As if the threat of contracting a deadly disease weren’t bad enough, the COVID-19 pandemic also brought with it a series of unprecedented calamities no one was ready for: layoffs, isolation advisories, and business and school closures. For many families, it was a perfect storm.
Manitoba’s school divisions have been taking their cues from Dr. Brent Roussin, the chief public health officer, and on March 23 schools and licensed daycares were instructed to close, leaving parents to figure out how to make it all work on the homefront.
Six weeks in, the short-term ramifications of these necessary precautions are becoming more clear.
Lisa Reutky echoes the sentiments of many parents of young children who’ve had to isolate their active kids from their friends. For Reutky, it’s magnified by the fact that her son is an only child.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Reutky says. “Kids just long for that connection and want to keep busy, and the first few weeks were hard having to explain [the situation]… It’s just an emotional rollercoaster all the time with trying to keep his life as normal as possible.”
Another parent has a daughter on the Autism spectrum. She requires structure and schedules to keep her emotions in check.
“Just last week she had an episode because she saw too many people not following the quarantine rules [while we were] taking the dog on a walk,” says the parent, who chooses to remain anonymous for his daughter’s sake. The fact that his health issues put him at higher risk and his wife works in the healthcare field only add to her distress. “None of us are sleeping well and our stress levels are at an all-time high.”
An educational assistant from the Niverville Middle School says that routine plays an important role in the lives of kids who require extra assistance in school.
“To [suddenly] wake up… and not have that routine in place is certainly going to be tough,” she says. “[EAs did their] best to provide engaging and familiar material and learning tools that the students and parents could use to continue with the skills that they have already mastered as well as slowly introduce new ones… My biggest concern would be for everyone’s mental health… Parents have been put into roles that the kids may not, and likely won’t, respond too.”
Jenn Elliot has two sons, aged 10 and 11. As a self-employed person, she’s had to take the boys with her to work twice a week. Adjusting to home-schooling required her to learn new technologies so the teachers could assign daily homework and do video chats with her boys.
Effective time management, she says, took on a whole new meaning. She felt overwhelmed in the beginning, until she got a grasp on learning to teach in ways that would be helpful to her sons.
“I was initially very concerned that my children were going to have permanent setbacks in their education,” Elliot says. “However, after further discussion and thought about the situation, I realized that everybody is in the same boat. There are going to be some children who do no work at home and some that do it all, and [everyone] in between.”
Shannon McConechy was already a home-schooling mom and ran a business from home even before the pandemic hit. When the schools closed, McConechy anticipated it would be business as usual in her household. But that hasn’t been the case.
“Our home-school life is not at all like it once was,” McConechy says. “We can’t go on impromptu or even planned fieldtrips to enhance their learning. Everyday interaction and free play with other home-schooled kids [doesn’t exist].”
For the McConechy children, even grocery shopping used to be a regular education in math and reading. Now, Mom shops alone. Essentially, all the opportunities for education outside the household have come to a halt, including trips to the library and museums.
“Our routine of evening activities [with other home-school families] is non-existent, and those times helped keep us on track to do deskwork everyday at home.”
At this stage, she says, they’re all just missing community.
“I miss adults, two-way conversations, joking around, and just plain old interaction,” McConechy says.
Jen Lund Ervick once ran a daycare from her home, but with a husband and child at high risk for infection, she had to temporarily close the business. Home-schooling her kids at three different grade levels without enough household computers to go around has been a big challenge.
“My kids have had days where they are sad, some days they are mad, and some days they are happy to be home where they are safe,” Ervick says. “I feel that it’s been the hardest on my oldest child. He fully understands what is going on in the world and is worried for all his family and friends… We can definitely see a change in his spirit.”
To make matters worse, the family recently experienced the death of a loved one in British Columbia.
“It was super hard and challenging for my family because the grieving process is different when you can’t be around family or have a funeral,” Ervick says. “I and my parents struggle with that almost every day.”
But possibly the most challenging experience of all belongs to the Bakers, a couple who has been separated from their four-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter since March 17. The couple, both essential workers, decided the best thing for their children would be a stay at their grandparents’ home in Riding Mountain. Little did they realize at the time just how long the separation would be.
“As much as we want them back with us, we know they are safer being in self-isolation with their grandparents,” says Rachelle Baker. “They have been educating our children… with the required schoolwork, and also finding new ways to teach them important life lessons like chopping wood, baking, gardening, horticulture, and wildlife lessons.”
While the kids have adjusted well, Baker says it’s been heart-breaking when the children ask when they can come home. As well, it’s been a hard to listen to co-workers discuss the challenges of having children at home full-time.
“I was almost jealous of the stories that parents were sharing because I would give anything to be there with my kids and experience the same challenges with them,” Baker says. “I remind myself that this will pass and we will be stronger as a family because of it.”
And then, of course, there are those who would be celebrating a major milestone this year—the grads of 2020.
Dylan Peters was set to graduate with about 50 of his Niverville High School peers this June. Now there’s talk of having to push graduation celebrations to the fall.
“I was sad at first, but it also makes it a new experience that no one has really had before, so I find that idea cool,” Peters says. “[We] don’t want grad to be cancelled, and we were very nervous about that happening, but we also know that we will have it eventually. We just have to have patience.”
Peters’ parents are trying to deal with the disappointment too.
“You want your child to have the same opportunity as every other previous class, so that was a bit difficult,” says his father Kelly Peters. “We were told that there would be a grad at some point. It became clear very quickly this whole pandemic situation was much bigger than missing grad. Everybody is missing something important to them. The most important thing is to get through this and celebrate grad 2020 when it can be fully enjoyed.”
Like other senior year students, Dylan’s missing out on a lot more in his final months of high school.
“He’s also missing basketball provincials,” Kelly says. “NHS was ranked as number one going in and had a great opportunity to repeat as provincial champs. The abrupt end also meant he could not participate in the provincial track meet, as well as he was planning on joining the baseball team during his last year in school. Dylan has always loved participating in all of the school sports… It was very tough as parents to see him lose those chances.”
In the end, though, Kelly feels this year’s grads are learning an invaluable life lesson in all of this: never take your health or the good times in life for granted.
Robyn Jones is the parent chairperson of the 2020 NHS grad committee, and she has a daughter scheduled to graduate this year. She says graduation has been in a holding pattern for a while now, and as yet the school division hasn’t indicated whether the ceremony will happen in June or in the fall.
Either way, she says it will come with some challenges. Time is running out for grads to shop for their suits and dresses if they haven’t already done that. It will also leave little time for the many details that have yet to be worked out for the event.
If moved to the fall, she wonders how it will work for students who accept employment or continuing education out of province.
“Grad 2020 will be the most memorable and the most talked about year ever,” Jones says. “I almost feel like they had to become adults a little quicker than expected. I hope they aren’t always remembered as the quarantined graduating year, but [rather] the 2020 grads that took their final year one day at a time with patience, determination, and hope.”
