I am self aware and socially aware enough to know that not everyone has the options that we do.

I know that families are desperate. I understand, though I may not know personally, the pain families are enduring, the weight of the decisions they must make, placed upon their shoulders. 

The amount of pressure we as parents and caregivers of children have right now is unlike anything we’ve experienced in history. 

I am not a doctor. I am not a teacher. I am not a professional, an expert, or even really a mentor. 

Simply put, I am only a critical thinking, college educated, common sense striving individual, living in a rural town during a global pandemic, watching both from afar and within, while also striving to teach my children how to foster empathy for the world around them.

I’ve received hundreds of messages from followers and friends, stating how I cannot have an opinion because this pandemic does not affect me.

And though I delete them as fast as they come in, those messages stick with me, and make me critically doubt everything I am striving to understand. Who am I to care about this as much as I do? Who am I to educate, bring awareness to, or even talk about what is going on, when I am living in a bubble in my little town with my non-school aged children?

I’ve also been told that I’m selfish, inhumane. I’ve been called a murderer. My favorite, out of the many hurtful things being spewed digitally in my direction, is that I’m abusing my children by raising them in a conservative household. 

Politics has nothing to do with my outlook on raising my children. Politics, though, I do believe is the social driving force behind this pandemic, but is not what is driving me and my opinions.

What I care about is how our children are going to function as adults when this is “over.” 

What kind of world are they going to live in? And who is responsible for that world?

You. You are responsible for the world your children are going to live in. 

#saveourchildren is great. I support this 100%. Our children must be saved. But not only from sex trafficking.

No, we need to save our children FROM US.

I feel sick to my stomach writing this. But I feel much more sick when I watch the world around me,telling them that this is the new normal. That this is the world we live in now, without doing anything to change it.

If you aren’t ok with what is happening, then stop complying and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

There are a million tangible things we can do to #saveourchildren. Social media posting guidelines. Keeping them off of unsupervised internet. Teaching them about their bodies and the respect they deserve. The list goes on.

But what about saving our children IN REAL LIFE, right now.

The long term trauma that will ensue on our children from this pandemic is unknown as of now. But we can guarantee that it won’t be slight. 

When our children look back on this time of their lives, what will they remember?

Five months ago, we had plans of how we would present this time of life to our kids. The time we had to stay home to stay healthy. The year we put others before ourselves. The extended summer of play and learning how to be together again. The year we saved all our dollars, and how that changed our lives. So many positive spins on such a devastating circumstance.

We are long past this. We are now in the traumatic phase of this pandemic. We joke about feeling sad. But that’s not a joke. Social distancing is a trending term, and it’s unhealthy. Our children were asking us five months ago why they couldn’t see their friends. Now  they were asking us why they aren’t allowed to have friends. We have forced trauma on our kids. And it happened so fast and so without our consent, that we didn’t even notice. 

But they did. 

It’s a common “ideology” right now that kids are resilient. That they bounce back fast. That they can adapt better than we as adults can. 

The problem with this ideology is that there is no “back.” Not until we make the “back” happen.

The idea that mask mandates will be lifted, that the plexiglass will come down, that the social distancing atmosphere will dissipate, is a MYTH. 

The signs at the farmers’ market telling us that masks won’t be required forever but they are today, is a lie. Telling our children that one day they will be able to play with their friends at school again is a lie. We are lying to ourselves, and worse, our kids. And that simple fact alone will play out tenfold in our children’s lives. Trust, empathy, respect and honesty has been thrown out the window, and we will never get it back.

I see parents saying that they are letting their children decide whether or not to go back to school in person. My question is this – where have all the parents gone? This is not a decision a child needs to make. This is a decision PARENTS need to make. Giving our children the burden of this choice is unfair, and more importantly, traumatic for them. We have put the responsibility of a parent onto our children. We have given them the weight, simply because we didn’t want to carry it.

We as parents have the responsibility to save our children. It is not their responsibility to save themselves.

I feel like this is important, so I’m saying it again.

IT IS NOT OUR CHILDREN’S RESPONSIBILITY TO SAVE THEMSELVES. 

We are supposed to protect them. Teach them. And lead by example. 

