07/21/2020
I know everyone is struggling with all the ramifications of COVID-19. Right now, with the fall school start date right around the corner, so many are struggling with having to make hard choices.
One perspective on the need to send students back to school has to do with mental health and need for socialization. While I I agree that socialization is necessary for good mental health, I think that there are more factors to consider regarding returning to school in the midst of this pandemic and the mental health of our students.
Someone I know shared this perspective from another therapist with me. It’s food for thought. I understand we are all doing the best we can in a very difficult situation. We all are having to make choices we never thought we would have to make. Based on health situations in our family, we made a heart-wrenching decision to keep our grandkids home and do virtual school with them. They’ve been devastated this week as their friends have gone back to band camp and they did not. They know that other friendships will deepen and they’re going to miss out on so much. We try to keep helping them find ways to make lemonade and to be resilient. I suspended my practice in order to be what I need to be for them and help them with virtual school. I know my situation is different from many and so many people don’t have options to quit bringing in income and be a virtual school coach for their children.
Sharing this view is not meant to be critical of those who have no other choices. It’s meant to help raise awareness about impact on mental health so that we can all be cognizant of these things and help our children as best we can, especially when some school districts are reopening.
Here’s the post:
“A therapist’s perspective has been absent regarding children’s mental health in the debate to open schools or not. The writer is a LCMFT RPT CFPT in Maryland:
As a child and family therapist, I strongly disagree with the arguments that “schools should reopen for children’s emotional health”. No version of this situation is good for children's mental well-being, so we are choosing between bad situations here. Calls to open up schools are short-sighted and illogical. Here are some things bad for emotional health about reopening:
- Children experiencing so much more death of their loved ones, friend's loved ones, and community members.
- Having to obey rigid and developmentally inappropriate behavioral expectations to maintain social distancing for hours at a time.
- Restricting their engagement with their peers even though those peers are right in front of them.
- Having to constantly actively participate in cleaning rituals that keep their community trauma present with them
- Somehow having to have the executive functioning within all of this to meet educational standards and possibly experiencing overwhelm, shame, and self-doubt when they reasonably can't
- Being unable to receive age appropriate comfort from teachers and staff when dysregulated from all of this, thereby experiencing attachment injuries daily.
- Lack of any predictability as COVID takes staff members for weeks at a time with no warning while children wonder if that staff will die as well as the looming threat of going to back into quarantine any random day
Returning to school as things are now is NOT better for children's mental health.
It is a complete rationalization by people who are uncomfortable with children not engaging in productivity culture.
The majority of schooling NEEDS to stay virtual to protect our children and teachers and to make room for the safe return of the populations of students who actually do need to be in person.”
