Anyone Feel Guilty for Isolating Their Kids due to COVID???

[Anonymous]

I try not to have regrets. I didn’t want to look back on the past year and feel like we were miserable so I used my own brain to do a risk / benefit analysis of the stuff we did. We never stopped socializing outdoors but we stopped socializing indoors until now - now we are resuming indoor socializing. My kids all did outdoor sports & activities once they resumed in June 2020.

We didn’t move - I can imagine that would be hard. If you’re feeling you have regrets etc - enroll your kid in summer activities etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No. I do not feel guilty in the least. We did the right thing.

This is a truly stupid topic and thread.

This.

Agreed. I think OP isa troll. The post makes no sense. Someone stirring up trouble.

[Anonymous]

The priorities have changed OP and you can't punish yourself for doing at the time was the wise thing.

For me, isolating was always about keeping DH and I healthy and alive. I was never overly worried about the risk to my daughter. But we decided it would be wise to short-term close off our family's contacts for the long-term benefit of healthy and living parents.

Once we crossed the one year mark and it no longer was short-term (and we were past the winter surge), we started flipping the risk calculus to prioritize mental health more and gradually opening exposure back up.

Now that we're both fully vaccinated, as are DDs friend's parents, we've pretty much gone back to normal. But we're doing it gradually, becoming more and more open each week.

The risk calculation here has always been about length of time. Isolation is ok short-term, but the longer it lasts, the more you have to push mental health to the front. I think you did the right thing and your instincts to reintroduce DD to the wider world now are good. She will adapt in time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No. I do not feel guilty in the least. We did the right thing.

This is a truly stupid topic and thread.

This.

Agreed. I think OP isa troll. The post makes no sense. Someone stirring up trouble.

Yeah, we can’t allow people to reflect on the choices they made over the past year. God forbid we might consider tradeoffs in the future.

[Anonymous]

I'd suggest once you, DH, and the adults in your circle are fully vaccinated to let the children play and socialize as normal.

And sign her up for some camp this summer! I sent my then 6 yr old DD to five weeks of day camp LAST summer, and oh my goodness did it bring her such joy! The camp did a fantastic job -- not one positive case. I don't feel guilty about that decision.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'd suggest once you, DH, and the adults in your circle are fully vaccinated to let the children play and socialize as normal.

And sign her up for some camp this summer! I sent my then 6 yr old DD to five weeks of day camp LAST summer, and oh my goodness did it bring her such joy! The camp did a fantastic job -- not one positive case. I don't feel guilty about that decision.

This is what we are doing. We weighed the risks to kids as kids (since the adults are vaccinated) and decided this was the right choice for us.

OP I felt a lot of guilt about isolating my children at the end of this winter. However I will say that 4 days of in-person school and play dates are helping tremendously.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No. I don’t feel guilty. But I also know a fair number of people who weren’t as careful as we were, and they did get Covid, and so did their kids. Or their kids got it and they didn’t or vice versa.

And all the kids were fine.

Fin.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, of course I don’t feel guilty! Not one tiny bit. We acted in the best interest of our children and our community.

I know it’s going to be hard for my son to start school after seeing virtually no one but us and nanny for a year. But we’ll help him adjust and so will his preschool. He’ll be fine. He’s healthy and we, as a family, didn’t spread the virus to anyone.

This is the right attitude.

We don’t feel guilty either. Had a great summer 2020 in a lake rental, winter break at the beach, spring break with extended family vaxxed, soccer schedule, local ski trips, tons of nature walks, camps coming up.

Only bad thing is the kids’ poor mental and social development due to lack of friends for 16 mos, plus they are greatly behind academically. One kid will do workbooks with me and the other won’t. She’ll need remedial math at a minimum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I try not to have regrets. I didn’t want to look back on the past year and feel like we were miserable so I used my own brain to do a risk / benefit analysis of the stuff we did. We never stopped socializing outdoors but we stopped socializing indoors until now - now we are resuming indoor socializing. My kids all did outdoor sports & activities once they resumed in June 2020.

We didn’t move - I can imagine that would be hard. If you’re feeling you have regrets etc - enroll your kid in summer activities etc.

+1. Heck we even started fencing lessons like Princess Elena! Only thing open...

[Anonymous]

Shrug. You did what you thought was best. Don't beat yourself up just because you now know you probably overdid it.

We never limited our kids' socializing. It was pretty clear early on that this virus wasn't a meaningful risk to kids, so we just kept their lives as normal as possible. And we find plenty of people who were comfortable doing the same in our social circle.

We never hid this from anyone. Some people may have disapproved, but I don't care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We’ve been really careful since the beginning of the pandemic, which has meant very limited human interaction for our 6-year-old. Her school has been virtual since last March, camps were canceled. We did work hard to make outdoor playdates happen last summer and early fall, but in November it got too cold plus we moved to a place where we didn’t know anyone. Normally we’d do outings at the children’s museum, playgrounds etc, but being in crowded places felt unsafe. So we’d go places but keep a distance and she wouldn’t get to interact with other kids. Besides us and her grandparents (once they got vaccinated), she hasn’t really had any contact with people.


She’s always been really quiet and shy, and this year seems to have made it worse. We’re trying to make up for lost time by signing her up for classes, camp this summer, etc, but I feel like I’ve messed her up and I’m a terrible mom. Especially looking at everyone I know who didn’t take precautions at all and none of them or their kids got seriously sick and I’m kind of feeling like an idiot. People were pretty judgy about us trying to follow the COVID rules, so I’m really second guessing if we were wrong to do that.

