Judith WOODS
Isn’t it peculiar how these last days before March 8 are dragging? After a year in limbo, our children will be returning to school on Monday. It heralds the resumption of my daughter’s education, the reopening of society, the point after which we will gingerly step back into our previous lives.
So why do I feel so many misgivings? Probably because it’s yet another hurdle we need to overcome, we are all tired – weary would be a better word – and there’s still a lot of argy-bargy going on. Not least about the wearing of masks at their school desks.
Masks are horrible, unnatural and reduce communication, which is crucial in any classroom. I hate them. Everybody hates them.
But that doesn’t alter the fact that we must wear the wretched things now in order to eventually never wear them ever again in the future.
If a school asks students to wear masks in class, then so be it. Unless there is a bona fide medical reason not to cover their face, there’s no valid reason to refuse, other than truculence or terror instilled in them by bloodyminded parents, who should be ashamed of themselves for putting my child and other children at risk.
The brainwashed anti-vaxx brigade and the cretinous Covid-deniers can do one, as far as I’m concerned. No jab, no job? Fine by me. Even the Queen thinks you’re selfish nutters (I paraphrase, Ma’am). Classroom Apartheid, with mask refuseniks made to sit at the back, and kids segregated at lunchtime? If that’s what it takes, Mr Chips. Knock yourself out, Miss Jean Brodie.
I gather some parents have been bleating on about the outrage of this “coercion” and cavilling at the stigma their child will suffer. It will be a far bigger stigma if Milo kills Miss. Maybe you can tell, but I’m bone-weary of exceptionalism. Yes, every child is a special poppet (particularly mine), but learning to conform is a life skill, too. In this case, a life-or-death skill.
Kids have more than enough on their plates come Monday, without being inculcated with criminally loopy theories about protective face masks being a vector of disease. They won’t need to be educated in glass boxes, confined and contained like smokers in the airport – their peers will treat them like pariahs anyway.
I think adults forget how uniquely tough childhood is. The playground is not for sissies. Big school is all about survival of the fittest, and the unspoken codes governing dress, behaviour and fraternisation would floor Tony Soprano.
Our children have suffered inordinately during this pandemic. The Royal College of Psychiatrists has warned that this crisis could create a lost generation who will be affected by “lifelong” mental illnesses. Research from the NHS points to one in six young people suffering from conditions such as anxiety and depression.
Some children have spent the past 12 months virtually alone; whether it’s because they are holed up in their bedrooms, hunkering in front of a screen, or baffled and upset because Mummy is on yet another
Zoom call and Daddy is typing so hard on his laptop, it sounds like machine-gun fire.
Our kids’ confidence has been shot to pieces. They will doubtless be low on vitamin D, having seldom ventured outside, and probably overweight for the selfsame reason.
Tweens and teens will also be acutely conscious that they have fallen behind academically, because their parents keep telling them so; fretting, worrying and occasionally scolding. We’ve all become those parents.
And now we are sending them back into the fray – because we have to. But it won’t be a shoo-in.
Imagine if you received a text right now telling you that tonight is your sixth-form reunion and your presence was mandatory. Visualise walking into a room full of people you have not seen in many years – and doing it stone cold sober.
No stiff G&T to help with social lubrication. No real idea of what will be going on, what power play is under way – and all the while feeling deeply uncomfortable in your own skin.
That’s what our children have to do on Monday. Friendship boundaries will have shifted and close classmates will have drifted. Every relationship will have to be re-examined, reassessed and either renewed or rejected.
Kids bantering about the group chat over lockdown – and kids only now discovering that there was a group chat.
And all this to a backdrop of Spanish verbs, the periodic table and the laws of thermodynamics. Frankly, if I could Freaky Friday the whole thing and do it for my 12-year-old, I would. But I can’t swap places, however much I’d love to.
Most of us have no idea what’s been going on, what dramas have been played out on social media, since our children last went regularly to school.
We have no clue as to what is going on in their heads. I have yet to meet a fellow parent who has been able to discuss this, or, for that matter, anything else with their secondary schoolchild. A great many have lost not just their learning identity – which is to say their place within the class dynamic – but also their sense of identity, perse.
Young people prefer, by and large, to run in packs. They gravitate towards their peers, the security of a friendship group, the comforting tribalism of sport, fashion or music.
After 12 months in solitary confinement, is it any wonder they might be wobbly – or angry or worried – as the Sunday night feeling is writ larger than ever before?
Our children are lonely even in the bosom of their families. A few will come out of lockdown more resilient. Many will be battling with self-esteem. Add that to the stew of bog-standard adolescent angst and insecurity, and it’s a perfect storm.
Parents of Britain, batten down the hatches.
Adults forget how uniquely tough childhood is. It is all about survival of the fittest