For those of us in our sixties and beyond, chances are the phrase "aging in place" has mostly positive connotations. But if you're six or eight or ten, those words might have a rather more ominous sound to them. Like, maybe we'll be old and grey before this whole thing is all over and we'll be allowed to hang out with our friends again? So today I'd like to look at some of the issues that affect children, particularly school-aged kids.
First off, what about the children of partners who are divorced or otherwise estranged from each other? What impact will quarantine, self-isolation and social and physical distancing have on shared custody arrangements and on visits (whether supervised or unsupervised) between noncustodial parents and their kids? Non-supervised visits by noncustodial parents living in the same city might be just about doable, but what about if they live in different cities? Or even different countries? What if that noncustodial parent has a few children in two or more different locations? And I haven't even begun to discuss visits by other significant adults in the child's life like aunts, uncles, grandparents and close family friends.
What about kids in foster care or group homes? Or those who, for one reason or another, SHOULD be there but won't be?
Mind you, lack of intervention can have a positive side too, if it means no more school suspensions or expulsions for the girl with a skirt too far above her knee, the boy with the hair growing too far below his shirt-collar, or the child with green hair who is male on Mondays and Wednesdays, female on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and gender-fluid on Fridays, weekends and holidays! No more unnecessary and intrusive visits and interventions and child-confiscations by overly suspicious Children's Aid Society caseworkers either. False allegations of abuse, or even simple misunderstandings that could have easily been addressed and resolved at a much earlier stage, have ruined many a parent's life and career, as a study of Dave Brown's columns over the years would show!
But I want as well to look at some of the potential downsides of the interruption of schooling and other formal instruction on children's well-being. Let's face it: school isn't just about learning the three R's - it also has a very important socialization component to it. If anything, the early grades are MORE about socialization than they are about book learning, particularly nowadays with one- or two-child families far more common than when I was growing up. I'm thinking, for example, of the "Values, Influence, Peers" programs in Ontario schools in the 1980s and 1990s (and maybe still today, for all I know). Or the Peacemakers program in school playgrounds, where older kids got to wear cute little blue vests and do some on-the-spot dispute resolution during recess time. All that will fall by the wayside now.
Another issue is second-language learning and retention. In Quebec, most schooling is in French. But at home and in the community, chances are the kids speak a mixture of English, French, "franglais" and possibly other languages as well. In Ontario, French immersion has become a kind of de facto streaming system for any kids who are doing reasonably well in school, or at least not struggling to master the basics. But their parents may be unilingual anglophones, or may have a native language that is neither English nor French. Perhaps the children would normally go to Saturday morning schools to do some fun activities in the language of their parents or grandparents and this, like most group activities, has now been put on hold or at best, moved online. With major restrictions on socializing, the language of children will be the language of the home and the nuclear family, regardless of how official or widespread it is in the community. And by the way, Ontario kids had already lost a lot of days of school to labour unrest even before pandemic-related measures took hold.
A large part of a school-aged child's life is of course also the extracurricular activities. Team sports. Scouts and guides. Music and art lessons and gymnastics and swimming. Visits to museums, art galleries, libraries, bookstores, parks, playgrounds and farmers' markets. Most of which has now come to a screeching halt. A huge disruption of their daily life.
To be sure, there might be a few small pleasures to be had in the forced proximity of the family unit - less rushing about from place to place, getting to know each other better over shared meals, board games, storytelling, puzzle-solving, photo albums and the like. But togetherness has its limits too, and over the next few weeks and months, those limits will be severely tested as family members increasingly get on each others' nerves - even if their interactions are normally fairly harmonious. We will need to cultivate mental and imaginary distancing as well as the physical kind. We will need to learn to be absent in the moment, or for a few moments, to escape the relentless onslaught of bad news.
Under pandemic conditions, is each household destined to become its own distinct society? An interesting Canadian cultural mosaic consisting of microscopic tiles?
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