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

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.

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

This is a truly stupid topic and thread.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.