We are doing none of these things by sending them back to school with a mask on. Not a single one. Among many other examples we are setting for our children right now, this mask mandate situation is most triggering for me.

How are we showing them what independence and freedom looks like? How are we showing them what it feels like to be protected? How are we teaching them to think for themselves, have respect for their bodies, and lead with empathy?

We don’t all have the option of virtual learning, homeschool, paying for a charter or private school, or any of the other options. I understand this. And there is no valid reason to put the weight of this decision on our kids. This is our job, and only our job, as parents. As protectors. 

What could possibly be more important than saving the sanity and soul of our children? 

Many would argue – 

Money, putting food on the table. Many parents have to work and cannot stay home to facilitate their child’s education. How is a mom or dad supposed to work, maintain a household, and educate their children? My argument is this – isn’t that what we are supposed to do? Is that not why we are here, on this earth? To serve our children and spouse and our Lord? God blessed us with our children to make the world a better place. To leave it better than we found it. And yet again, we seem to so quickly put the responsibility of the school system, or other caregivers, to do that job for us. Why are we not making it a higher priority to do this ourselves? To raise our children OURSELVES?

School is a safe haven for millions of children. Home is not safe, or healthy, for so many children. School is NEEDED for these kids. But where are the neighbors? The families? The friends – who know these kids need to go to school for their safety? Why are we allowing, from a distance, for these kinds of families to exist, and then count on our government and our tax dollars to save them?

This is not a responsibility a teacher needs to have. Or a school system. If school is the only place a child can get a warm meal, and an adult to protect them, then the problem has gone too far already. And we, as a #saveourchildren preaching community, have failed. We haven’t saved the children at all. In fact, we have yet again put off that responsibility to someone else, the public school system, to take care of the problem for us.

I don’t have answers. These are simply questions, complex questions, I have. How are we serving our children? How are we truly saving them? 

When our children are older, and they ask us, “What did you do for society during the pandemic?” What are you going to say? I know that I want to say that I fought. That I did more than post memes on social media, or joke about the mask. 

I want to say that I fought for them, for my children. That it was hard at the time, but together, in this house, we sacrificed a whole lot for the safety of them, and their future. That we stood up in public, educated our family and friends, and never ever stopped digging for the truth. 

When Joey is 21, and we talk about that time in his life when he couldn’t see anyone smile because they all wore masks, I will reply with, “But you didn’t, and everyone saw your smile.” 

Our kids are not going to remember why they had to wear a mask, because frankly, that’s not even what is important right now. What they will remember is how they felt so abandoned at their first day of school, wearing a mask, being told they can’t play with the balls, or go outside, or share their lunch boxes. Why school felt so lonely, when surrounded by other people. Why they couldn’t touch their face, pick their nose, or kiss in the hallways. 

I think about Emma, our 6 year old “other baby.” Coming to my door, holding her mask, telling me how much she hates kindergarten. That she can learn all these things at home, and still play outside with Joey. Or Anna, her older sister, who just wants to play field hockey in college, but can’t even play now in high school because sports on school grounds aren’t allowed this year. Or how she won’t have her first kiss at school, because how are you supposed to kiss through a mask? 

I think about Madi, my sweet Madi, being told to wear a mask in the dentist office, only to take it down when the doctor needs to look at her teeth. Never to be told what a beautiful smile she has.

I think about my sweet baby girl, getting her shots at the doctor’s office, not being able to see her mom’s face behind the mask to reassure her that it’s going to be okay. 

I see all the kids, wondering why their parents are so sad all the time. Why we keep looking at them with solemn faces. 

Just because Covid isn’t in this neighborhood doesn’t mean this doesn’t affect me. And assuming that anyone in this world is living a normal, unaffected life is a sad misunderstanding. This hurts all of us because it is hurting our kids. 

We are not setting an example for our kids when they see people hiking with masks on, talking behind a plexiglass shield, leaving them at school with strangers they can never hug, or hiding behind our phones laughing at sad jokes about being sad. 

This new normal cannot be normal. We cannot let it. Because this new normal would be something our children live with FOREVER. Thankfully, in fifty years, we can say goodbye. But our kids cannot. They have a lifetime left of this, and they can do NOTHING about it. But we can. We must.