Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are you forcing a 20-month old to wear a mask? It’s against guidelines.

OP here - because wearing a mask is what keeps us safe? As well as vaccines but since he is too young for a vaccine the only defense is a mask. That is what I have been drilled into my head since March 2020.

If you want to keep your kid safe you should read the CDC and AAP guidelines that say not to mask kids under 2 years of age.

And maybe some updated guidance. OP seems extremely anxious. You don't isolate (quarantine is what you do when you have COVID or have a known exposure). You vaccinate everyone who can be, which protects the toddler. You avoid spending time indoors with unvaccinated and unmasked people. But you can do tons of stuff outside, or with fully vaxxed and boosted friends. You can use rapid tests before get-togethers. Lots of things short of a full self-isolation. You can isolate in advance of a trip if you're concerned that exposure will derail your plans, but I wouldn't just isolate.

No, OP. That is extreme. Do rapid tests a couple days in a row if you're - for example - traveling to see vulnerable relatives.

Toddlers that young do not wear masks properly and therefore it really has limited effectiveness even if they're compliant. Look at other countries, including some European countries that were extremely strict in their lockdowns in 2020 -- the US is really an outlier in requiring masks at 2+ versus, say, 5 or 6 years old.

Ask yourself what Covid would mean for you and what activities are worth the risk of catching it. For the vast majority of toddlers, it means inconvenience -- a mild to moderate respiratory illness like a bad cold, plus a couple weeks off school.

The latter is actually what concerns me more than the former, with regard to my own toddler. I don't want our family's life and work to be disrupted by weeks of quarantine. So I've modulated my lifestyle to fit my risk tolerance. I try to avoid eating indoors; I mask indoors much of the time; I socialize with only one friend (or one household) at a time, usually outdoors. I have my child in daycare. I work from home when I can. Only you can decide where your limits are. But they don't need to be extreme.

We never went back to "normal" except that brief period at the beginning of the summer when we thought COVID might be over. For our family with a 4.5 and 1.5 year-old, everything is a cost-benefit analysis, and while we aren't that fearful of COVID itself, I am terrified of trying to take care of two little kids on our own if we are all sick. It's hard enough to take care of them when we're healthy, let alone have a cold, flu, food poisoning, COVID. Plus, I have a terminally ill parent and would be devastated if I couldn't visit them or gave them COVID.

Having our nanny come every day = worth the risk
Having our cleaning team come every other week = worth it
School = worth it
Playdates/playground with select friends = worth it
Visits with select family members and friends (who are boosted) = worth it
Running errands when delivery services will suffice = not worth it
Kids traveling on public transportation (including commercial flights) = not worth it
Indoor dining with kids = not worth it
Generally anything involving the masses (movies, concerts, shopping malls) = not worth it
Going into the office regularly = not worth it
Indoor holiday parties = not worth it (though this is the toughest one for me since I know I would have fun)

Anonymous wrote:I have a 4 year old. The rest of the family (2 other kids and my DH and me) are fully vaccinated and boosted (adults). This is the best we can do. We wear masks when we are in stores. We've just accepted the risk of the virus because we simply can't stop living our lives, for all the reasons you stated. We do the best we can to protect everyone by following masking and vaccinated guidelines, and then we accept the risk. I am OK with this because I have done all that I am willing to do and all the rest - family meet ups and school attendance - are worth the risk to me. I think everyone has to find their balance and risk tolerance.

This is where we are. We draw the line at things that are important for our family vs just extra. We have 3 kids under 10, the older two are vaccinated but the youngest is too little. We stopped going to restaurants in March 2020 because we didn’t want to risk getting grandparents sick. But now that everyone is vaccinated and boosted, we don’t have that worry anymore, but we just don’t really care about eating out that much. It’s a pain with the kids who are out of practice and it’s expensive and we have found lots of new takeout places, so that’s just not a risk we feel the need to take right now. But we did let her go to an indoor party at a bounce house type place - she wears a mask fairly well and it was a huge place and some good family friends and the kids all LOVED it. I bring her to stores with me when I need to, but it’s also a pain shopping with a toddler so I often just go alone at night.

We also consider what we have coming up - if any of us catch Covid and have to miss a long planned trip, that will be awful, so I plan to be much more cautious in the week or so leading up to things. I really don’t want my older two to miss school, but I am more worried about other things we have planned.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are you forcing a 20-month old to wear a mask? It’s against guidelines.

