Just a Random Rant

Dear Surgeon General Admiral Murthy,

Reflecting upon recent events I feel the need to react to an article that was posted this morning in the Los Angeles Times. Or is it Las Angeles? I can never remember. Whatever. That’s not the point. The point is WTF. When is enough enough. The surgeon general is now warning of an “emerging” mental health crisis in our youth? You are seriously, just today, warning that there is a crisis that may or may not be starting in our young children. Are you joking? Do you think you are calling attention to this crisis? 

You should be advised that you are about two years too late. The party stopped a long time ago. The music stopped. Are you the only one who didn’t get a chair? That means you lost. You need to look more closely.

Didn’t you notice that the children were suddenly, without even knowing what was going on in a lot of cases, pulled out of life and living? They simply disappeared. The schools were closed. Stores were emptied. Restaurants were closed. 

Family dinners, family celebrations, vacations …these all stopped. Birthday parties were canceled. Birthdays were gone in the kids’ minds. Birthdays. My students were in tears about missed birthdays with grandparents, cousins, friends, and cupcakes. 

And the pandemic kept going. 

These children were gone. The schools were empty like fish bowls turned upside down. The goldfish flipped and flopped gasping for air, but there was none to be found. The water was gone.

These children had been surrounded by routines and schedules. They had warm places and warm hearts to rely on five days a week. They had safe and secure havens. They had breakfast and lunch provided for them, and sometimes snacks too. These children were afforded counseling services, a school nurse, a psychologist, a bus driver or teacher that they shared a special connection with. They had a library filled with books. They had art classes and music lessons and a gym to run around. 

And then these were taken away.

But you think these children are, two and a half years later, they are just now showing signs of possibly having anxiety and depression. 

Am I angry? You bet. These children have forgotten how to talk to one another. They have difficulty looking at a human face or maintaining eye contact when having a conversation. They cringe at a sneeze or cough and rather than say, “Bless you” or “Excuse me” the immediate response is, “Are you sick?” or “It’s just allergies!” It is a constant struggle all day long to ask the students to pull their masks up. I don’t want my students to cover their sweet faces. I want to see them. I want to know what their faces look like and see those toothless grins. How odd is it that I am teaching students to read when we don’t even know what each other looks like? Fifty years from now, will I be remembered as some masked shadow who taught that child his letters and sounds? So much has been lost.

The children have lost holidays and how to be a family. They lost the family connection. The big family dinners at Grandma and Grandpa’s house stopped. Those stories and conversations with deep and rich meaning and history ended. We all crawled into our shells and prayed for the end. We all hunkered down in our houses, tried to buy toilet paper on instacart, and binged on Netflix. I myself have only seen my parents three times in the last two and a half years. They live hours away and are elderly. We have only managed to meet up for lunches a few times in an outdoor, airy location. We also waited until everyone was fully vaccinated. My husband hasn’t been able to see them at all due to an unfortunate set of health circumstances for him. My children have also not seen my parents either. We have wanted to limit their exposure to people and up until recently they haven’t been able to be vaccinated. My parents aren’t getting any younger and this scares the hell out of me. 

I’m an adult and I am having these anger issues. I am feeling this anxiety and depression. I cannot imagine being a teenager during this. I can’t imagine being a ten year old living in this time. My five and six year old students are perplexed as to why they can’t sit near one another and share crayons.

Aren’t we all taught to share and get along with one another? Aren’t we innately social human beings? Why are we being kept six feet apart? How do we keep kindergarten students six feet apart during recess? 

My own child stared at a screen for his classes all day every day. He rarely turned his camera on. His teachers didn’t expect him to turn it on. They emailed packets to be completed each day by 2 o’clock. Every teacher. That’s right. Every teacher sent a packet to be completed by two o’clock. Six classes, about ten-fifteen pages in a packet. You can guess how much work he did in a day. Zero. I can’t say there was very much motivation. My son is the type of person who requires a teacher who teaches, not hands out a packet. He is a student who asks questions until he understands. He won’t quit until he gets it. Well, he used to be this way. Lately, he has given up. 

I can’t get my son to get out of bed most mornings. He used to be so happy and bubbly. He used to be the one telling the jokes and funny stories. He used to be the most energetic person in the house. Virtual learning for two years took its toll on him. Everything seems overwhelming. There are days when he can’t decide whether to wear socks or not. He can’t decide if he is going to shower now or in ten minutes. He is simply overwhelmed by life as all sense of control was quickly taken away. 

And so many people died. 

Every day. 

The news just came pouring in. Over the phones via texts and news stories. It was on TV. It was on the radio. It was being talked about at the dinner table and over breakfast. It was even on “Grey’s Anatomy.” There was no escaping the fact that this pandemic was killing people. Rapidly. It was not safe to leave the house. It was not safe for anyone to enter your house. 

It was like we had all entered our own shelter in place, like we practice at school five times a school year. Only this wasn’t a drill. This was the real deal. We closed our doors and didn’t venture out. And every one of us crawled inside, some crawled into their turtle shell and haven’t yet come back out. 

I thought with the return to in person learning this year, things would have improved. I thought with more people being vaccinated things would have improved. But that’s me, ever hopeful because without hope there’s despair. 

But it didn’t take the surgeon general telling me that our children may be feeling depressed and anxious. Moron. I am so tired of our country being reactive rather than being proactive.

We see that our children are struggling, so help them. We see we need more counselors, teachers, and paraprofessionals. We also know that the vaccine works. We need to be proactive. In this case, yes, put the cart before the horse. 

This is a matter of life and death. These children deserve our best. So please, please don’t tell me, “well that was dramatic.”

All my best,

A mother/teacher/wife/human being