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Here are two COVID-related worries that my clients have expressed. One is about holiday gatherings. The other is about remote schooling's effects on their child.
I've converted these concerns into composite letters and add my response.
Marty,
My wife and I are invited to a three-day Thanksgiving family gathering. My wife very much wants to go, in part because she has cabin fever from following all the public-health urgings to stay home.
I am nervous about going, even though the hosts assure us that they’re reducing the risk: asking people to have had a recent negative COVID test, lots of outdoor time that’s socially distanced and masked, and when indoors, also masked and socially distanced, windows open with the heat turned up, sanitizer bottles all around.
I’m nervous because even though the air during a flight is good, the air doesn’t circulate as much when the plane is on the ground, taxiing, or waiting on the tarmac. Then there’s all that time on shuttle bus, in the airport lobby and bathroom, waiting on the TSA line, rental car line, etc. And even though the host is taking mitigation steps, there’s the potential COVID exposure from three days with ten people, plus from staying in a hotel. It feels like too much risk. What would you do?
Dear Scared,
Not withstanding the cabin fever, as many public health experts urge, should you forgo the trip and join the group virtually for a Thanksgiving chat and toast, in hopes that by next Thanksgiving, a vaccine and new scientific learnings will make an in-person Thanksgiving safer? For this year, might you and your wife celebrate Thanksgiving at home by yourselves or with one or two people you’re confident are safe enough, with you and she taking the precautions that that host is taking?
If the two of you find that unacceptable, might you agree to go only for Thanksgiving Day? If not, might she go for the three days and you just for Thanksgiving, with both of you tested for COVID before and after?
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Marty,
My child, a 4th-grader, is getting a—to be polite—scaled-back education. It’s just a couple of hours a day, and it’s really hard to ask a child, at least my child, to stare at a screen that long, let alone while focusing on math, history, and so on. Although my child has always been a good student, I’m worried that he will suffer from the lack of learning for what appears to be an entire school year, maybe longer.
Dear Worried,
I understand: Most people place much faith in education’s power. But many students have, for example, because of illness, been forced to completely miss even a full year of schooling and aren’t permanently impeded, especially if they’ve been, like your child, a good student. Such students tend to quickly make up the important learning and, even at home, can learn a lot, especially if you supplement with individualized activities.
To that end, might you and your child pick activities of interest from the myriad resources online. For example, some kids might be motivated to write a report on dinosaurs, others about friendship. Speaking of friendship, kids can learn a great deal from peers. Are you encouraging—consistent with COVID restrictions—friendships with kids who are intellectually curious and kind?
On a personal note, as a child who had a hard time sitting still in school, it would have been manna from heaven if I had had less time chained to my seat. I’ve always loved learning but wonder if, net, I would have learned more and certainly more of interest and had been a happier human being if I had had more time to do self-directed, active learning. Perhaps that's true of your child.
I read this aloud on YouTube.