Obviously the ideal would be to have a few close friends taking the same level of precautions and hang out with them, but we just didn’t have any friends like that.

At this point I kind of feel like throwing all caution to the wind, esp because my DH and I are completing our own vaccinations, and just letting her socialize in any way we can get - inside, outside, masks, no masks, getting up close in each other’s faces, etc. In our area other people just don’t seem to care the same way we do, so the other kids don’t wear masks or distance.

It feels like such a lose-lose situation for me.

I am so sorry OP. Do what’s right by your kid and don’t let the judging Karens dictate your choices. Seriously, look at the data and make your own decisions.

No, the judging Karen’s are the pro-masking harpies who go mental when even one person is unmasked within a 1 mile radius of them. I feel bad for OP but worse for her kid. Barring major pre-existing medical conditions, OP should have done her own risk analysis instead of relying on the idiotic media to do it for her.

She did "do her own risk analysis." You just don't like it.

Too damn bad.

Forget me not liking it. OP herself is not satisfied with her decision, which is why she’s doubting herself on here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Shrug. You did what you thought was best. Don't beat yourself up just because you now know you probably overdid it.

We never limited our kids' socializing. It was pretty clear early on that this virus wasn't a meaningful risk to kids, so we just kept their lives as normal as possible. And we find plenty of people who were comfortable doing the same in our social circle.

We never hid this from anyone. Some people may have disapproved, but I don't care.

OP, congrats to you on looking out not only for your family but for your community. It's hard to do (I know because we were similar, though also very lucky b/c our kids did have in-person school with lots of safeguards), and it's especially hard because of people like the above PP. There is a tendency to push back, ridicule, and dismiss those who have been extremely cautious this year. At best, the very cautious folks are helping everyone else; at worst, they are having little effect on viral spread and making only their own lives more difficult.

Try to get your child out to the playground and enjoy some masked, outdoor playdates. We've also found that little things--getting the kids a treat from a coffee shop, for example--are extra exciting these days. Your child will re-acclimate and I truly believe she'll be fine. You sound like a great mom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Shrug. You did what you thought was best. Don't beat yourself up just because you now know you probably overdid it.

We never limited our kids' socializing. It was pretty clear early on that this virus wasn't a meaningful risk to kids, so we just kept their lives as normal as possible. And we find plenty of people who were comfortable doing the same in our social circle.

We never hid this from anyone. Some people may have disapproved, but I don't care.

OP, congrats to you on looking out not only for your family but for your community. It's hard to do (I know because we were similar, though also very lucky b/c our kids did have in-person school with lots of safeguards), and it's especially hard because of people like the above PP. There is a tendency to push back, ridicule, and dismiss those who have been extremely cautious this year. At best, the very cautious folks are helping everyone else; at worst, they are having little effect on viral spread and making only their own lives more difficult.

Try to get your child out to the playground and enjoy some masked, outdoor playdates. We've also found that little things--getting the kids a treat from a coffee shop, for example--are extra exciting these days. Your child will re-acclimate and I truly believe she'll be fine. You sound like a great mom.

You are not similar to OP. Our kids were also in person (private) and those “safeguards” were a joke, so no need to be a sanctimonious s**t.

[Anonymous]

Dear OP,

You did what needed to be done, especially with grandparents in the picture.

However, just because you did the right thing, does not mean that there are no negative consequences. You will need to re-socialize your daughter. It will probably take less than a year, but we don't know because what we as a nation did during COVID19 is somewhat unprescedented.

Look, here is an analogy. When my daughter was almost 5 y.o., she had a series of epileptic seizures that nearly went into intractable seizures (status epilepticus). She was hospitalized twice in the course of a week, and given rescue medication IV. When we brought her home, she was unable to feed herself because the seizures damaged some of her nerves. She was unable to close her hand around the spoon to lift it because her fine motor skills happened to be affected. It was due to the location of the epileptic foci in her brain.

I had to re-teach her how to use to hands. I had some experience by working with her speech therapist when she was 2 y.o. I watched videos on physical therapy. I bought puzzles with really, really large pieces. I bought thick crayons for little babies. I defrosted large frozen vegetables for her to lift up and eat etc. She caught up. I took about 3 months, and then a year to really normalize.

Two days ago, she accepted her admission to Yale University.

Please hang in there. There is work to be done, but you are able to do it. You cannot pretend that everything is fine, but you must work towards a resolution. Don't lose heart, and work diligently every day to re-socialize your daughter. Best wishes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Shrug. You did what you thought was best. Don't beat yourself up just because you now know you probably overdid it.

We never limited our kids' socializing. It was pretty clear early on that this virus wasn't a meaningful risk to kids, so we just kept their lives as normal as possible. And we find plenty of people who were comfortable doing the same in our social circle.

We never hid this from anyone. Some people may have disapproved, but I don't care.

OP, congrats to you on looking out not only for your family but for your community. It's hard to do (I know because we were similar, though also very lucky b/c our kids did have in-person school with lots of safeguards), and it's especially hard because of people like the above PP. There is a tendency to push back, ridicule, and dismiss those who have been extremely cautious this year. At best, the very cautious folks are helping everyone else; at worst, they are having little effect on viral spread and making only their own lives more difficult.

Try to get your child out to the playground and enjoy some masked, outdoor playdates. We've also found that little things--getting the kids a treat from a coffee shop, for example--are extra exciting these days. Your child will re-acclimate and I truly believe she'll be fine. You sound like a great mom.

You are not similar to OP. Our kids were also in person (private) and those “safeguards” were a joke, so no need to be a sanctimonious s**t.

How were they a joke?