For the past 20 months of the pandemic, I have had to say “no” to my kids very frequently. First, life as they knew it was turned completely upside down. School was a “no.” Playdates were a “no.” For a while, with so much unknown about COVID-19, even leaving our house felt like a great, big “nope.”
Obviously, things have changed considerably since the pandemic first began
But although my kids have been able to do many of the things they weren’t able to do when the virus first hit, our family has definitely still erred on the side of caution.
So, although my kids did return to school, and although they have seen their vaccinated grandparents, and went on a COVID-safe vacation this summer, there still have been lots of “nos” for them. Until now, we haven’t allowed unmasked playdates for our kids. We haven’t dined indoors, and we haven’t gone to the movies.
My kids have been troopers about it all, and rarely complain
But I know that all the restrictions — and all those, “Sorry, we can’t do that yet!” explanations from me — have been challenging for them. My younger child in particular has had some increased anxiety and stress throughout the pandemic. And both my kids are just so ready for some more “normal” stuff.
The pandemic is still, unfortunately, raging on (hello, winter surge! hello, freaking omicron!), but something pretty amazing happened about a week and a half ago: my younger son got his second COVID-19 shot. That means that a little over a week from now, he will be fully vaccinated. My husband and I are vaccinated (and boosted) and our teen son got his vaccine several months ago.
In just five days from now (yes, I’m counting), our family will be able to breathe a deep sigh of relief. Yes, we know that the vaccines won’t protect us from getting infected in every instance, but they should still prevent all of us from getting severely ill with COVID, and that means that the mama bear in me can hopefully begin to relax.
Most importantly, it means that I can say “yes” more often to my kids
I’m not sure that we are going to start acting like it’s 2019 around here, at least not yet. None of us wants to contract a breakthrough case if we can help it. Getting COVID-19 still means having to stay home from school for 10 days, it means notifying close contacts of your illness, it means feeling concerned that you might have passed the virus onto a vulnerable person. None of us want that.
But that doesn’t mean that we can’t take a few more risks now that we're all protected
I’m hoping that over the next few months, our family can try out some indoor dining, that we can go bowling again, and that we can go to the movies!
But other than the actual things we can do now that our family is more protected, I just generally want to work on cultivating a culture in our family of more “yes,” more positivity, and more light. This has just been a really hard time for parents and families. To some extent, there is nothing we can do about that — pandemics are just really hard — but that doesn’t mean we can’t do what we can to make things a little easier for our kids.
As 2022 rolls around, my goal is to make it the year of saying “yes” to my kids as much as possible, to make it the year that we are grateful for our health and our family — and that we begin healing from the s—show of the past few years.
