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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You made the right decisions with the information you had. Don’t feel like a terrible mom, and you did not ruin her. Kids are resilient. I like your plan. I suggest you help your daughter facilitate friendships now. Help her approach kids on playgrounds, start games and involve others, and bring fun toys/props to share.

This.

You don't have to throw all caution to the wind, but early on in this pandemic my DH and I choose to take ALL our risks in the way of socializing our kids. We did not socialize much, but we made sure our kids did. We haven't done much indoors with anyone, but we are VERY open to almost anything that is outside with other kids. Add in a mask and the risk is VERY low.

Since she's had such little playtime with friends, I'd ask an old friend to go to the playground, then find a classmate to meet up with etc. Indoors is fine too if that works better, but I know almost everyoen I have asked is VERY open to outside and some are hesitant about indoors still.

It's not a done deal. Just start getting her out there.

You aren't a bad mom. It was a shit year.

[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.

Wow, you sound like a lovely person, and one with limited knowledge of how this virus behaves.

[Anonymous]

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.

we could have written this post. Our 6 yo is high risk so we've had to be extremely careful. It has taken a toll. I wish we knew you in person so the girls could have played together!

[Anonymous]

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.

Yeah, that's hilarious. it's the karens who think they are so special that they are entitled to "be free". given that wypipo are far less likely to mask up than POC, you need to check yourself

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:there’s definitely a point where the child’s mental health and development need to be placed above marginal health risks. we were comfortable with 1:1 indoor masked playdates with one family all winter, and now that we are vaxxed we are doing more activities. also in school in person and planning on camp.

The kids are going to have to become functioning, productive adults and deal with the virus for the next several years, probably decades. It is what it is now. Let them grow up and not be held hostage by this for the rest of their childhoods. Eventually, there will be even more effective, and safer vaccines, also effective treatments, maybe even true cures. We have to stay hopeful rather than keeping them trapped and scared. It's not like other causes of death are also on hold.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:there’s definitely a point where the child’s mental health and development need to be placed above marginal health risks. we were comfortable with 1:1 indoor masked playdates with one family all winter, and now that we are vaxxed we are doing more activities. also in school in person and planning on camp.

The kids are going to have to become functioning, productive adults and deal with the virus for the next several years, probably decades. It is what it is now. Let them grow up and not be held hostage by this for the rest of their childhoods. Eventually, there will be even more effective, and safer vaccines, also effective treatments, maybe even true cures. We have to stay hopeful rather than keeping them trapped and scared. It's not like other causes of death are also on hold.

+1. In fact many other causes played a large role in excess deaths this tear. The virus is seasonal, endemic. There is a very effective vaccine to prevent hospitalizations and deaths in those at risk. At some point, people must be allowed to move forward.

[Anonymous]

OP here, I'm not a troll and I don't mean to start drama (though maybe that's impossible when talking about COVID precautions).

I feel better about the decisions we made over the past year, but still really torn about what to do going forward. We will be doing camp this summer, it'll be starting in 2 months. But as for other things - playgrounds, playdates, outdoor classes, etc, all of that is with unmasked kids (and obviously not distanced). Some posters on here are saying that masks for kids are pointless/ridiculous, but others say they are doing masks. It's crazy to me that after a year of this, there still isn't a clear answer.

And I don't get how everyone is so confident in whatever choice they are making. If I put a mask on my kid and keep her away from the others, I'm freaking out that I'm isolating her. If I let her take the mask off like everyone else and play with someone on the playground, I freak out she's going to get COVID. All the contradictory comments are making my head explode.

[Anonymous]

So what if she gets covid? Honestly. I’m sure you never kept her isolated because you feared the flu or rsv or any other childhood illness. Look at the death rates for covid vs flu. Did you know flu has all the same wonky side effects that covid does.

Freaking out over a kid getting covid is ludicrous. Let her have a life again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So what if she gets covid? Honestly. I’m sure you never kept her isolated because you feared the flu or rsv or any other childhood illness. Look at the death rates for covid vs flu. Did you know flu has all the same wonky side effects that covid does.

Freaking out over a kid getting covid is ludicrous. Let her have a life again.

I had scarlet fever as a kid decades ago. I bet quite a few of us here born in the 1970s had it. It had much a higher mortality rate for children than Covid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So what if she gets covid? Honestly. I’m sure you never kept her isolated because you feared the flu or rsv or any other childhood illness. Look at the death rates for covid vs flu. Did you know flu has all the same wonky side effects that covid does.

Freaking out over a kid getting covid is ludicrous. Let her have a life again.

I had scarlet fever as a kid decades ago. I bet quite a few of us here born in the 1970s had it. It had much a higher mortality rate for children than Covid.

266 kids died of Covid in the US. In 2009, 1200 American children died of the flu. Covid is not an emergency in kids. There is no emergency that justifies EUA in children. You may be waiting a very long time to get back to normal if you are waiting for a vaccine..

