Life is hard, especially when making decisions that could impact you, your family, or others in drastic ways. The pandemic has put a twist on just about everything we took for granted. From going grocery shopping, athletic events, church, and probably worst of all, school. To have to make a decision to withhold a child from going to hang out with numerous other kids his age and miss out on the social aspect of being a kid has been extremely difficult.
Everyone seems to have an opinion on the topic, whether asked for or not. You could say, it’s kindergarten, is it really that important for him to be in person? Or you could say, it’s kindergarten, it’s critical for them to be in person to develop those social skills. But then to counter each of those, some kids thrive in social environments, my kid happens to be one of those. Alternatively, I know many people that were home schooled their entire lives and are perfectly fine, functioning adults.
To top it all off, there are countless options where we live. We have the option to go to a public school in person, a charter school in person or from home, we could fully home school and try to get some social interaction with friends throughout the week, we could join a homeschool community where they meet once or twice a week in person, we could do a private school that offers 2 days in person a week and 2 days from home.
Our son wants to go in person, but the thought of sending him in person, where he is confined to a tiny desk, in a tiny room with no windows, and ~19 other kids, with a shield around his desk, and extremely limited time to actually interact with other kids (like a 15 minute recess), and has the potential to get sick or get others sick, this all has been weighing on our hearts heavily. I know we are not the only ones with these thoughts, and every situation is unique but it doesn’t make things any easier.
Many people seem to think this will all be over soon but I am less optimistic. Making decisions that can have tremendous impacts one way or another is an extremely difficult thing to do. So in all of this, we continue to pray, continue to believe that God is good and continue to love on our kids and try to raise them to love God, as hard as that may be sometimes.