Being stuck at home with your kids can be really stressful. After months of shutdowns, stay-at-home orders and quarantine, parents have had this daunting realization.
My main job for the last five years has been, in one capacity or another, involved in private childcare. That includes anything from private swim lessons to a live-in na n ny.
During the summer, the family I currently nanny for was entertaining the idea of placing their children in the full-time kids camp they normally attend on school breaks.
The idea was quickly squashed as infection rates in Spokane, a city only 24.6 miles away from where I live, skyrocketed and childcare facilities continued to have intense outbreaks of COVID-19.
The parents I work for are facing a decision just as challenging as staying home for months on end – whether they should send their children back to school or continue at-home learning.
As previously noted, parents know, now better than ever, their children can sometimes be the worst company.
Rivaling the nature of your spawn, however, is the frustrating and jaw clenching task of assisting with your child’s long division homework and spelling rule breakers.
But when you decide to send your children back to school because it’s easier for your work schedule, it lessens your stress levels, or even just because your kids miss their friends and teachers so much, I’d suggest you step out of your own bubble for a moment.
I would implore you to, first, look at your bank account and then look at the families who have no other option than to send their young children back to school. The parents down the street may be unable to afford private childcare, tutoring or other alternative learning.
Think of the parents who aren’t given the option to work from home and, like you, have a mortgage or rent, among other bills, to pay. Many parents cannot come up with payment for a babysitter to ensure their child is on their zoom classroom calls, not chatting on Google Classroom or sneaking onto YouTube to watch cat fails when no one is looking.
If you are one of these exceptionally privileged families that can afford private childcare during this pandemic and are choosing not to do so, for whatever reason you have so acutely justified, I would ask you to reconsider.
If you can afford the time or money to stay home, or if you figure out alternative learning for your children, you should be doing so. This is not only for your child’s health and your own, but for the families who have no other options. As cold as it may sound, if you are sending your kids to school when you could find other options easily your children are now just taking up valuable space and resources.
Think of it as emergency kits in an earthquake. If we were to send limited care and aid packages to families whose home’s worst damage was a few broken glasses and some picture frames knocked off the walls before families without food or water, we would condemn the decision as poor and impractical with huge fallout. To those ignoring the fallout of sending their children to take up much-needed space by other less-fortunate families, I’d like to say your decision is no different except that it may be even more short-sighted than a poor disaster relief program.
Rebecca Pratt can be reached [email protected]