“Emergency Use Authorizations for child vaccinations can make sense for children for whom the benefits are greatest, and thus for whom it is clearest that the benefits outweigh any unknown harms. In the near-term, EUA’s should be considered for children at genuinely high risk of serious complications from infection. It is also worth considering whether emergency use could be authorized for children whom especially concerned caregivers are sheltering from school or social interactions. The small risk posed to children by COVID-19 does not merit restrictions on any normal child activities in a context where adults are protected by vaccines, but individual children who find their lives curtailed in this way may obtain significant benefits from vaccination.”

https://medium.com/@wpegden/covid-19-vaccines-in-children-6cdff15b2415

[Anonymous]

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

This is a truly stupid topic and thread.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here, I'm not a troll and I don't mean to start drama (though maybe that's impossible when talking about COVID precautions).

I feel better about the decisions we made over the past year, but still really torn about what to do going forward. We will be doing camp this summer, it'll be starting in 2 months. But as for other things - playgrounds, playdates, outdoor classes, etc, all of that is with unmasked kids (and obviously not distanced). Some posters on here are saying that masks for kids are pointless/ridiculous, but others say they are doing masks. It's crazy to me that after a year of this, there still isn't a clear answer.

And I don't get how everyone is so confident in whatever choice they are making. If I put a mask on my kid and keep her away from the others, I'm freaking out that I'm isolating her. If I let her take the mask off like everyone else and play with someone on the playground, I freak out she's going to get COVID. All the contradictory comments are making my head explode.

OP, I work with environmental engineers who model aerosol spread (as in airborne viruses). Masked outdoors is very low risk. This is what we do, and we’re not especially fussy about distance. It’s difficult to maintain that while playing. But with masks and outdoors, you should be fine. Enough big particles are trapped in the mask and the smaller ones disperse due to infinite air volume.

Indoors, even masked, is a different story. It can be safe if your ACH (air exchange per hour) is very high but most schools don’t have the ability to do this with their HVAC. I would not do this with current community spread, unless you really have to... and then only with windows open and as much ventilation as you can create (such as a boxed fan blowing out). Knowing the science around this has helped us to make decisions we are comfortable with for our family.

Check on neighborhood lists to see if there are other families with kids your daughter’s age and a similar risk profile. We have been lucky to find several families who we socialized with throughout the year (outdoor/masked), and the difference between 0 friends and even 1 or 2 is infinite. We are now opening up to socialize (again, outdoor and masked) with more families so long as the adults are vaccinated. It’s been a long year and mental health is also a consideration. Don’t worry about what’s done — just focus on what is ahead and do your best. Vaccines for kids will be here within 6-7 months and hopefully that will relieve the stress and anxiety around all these decisions. Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Are you for real?? No! Of course I don’t feel guilty about being responsible to my community and protecting my kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So what if she gets covid? Honestly. I’m sure you never kept her isolated because you feared the flu or rsv or any other childhood illness. Look at the death rates for covid vs flu. Did you know flu has all the same wonky side effects that covid does.

Freaking out over a kid getting covid is ludicrous. Let her have a life again.

I had scarlet fever as a kid decades ago. I bet quite a few of us here born in the 1970s had it. It had much a higher mortality rate for children than Covid.

266 kids died of Covid in the US. In 2009, 1200 American children died of the flu. Covid is not an emergency in kids. There is no emergency that justifies EUA in children. You may be waiting a very long time to get back to normal if you are waiting for a vaccine..

“Emergency Use Authorizations for child vaccinations can make sense for children for whom the benefits are greatest, and thus for whom it is clearest that the benefits outweigh any unknown harms. In the near-term, EUA’s should be considered for children at genuinely high risk of serious complications from infection. It is also worth considering whether emergency use could be authorized for children whom especially concerned caregivers are sheltering from school or social interactions. The small risk posed to children by COVID-19 does not merit restrictions on any normal child activities in a context where adults are protected by vaccines, but individual children who find their lives curtailed in this way may obtain significant benefits from vaccination.”

https://medium.com/@wpegden/covid-19-vaccines-in-children-6cdff15b2415

First of all, COVID didn’t spread as much among children due to widespread school closures. Comparing absolute numbers in this context is meaningless. Second, death is not the only parameter. Rates of pediatric long haul COVID are significant and may increase with the new variants. It is frankly understandable to be conservative with your child’s health, especially because as more is known better treatments will become available.

I say this as someone whose kids have been in in-person schools with great protocols for testing, screening, ventilation, masks, and distancing. I also know the parents of their classmates and feel relatively comfortable with the exposure. But we did not mix with people indoors, aside from close family who quarantined before, and we don’t plan to do do post vaccination until the overall numbers go down and kids are vaccinated.

[Anonymous]

You shouldn’t feel bad at all. You did your best to protect your daughter and she will make up for lost time once things are back to normal. Kids are incredibly resilient.