countries found “almost one in four children living under COVID-19 lockdowns, social restrictions and school closures are dealing with feelings of anxiety, with many at risk of lasting psychological distress, including depression” and up to 65 percent struggling with boredom and feelings of isolation.
If we’re evaluating risks and benefits, those risks need to be considered, too. We need to move forward, for our kids and ourselves.
Twitter: @Karol