The constant back and forth between daycare, school, homeschooling and childcare 24/7 has left its mark. With parents and children. Our author is particularly concerned about the latter.
One year of Corona. One year day care center, no day care center, school, no school. Whenever we found our rhythm between homeschooling, home office, homework and whatever else you can do at home, things turned out differently again. Status quo: The 8-year-old has alternating lessons, the 4-year-old is allowed to go to daycare. It’s supposed to be a relief. It would be for me too, if the tears didn’t run every morning. First with the school child, then with the daycare child, then with me in the car.
A daycare child who is no longer one
The little one had been at home since mid-December. It’s May now. In the life of a four year old, six months is almost an age. Six months in which we somehow got used to here. Me in the home office, she play between boredom, tablet and TV, and my big sister, who feels the same way. She doesn’t really miss the daycare center, but her friends and me do as soon as I walk a few steps away from our four walls. I am her security, next to her sister and dad the only reliable constant right now and you can tell. We got used to being around. It is now more normal that we are all at home all day than apart from each other. But that becomes a dilemma now that she is allowed to go to daycare again. Every evening I am asked with wide eyes whether she can stay home tomorrow and every time I am disappointed when I say “no”. The anticipation for the weekend is at least as great for her as it is for me, and she has a really good time in the care.
No matter what I do, every decision feels wrong
She likes to be there, has friends to play in the daycare center and likes the educators. I know she is in good hands. Nevertheless, every morning I have the feeling of being a bad mother, because I am not allowed to bring her into her group, because I cry her over to educators who have not seen her for a long time, because I feel the pain of separation and have to leave her alone with it. I know she’ll calm down really quickly and have a really great day, but that’s when it breaks my heart to just leave my child behind. How many times have I had to resist the impulse to just put it back in the car and take it home with me. After all, it works somehow. But just somehow. She needs her friends and social interaction. And I need the care of the daycare center in order to be able to work undisturbed for a few hours.
Children are adaptable
Yes they are. Changes are usually much easier for them than for us adults. On the other hand: What else can they do? You are not asked. Articulating feelings is not easy for children anyway, especially not for the little ones. But our elementary school child is also having a hard time, complaining of stomach aches and fears. The first days of face-to-face classes were bad for her. She has now been in Corona school mode longer than she ever had normal lessons. So here in the morning as parents you stand in front of school and try to get your desperate child to go into the classroom, who simply refuses completely. And the clock is ticking. For the start of school and my working hours.
What does that do to our children? What are we expecting them to do right now? Yes, it will get better, you will get used to it and the tears will dry. Only for how long this time, until everything changes again, the daycare centers close and the class has to be quarantined or something similar? There is no security, no stability, not for over a year.
If we have a choice, it is a choice between plague and cholera
Corona weighs heavily on families’ shoulders. Just making the decision to bring the children to school and daycare is overwhelming for me. Because I’m scared of doing the wrong thing. I am afraid that they will get infected, that I will get infected. I can hardly count the number of first contacts between the two of them. So far, the school’s hygiene concept has worked or we were just lucky. In the day care center, distance is as good as impossible. How should that work seriously? After all, the educators have now been vaccinated. But when are the children’s turn? When are we parents? Our risk is accepted approvingly because we have no real choice, only the one between plague and cholera: staying at home and taking care of children and a job in a wuppen or the increased risk of infection, but working in peace and allowing the children to make contact. Thanks for nothing.
Parents don’t care about politics …
… and children too, apparently. I’m not one of those people who get upset about anything per se. So far, I have found many of the regulations to be quite sensible and for a long time I have held the people at the top of our country to be good at the lack of experience with pandemics. But now, a year later, the proposed solutions are still the same, even though you only have to look around at the countries that manage it. Maybe I’m making this too easy for myself, but why don’t we? Instead, we fluctuate between open-close-open-close, are fobbed off with child bonuses and are supposed to endure a little good, while our children suffer from the situation as much as we do and may not emerge unscathed from this time. While families scramble, do not know how to keep going any longer, financially tight, they fear for their health, some of those who have already made it to the upper food chain enrich themselves – largely with impunity, of course. Incomprehensible! It’s so sad that you can only endure it with gallows humor.
I do not want to become sick
So far we have managed to stay healthy because we have followed the rules. At least physically. What my children will take away from this time remains to be seen. I am exhausted, tired and angry, just like everyone else around me. “How are you?” I haven’t asked for a long time. We’re all in the same boat with little water under the keel. Yes, we are healthy, but how much longer?