A Love Letter to Parents At the End of The Most Difficult School Year EVER
WOW, that was really something, huh?
It’s the end of the most difficult year school for all of us: teachers, parents, students… Hell, probably even the neighbors of parents and students. I would say “at least we survived!” but this has been more than a year of illness and mental health crises… not all of us did. Some of you are mourning those loses. I am so sorry.
As my daughter celebrates her final day of Kindergarten, and I celebrate my final day of supervising hours of zooms and packets full of work, of being her mother, teacher, confidant, chef, maid, PE teacher, and playmate… I have a lot of emotions. I’m sure you do too.
It was hard for those of us who, like my family, spent the entire year in virtual school: never meeting teachers or classmates in person. Those of us who spent so much of the year trying not to worry about excessive screen time while going against our intuition to coax children to sit up and pay attention to their computers.
It was difficult for families who did hybrid and had their bits of in-person “normalcy” sporadicly and suddenly turned to quarantines every time there was an exposure so that there could never be a true routine.
It was complicated for parents navigating this with multiple children who all needed different things at the same time. I know in my daughter’s own little kindergarten class we over-heard older siblings’ music lessons, younger siblings’ infant-wails, and parents trying to deal with their work zooms while 6 year olds struggled to concentrate on learning to read.
My heart especially goes out to the parents of children who need extra attention or services, some of whom lost out on months or a year of in-person therapies. This is unfair and horrible. This has been infuriating, unfair, and horrible. You have been dealing with far more worries than you should have had to and I am so sorry.
And then there’s work… whew. As a working mother who went to work in person in full PPE, then worked from home with endless Zoom meetings while my daughter put Elsa stick-on earrings all over my face, and then who lost my job due to pandemic related situations. I know it was difficult to work and teach and parent and be a child’s only friend and entertainment.
For those of you who are essential, for those of you who work in healthcare and mental healthcare… I just, I can’t even begin to tell you how much I admire you and also know my admiration doesn’t do a fucking ounce of good to help alleviate all you’ve had to juggle and endure.
So much has fallen disproportionality on mothers. We can see it in hard data. This will have ramifications for years to come. Just as it will on our kids… in ways we don’t even fully understand yet. Just while trying to write this essay…. my daughter and our kitten have crawled into my lap. They are both here right now.
And yes, I know plenty of amazing Dads who have been struggling right there with us. My dad-friends and I have leaned on each other TREMENDOUSLY this year, so please don’t think I don’t see you out there struggling through this too.
As I look back over this past school year (and the end of the academic year before) I am feeling sad for the milestones my child didn’t get to have. The things we didn’t experience as planned. The fond farewell to her preschool of 3 years we never had. The kindergarten teacher she never met in person. The first year at an elementary school where we haven’t yet been inside the building. I have so much dread for the coming separation anxiety after more than a year of never being apart. Hers and mine. This was not how things were supposed to be. No matter how you’ve experienced the pandemic, because we’re all doing it differently… this was not what we “planned.” It’s also not something anyone else alive has ever had to deal with before.
I want to stress that again:
No parent alive has ever dealt with anything like this. No one alive has experienced anything like this as a child. Bad things? Yes. Worse thing? Yes, even. But not THIS.
So if your parents/elders are giving unhelpful “advice” about how you should/should have handled things please remember THEY HAVE NO IDEA. None. At all.
This is one area where you can laugh and laugh and be like… “YOU HAD OPEN PARKS AND SCHOOLS AND KIDS COULD GO RIDE THEIR BIKES UNRESTRICTED. YOU COULD GO SIT IN CHURCH AND THE KIDS WOULD BE IN SUNDAY SCHOOL. YOU CAN NOPE RIGHT OFF.” Love them. Love their advice, but they don’t actually know what it is like.
I hope they are offering love and support. I don’t have living parents, but my grandmother is the first to say that even as a stay at home mom whose husband was away fighting a war, she can’t imagine being unable to simply take her kids to school or to run errands, or to let them play with other children. Her situation was very difficult and complicated. I don’t have it worse. Not at all. It’s just that this school year has been one hell of a weird one.
There have been bright spots. I loved getting to watch and experience my daughter learning in real time. Seeing the day-to-day progress and truly knowing what is going on in her classes. Again, that isn’t the experience for parents who have children unable to access their child’s IEP help in the way they should.
I love the extra time we’ve gotten together as a family. The movie nights outside and snuggles and lack of rushing around from place to place. I enjoy as an Angeleno not being stuck in traffic for hours. Not everyone has been able to work from home like my wife and I have mostly been able to do for much of this and I am grateful for that too.
My hope is that when this is truly over, when we get back to whatever new life looks like in the next school year, that some of the good will stay. That I will be more involved in our child’s education than maybe I would have been before because I know what it looks like. That we will spend more time as a family together just us. That I won’t say “yes” to things out of obligation that don’t add value to our lives. That we won’t be too busy.That’s probably naive, but we can sure try.
I hope that you have some bright spots to look back on from this past school year. I hope you can share them with your children and they can share theirs with you. Whatever you had to do to get through this, I am so outrageously proud of you. I am proud of me too. And wow, our kids. They’ve been through some shit. I’m super proud of them.
Please, please take some time to celebrate what you have managed to get through. I got cupcakes for the kiddo and some cocktails for grownups. Please do whatever version of that sparks some happiness.
PUNT THAT SCHOOL-ISSUED LAPTOP INTO THE SUN.
I mean, yeah okay, we’ll all responsibly return it fully charged and be so grateful to the school system that we didn’t have to use Mommy’s work laptop for it but you know… metaphorically it’s that scene from Office Space. (Your kids wouldn’t get this joke but this isn’t for them. JUST LIKE THE COCKTAIL/CHOCOLATE/BUBBLEBATH/WHATEVER YOU ARE GONNA DO TO CELEBRATE YOU )
Anyway, you are amazing. Maybe you don’t feel like many people noticed. I see you. I’m toasting you from this weird half-teacher’s lounge we share.
If you’d like to share some of your brightest spots, or most amazing, brilliant parent hacks from all this madness, I would love to read about it in the comments. We’ve got to hold onto the good.
