Read on Twitter
As a parent of a child entering kindergarten in 2020 1/
jndgklsjl;dfghjnfgd;hjndfhdbfjnhjnfl;hdjn;lhds;jn 2/
Ok I am ready to talk about this in english. First of all I want to say that WE ARE PRETTY LUCKY. We live in a small town with low covid numbers, so we have it relatively good 3/
And I don't want to negate anyone's experience -- most parents have it much worse than we do -- but I do want to share our situation as a mild example of what parents are dealing with 4/
To start I want to go back to March and schools shutting down. We had a third grader, a first grader, and a preK 5/
Third grader got to pick up her school chromebook and was able to complete a pretty rich curriculum remote. We just had to encourage her not to rush through her work 6/
First grader did not get a school issued device, so we got him his own chromebook. We were "smart" and set it up as a child account to be safe 7/
The Google Family child account blocked all the links he needed to complete his school work, so I had to let him use my (adult, not safe) account 8/
Both of us are working from home with demanding jobs, so of course we can't supervise him on the unlocked chromebook 9/
On top of this his school app doesn't always work on his personal chromebook, so he would often have to interrupt us at work to help him figure out a workaround, often requiring us to email his teacher for help 10/
And in many cases the teacher couldn't even figure out the resolution, so we would resort to printing his exercises and emailing pictures of his work to the teacher 11/
And eventually buying him a new ipad in hopes that the app would work better, so we would end up (during work calls) troubleshooting on multiple devices in hopes of him being able to do his school work that day 12/
And most of the time succeeding although there were plenty of days we just emailed his teacher "we give up" and letting him play on his iPad the rest of the day 13/
Which brings us to our preK whose school is completely shut down except for an occasional zoom call which we can either supervise or do our jobs during 14/
So PreK is basically wandering around the house feral with an ipad 16 hours a day. I'd walk by his room sometimes and hear friend&family parents on messenger "sorry ---- can't talk right now bud" 15/
And of course all this time we are trying to establish an "office" for every one of us to make our scheduled calls and realizing our house has major wifi dead zones 16/
So on top of work, homeschool, and assembling Wayfair desks and chairs I'm installing a mesh network so the kids can actually see the video and participate in their calls 17/
While trying to plan meals from our pandemic pantry using canned food we have never seen before 18/
We are a couple who pride themselves for the work and parenting we do. That pride had evaporated. Everything we did was a shitty bandaid we scrapped together in the five minutes we got if we show up late to the next call 19/
Needless to say, we were stressed to the point of tears on a daily or even hourly cadence. The only thing that made it any "better" was drinking enough to forget everything for a few minutes 20/
Which brings me to this year. We don't yet know when or how our schools will open, but we are supposed to find out this week 21/
And the rumor mill says "hybrid" with two days a week in person and school provided devices for all 22/
Fourth graders should be fine, and we are hoping the second grader will do better with some in person and a device that should actually work. Hybrid kindergarten? Oh hell naw 23/
So we are frantically looking for options for full time school for the kindergartner even if that means doing preK again 24/
We are secular but would probably join a church if we had to to get the kindergartner in school. We can't homeschool (we are not teachers and we have other jobs) and we can't let him run feral three days a week while we try to work 25/
As I wrote that above tweet, his swim lesson finished with his teacher telling me he is "having trouble listening" 26/
And getting him into the car I realize he pooped his pants during the lesson for the second time this week which is completely new and unexplained 27/
Taking a break to clean up shit. Will continue later 28/
Clean up done. I don't have it in me to clean shit off his car seat so he gets an upgrade to booster seat 29/
So that was a pretty visceral segue to the point I want to make, which is why would parents who do not have it "that bad" be willing to resort to things like paying thousands for private school and/or joining a faith they don't believe in? 30/
It's because OUR KIDS' DEVELOPMENTAL NEEDS, THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN EACH ONE OF OUR LIVES, ARE NOT BEING MET 31/
When we chose to become parents, we made a deal that we would pay thousands each year for childcare until K-12 where, if we if we overspent enough on a house, we would get public schools for 13 years while we tried to save for college 32/
That deal evaporated in March, when @POTUS decided to let a virus run rampant in a vindictive, idiotic attempt to fuck over blue states 33/
Thereby sending the entire country into a state where parents have an impossible choice to make: quit your job to teach your kids (as best you can) or resign to developmental delay 34/
Or, if you can, spend money you were planning to save for other things to support private schools you don't want but hey at least your kid is learning something 35/
Not to put too fine a point on it but KIDS ARE NOT OK AND PARENTS ARE NOT OK, OK? 36/
And again, we have it pretty good compared to others. We are only extremely worried about one kid, and we are in a place where we can throw money at the problem if needed 37/
The vast majority of parents are not in our shoes, and their rants would certainly make you more uncomfortable than mine. We have it easy. And we are not OK 38/
I am not looking for any sympathy or solutions. I posted this thread to try to express what parents are going through right now, and the fact that we can't open schools safely is a Big Fucking Deal 39/
