Back-to-School During COVID’s Forth Wave Creates Mental Health Challenges for Parents and Children

These are uncertain times:

I think the word for these times should be “uncertainty.” As the back-to-school season begins, parents and school-children are returning to the classrooms, not knowing what to expect. Here, in Toronto, we have a pretty high, close to 80% vaccination rate, among eligible candidates, but all the children under 12 are still not eligible to get a vaccine. This leaves us in a precarious position. Will it mean that kids will be giving each-other COVID? Hard to tell.

We know that the Delta variant is about twice as contagious as the previous strains of COVID, and we know that it can make us sicker as well. We’ve been reading a lot of stories from the US, where the vaccination rates are a lot lower, and we’re seeing young children hospitalized and even dying of COVID. It’s heartbreaking.

I was listening to CBC radio the other day and parents across Ontario were phoning in to talk about their feelings. Some of the parents were expressing considerable anxiety, as they didn’t know what to expect for their children, now that they’re going back to school. Some were describing how anxious their children were, these days. One father said that his child had expressed a fear of dying of COVID because they were going back to school.

It’s important for children to attend school:

It’s clear how important it is for kids to go to school. Their mental health and their emotional and social development depend on in-person schooling. But do the benefits outweigh the risks? It’s impossible to say at this point.

Life is always filled with uncertainty and now, more than ever. We’re all holding our collective breath, waiting to see what happens as this great back-to-school experiment proceeds. Will the classrooms be safe? Will the kids be okay? No-one knows. For the next couple of months, it will be a watch-and-wait situation.

So, how do parents cope with the anxiety of the back-to-school season? How do they tolerate the not knowing and be able to carry on with their lives? My advice is the same as I’d give in any situation that’s filled with uncertainty and confusion: Do whatever you can do, so that at least you know you’ve made every effort to keep your children safe.

If your children are old enough to be vaccinated, by all means, get it done. The vaccines will do a lot to prevent them from catching COVID and if they do get sick, their illness will be a lot milder if they have the vaccine. If your children are too young to get the vaccine, keep repeating the messages about proper mask wearing, social distancing and hand-washing.

Parents can speak to their children’s teachers, to ensure that the teachers are taking the COVID precautions seriously, and if they aren’t, the parents can consider switching their child into the classroom of a teacher who is more proactive in this regard.

For children, this is a time for them for responsibility and self-care. They can consistently wear their masks, maintain the proper social distance, and practice good hand hygiene. They can feel entitled and empowered to say “no” to any activities that make them uncomfortable.

Looking at the big picture, parents can think about how the government and the school board are dealing with the pandemic. They can exercise their right to vote for representatives who take the safety of their children the most seriously. If parents feel that the current Ontario government is falling down on the job, they shouldn’t forget this fact when it comes to the next provincial election.

There are things that parents can do:

At home, parents can monitor their children’s health and well-being. If their children begin to develop respiratory symptoms, they can keep them at home and consider getting the children tested for COVID. This way, they’re more likely to protect the children’s classmates and the school staff.

Parents and children can practice Mindfulness Meditation, to help them to calm down and not feel overwhelmed by the situation. Parents can work on trusting themselves, that they will do everything possible to protect their kids, and they can remind their kids of this fact, to help the kids feel less stressed.

Of course, parents of school-aged children should be vaccinated. These vaccines are safe and extremely effective and they have been conclusively proven to save lives. There is no denying the scientific facts. Children can be asymptomatic carriers of COVID, but the adults who they infect can become seriously ill, so it’s important for all adults with very few exceptions to get the vaccine, ASAP.

Anxiety happens when we feel overwhelmed and out of control. The pandemic is so frightening and confusing that it brings up a lot of anxiety in a lot of people. Parents have a powerful drive to protect their children. When they aren’t sure if they can do this, their anxiety can escalate.

If children have intolerable anxiety about going back to school, parents will need to consider online schooling at home. If the child’s anxiety is too high when they’re at school, this will cancel out most of the benefit of in-person schooling.

If a parent can’t manage their anxiety about their children being back at school, they will need to carefully weigh the risk-benefit ratio. If they truly feel that their child is at an increased risk of contracting COVID, they might consider pulling the child from school.

However, if it’s mainly a matter of the parent not being able to tolerate the uncertainty, they’ll need to think about what’s best for their children and make decisions based on that, as opposed to allowing their anxiety to dictate their choices.

Hope for the best, but do your part:

These are very challenging times, and back-to-school is a real mixed bag of emotions: excitement for the children about getting back into the classrooms, seeing their friends and interacting with their teachers, as well as apprehension about what going to school during the fourth wave of a pandemic might actually entail.

I’m hoping for the best possible outcome for children going back to school. One way we can all make things better for kids is to get ourselves vaccinated. The lower the rate of COVID in the community, the lower the risk will be for our children of catching COVID. If we think about the welfare of the children in our community, the choice to be vaccinated is crystal clear.

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