OP here - because wearing a mask is what keeps us safe? As well as vaccines but since he is too young for a vaccine the only defense is a mask. That is what I have been drilled into my head since March 2020.

If you want to keep your kid safe you should read the CDC and AAP guidelines that say not to mask kids under 2 years of age.

I have a 4 year old. The rest of the family (2 other kids and my DH and me) are fully vaccinated and boosted (adults). This is the best we can do. We wear masks when we are in stores. We've just accepted the risk of the virus because we simply can't stop living our lives, for all the reasons you stated. We do the best we can to protect everyone by following masking and vaccinated guidelines, and then we accept the risk. I am OK with this because I have done all that I am willing to do and all the rest - family meet ups and school attendance - are worth the risk to me. I think everyone has to find their balance and risk tolerance.

Why would you quarantine? You mean pull kids from school and stop doing anything outside the home? Hell no.

Omicron has not been shown to be more serious than delta (though data is still coming in). It may be passed a bit more readily even through vaccinated people, but the illness is mild.

I would take reasonable precautions: masking indoors in public and maybe avoiding unnecessarily large public gatherings (think: indoor concerts, maybe limit indoor dining for the next month.)

But indoor gatherings with vaccinated friends? Yes to that. Seeing vaccinated family? Yes to that. Running errands? Yes to that.

Your mental health matters too; not just the covid risk.

Anonymous wrote:Why are you forcing a 20-month old to wear a mask? It’s against guidelines.

OP here - because wearing a mask is what keeps us safe? As well as vaccines but since he is too young for a vaccine the only defense is a mask. That is what I have been drilled into my head since March 2020.

Anonymous wrote:Are you going to keep your normal routines due to Omicron or change them? I am trying to get my 20 month old to wear a mask but he isn't great at it yet. The rest of our family is vaccinated and boosted as much as it is allowed. Should we go back into quarantine or limited exposure since our youngest cannot wear a mask well and can't be vaccinated?

I have a 32-month old. She has been going to daycare all throughout the pandemic except for one month in April 2020 when everything was shut down. None of the kids in her class wear their masks perfectly. The rest of us are vaccinated and boosted and going about our business. We are not traveling or dining indoors but we are not marking any changes otherwise.

Why are you forcing a 20-month old to wear a mask? It’s against guidelines.

Same situation.

I have decided that if we are coming up on a time where quarantine would prevent us from big plans, we will pull back to limit exposure. We are doing this for a week leading up to travel to see family for Christmas. Pulling early from daycare, not going in stores, etc. We will just do outside and our house for that one week.

But in day to day life, no. Toddler comes to the grocery store and Target and still will going forward with Omicron. Things like that. They wear a mask imperfectly. We try our best. But I'm not worried about the risk of them catching Covid. Just the disruption of quarantine.

I’m nervous too, OP. I feel like I’ve been in jail since before March 2020– longer, since I had a baby right before. But now omicron seems so insanely contagious that despite being in a form of lockdown for this long, my unvaccinated kids may get it anyway?

I have no advice. I’m just so fed up.

OP here - yes I am truly nervous to go back to March 2020. I had a 4 week old and had SEVERE PPD. Like I thought about killing myself. Or the kids. We were all fighting non stop, there was no outlet, no school, nobody to help, just a bunch of nothingness. I thought it would be better to be in the hospital or dead than deal with "life". Anyway we are in a much better place now but now I am nervous about Omicron and how life will look going forward. It is just about enough to put me in a tailspin again and convince myself it this so called thing of life isn't worth it. Its just a never ending emotional rollercoster right now.

Don’t have him wear a mask. It is unsafe. Please.

We aren’t doing anything different yet. It’s clear that more data are needed before making any changes, and what limited evidence is available says that omicron is more mild, on average, than previous variants, so I am not ready to blow up our lives.

To be fair, we had a hard time in isolation - gaining weight for me, fights along all of us, and true signs of depression in young children. Every therapist I have seen recommended against returning to isolation in the absence of known exposure.

Are you going to keep your normal routines due to Omicron or change them? I am trying to get my 20 month old to wear a mask but he isn't great at it yet. The rest of our family is vaccinated and boosted as much as it is allowed. Should we go back into quarantine or limited exposure since our youngest cannot wear a mask well and can't be vaccinated?