Reply to Anyone else lose their groove during Covid with young kids and still not have it back?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As a mom of older kids, I'm confused why everyone things the pandemic told them something new. Yes the pandemic sucked but we weren't supported before the pandemic either. [/quote]

Yeah but the pandemic shook up the delicate balance we had to manage. My kids’ preschool closed for a while and then drastically cut hours to put kids in cohorts when they reopened. Then instead of the usual burning through PTO for routine illnesses, we were all hemorrhaging leave for 10 day quarantines often while our kids were perfectly healthy. Or if we were “lucky” told we could catch up on work at night, which isn’t really sustainable. The icing on the cake was the total shutdown of places like playgrounds so we were truly stuck at home going crazy, no play dates, no mom group meetups, etc.

So not only did we not have support, but we also had societal factors coming together to make things even harder. [/quote]

Some of you act like you were uniquely affected by the pandemic. Talk to families with teens and high school teachers…rampant mental health issues amongst that age group. High school and college years derailed.
Or talk to nursing home personnel (I volunteer at one)….the isolation and feelings of abandonment for many elderly, including people approaching death with no access to loved ones was horrible. I get that many of you are not in a good place, but so are other people. Please stop acting as if you were uniquely victimized by the pandemic. Some of you have no fricken clue.[/quote]

Please stop telling people how to feel, or rather how they’re allowed to feel, based on the fact that others may have had it worse. (And you truly have no idea the extent to what ANY posters have gone through.) Please try to have a little empathy.

I think that’s what saddens me the most about covid.  What a missed opportunity for self-reflection and the development of a more [b]functional, loving, supportive society.  [/b]Instead, hypercapitalism has run amok and nobody knows how to function “normally” anymore, because it seems there’s no baseline anymore.  It’s awful.[/quote]

What does this actually mean and look like IRL for your average working parent?   Free daycares?  Relatives babysitting your kids?  Long maternity leaves?

I don’t quite get the “support” everyone is saying that they need.  Raising kids is hard work and I don’t see how support can make it all that easier.  Maternity leave has to eventually end and even a free daycare has its many challenges.

If you want an easier life, be a SAHM but that comes with its own set of challenges.

[/quote]

Did you really just say that you don't understand why people want "support" or how it would make anything easier? WTF?[/quote]

Yes, I did and I notice you didn’t respond to my specific question.

What does this support look like?  My assumption is you want others to provide you with *free labor.*. By others I mean mostly women.  You want the government to provide you childcare, grandparents to babysit, neighbors to pitch in, other employees to pick up your slack at work, etc.

[/quote]

It looks like school closures/virtual school strained the fabric of our society past the breaking point.

It was a huge political failure and it should have been avoided at all costs. [/quote]

I posted above but my kid’s preschool opened back up in the fall of 2020. A lot of daycares opened before that. Our public school remained virtual for another 6 months but most/all privates were open. I know a lot of working parents sent their kids to Catholic or private so kids could go to school in person.[/quote]

I honestly can't tell anymore whether comments like this are intentional trolling or if you are truly this obtuse.

Not everyone can afford private school. Full stop. The idea that everyone enrolled in public school can simply shift to private on a whim is asinine.

In some places (like where I live in DC), public schools were closed from March 2020 until fall 2021. A full year of school and then some. Especially for people with kids too young for virtual, this meant they had to figure out childcare and school options for a full year and change. And if you lived in an area like this, this also meant that there were more people looking for childcare spots for ECE-aged kids than there were options available, because where I live most people send kids to public for PK and K, so there is simply not capacity in the private programs to absorb everyone. A handful of daycares added classes for 4 and 5 year olds, but not all did or could -- Covid guidelines for daycares meant that even when the reopened (and not all did) they often had fewer spots available in order to accommodate social distancing guidelines, and had reduced hours as well, as many on this thread have pointed out.

I don't know why I am even explaining this. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together understands why "private schools were open" or "why didn't you just hire a nanny?" were not solutions available to the vast majority of the population. Y'all are either idiots or you're trolling, and if the latter I guess I'm just giving you what you want. But telling people to stop complaining because, after all, your private opened up in fall 2020, is idiotic either way.[/quote]

I have 3 kids. 2 kids were in elementary and I also had a toddler who was in the 2’s program. Most or all preschools opened that fall. I know a church preschool by us just shut down and never opened. Those parents just switched to a different preschool.

My older kids were in virtual school for almost a year. They did sports starting in June 2020.

I don’t know anyone who couldn’t find childcare if they wanted it. It is more they didn’t want to expose their kids so they kept them home and didn’t want the nanny to come. I had friends who sent their kids back to daycare as early as May 2020 and they weren’t even essential workers. These were daycares they did not attend previously. [/quote]

That's you. I literally just explained that not everyone had that experience. In my area, we lost hundreds of in-person PK spots because public schools were virtual for over a year. There was no way for private preschools to absorb all those kids. Some people were able to put pods together but not everyone could afford it or had the space. Some people were able to squeeze PK kids into daycares where they already had younger kids, but not all daycares had availability. Some people moved into their parents homes for periods of time to get extra help while they worked remotely, but that's obviously not an option everyone had. Many, many people just muddled through, maybe with some part-time care, maybe one parent moving into a part time role or a leave of absence or just quitting their job, but all of these meant losing money and impacted careers. And so on.

It's just frustrating and exhausting to say "this was my experience, it was hard" and to be repeatedly told "no that wasn't your experience because I didn't personally observe that in my own narrow experience." Like do you actually think that all these people are just lying or exaggerating about it? It happened. Many, many family spent a year plus with inadequate childcare, and if you had kids under the age 6/7, the burden was not insignificant.[/quote]

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