Ciara Kelly

Since the pandemic, the iron-clad contract of going to school every day has unravelled. I’m using tough love to get my kids out the door, but I’m worried

— trying to make a fully grown teenage child get dressed and get out in the mornings is actually incredibly difficult. The problem is once they stop going, they very rarely ever go back again. These kids generally don’t do their Leaving Cert and miss out on college, and their numbers are growing.

But the start is insidious. Kids start to push for more days off because of mild symptoms, like headaches, that are hard for parents to contradict. They get used to staying home and find it easier than going in, while at the same time they’re missing out on the academic and social hubbub their school pals are involved in — so on the days they do go in they feel out of the swing of things which makes them want to stay home more. It becomes a vicious circle.

What I’ve noticed is my older two who finished secondary school prepandemic had a wholly different view on going to school to my younger two — who lived with remote learning (a euphemism for doing feck all) for the guts of two school years. The older two missed a couple of days a year. The younger two say things like “I haven’t missed a day in two weeks!”

And my kids aren’t alone — the loosening of that school-going relationship is now a well-documented phenomenon and one of the myriad negative impacts of our draconian Covid-19 lockdowns.

I don’t know how best to address it either, other than with tough love: “You’re going to school unless your arm has fallen off.” But as I say, I’m worried. We already live in a time where kids have increased agency — they get to decide a lot of what they do — and that’s OK in general, just not in this instance. My youngest is only in second year. We’ve another four years of cajoling and barracking ahead of us.