Avoiding Pathogens Benefits Babies

My mom was right after all: We really should do everything we can to keep babies from getting sick.  

When I was close to the due date of my first child, my mom warned me not to pass around the baby to people or let lots of people into the house no matter how much they beg to see the baby. Everyone's going to want to see the baby, but the baby shouldn't be in contact with anyone who could be sick. And you can't always tell if someone's sick.  

Then suddenly, for just the past four years or so, the general populace seemed (seems?) to think that children should get as many infections as possible when they're young - and many think they also shouldn't get the inert version of infections offered by vaccines. Funny that. 

But now the old ways - the pre-2020 ways - have even further evidence. 

On Expectations of the Season

Today is often a difficult day for many people who celebrate Christmas, and it's been made worse with the prospect of walking into a family dinner with Covid in the air. 

Not all of us are surrounded by the people we love today, which can make the day all the more difficult than an ordinary day, when we don't compare ourselves so stringently to this ideal. 

Part of the problem is an old one: the universal issue of going back to the family home and re-experiencing all sorts of old feelings that have laid dormant. That can be hard on its own. But an additional element at Christmas is around gift-giving and expectations. In our consumerist culture, we have entwined gifts with all the images advertisers have given us of that perfect present that magically connects people to the point that we might expect that the right or wrong gift will prove to us that people understand us or at least see us. It's so often fraught with errors that are perceived to hold far more meaning than they necessarily do.  

It can be hard to remember that it's the connection we're after, not the things. 

The Daycare Years

Many of our ideas of virus transmission haven't changed in decades, for better and worse.  

Almost 30 years ago, I ran a daycare out of my home for a little over three years. I wanted to have more time with my kids while they were small, but I also financially needed to stay home since the cost of daycare for two kids was almost my entire take-home salary ($300 vs $400/week) even though I'm a teacher, assumed to be rolling in piles and piles of money. I'm so pleased we have subsidized daycare now. 

On Learning Loss

A New York Times piece discusses, again, learning loss from the lockdowns of 2020, but a new study shows the lockdowns actually improved some skills. 

The Editorial Board of the NY Times wrote about the "Startling Evidence on Learning Loss" insisting that school closures "may prove to be the most damaging disruption to the history of American education."

Really? More damaging than many children getting a brain invasive virus over and over, sometimes 2-3 times each year, a virus we know swells glial cells around neurons that then fuse together, blocking signals to the brain, which creates Alzheimer's-like symptoms in the young?? Those months off, in most places a shorter time than a typical summer break, caused more disruption than this ongoing virus? That was just the first paragraph, so let's keep reading:

How It Began

When it all started, I immediately started reading news from China and Italy, figuring that what was happening there could easily happen here, and we should be prepared. 

Esther Hopkins did the same thing. She wrote an excellent thread about it, which I'm saving here. She's in the UK, where there was just a remarkable inquiry into the handling of Covid, but it's all pretty much the same in Canada as well, except I think we vaccinated children earlier. 

We're still waiting for our inquiry!

We know that when governments are finally willing to act, legislation can be life changing:

Here's Hopkin's words: 

"This is a thread about going back to the beginning of the Pandemic to explain why I myself, like many others, started to campaign for safer schools and clinically vulnerable. I feel it's a good time to revisit how this government caused such division in our society with the current ongoing Covid Inquiry. 

If It Can't Possibly be Both, then Either Give us Masks OR Accommodations

If masks are a choice, then shouldn't being protected from a virus also be a choice?? The freedom to go maskless is butting up against the freedom from getting infected, in the worst way.

AVOIDING INFECTION IN UNIVERSITIES

Earlier this year, I raised some concerns with Covid as we removed mask mandates in my Master's program, randomly, in February. The response was very clear: If you can't make it to class due to health concerns (including trying to avoid catching a debilitating disease), you will have to withdraw from the program. There's no allowance for just listening to lectures after the fact or watching them live online. Although some professors set up their class for that possibility, the expectation is that every student is actually attending in person regardless any potential disability or condition that could cost them their lives for attending.  

And I really don't understand why. 

I love participating, but that can be done very easily with a live feed. Alternatively, a message board can be set up for additional post-class conversation. I did that over ten years ago when Facebook Groups first came out. There's never enough time to take every raised hand in class, so I created a place students could continue to discuss and debate. It also enabled quieter kids to participate. And it was super easy to do!

Is demanding in-person attendance just to ensure we're using the real estate that they've paid for? Because, at this point in our technological advances, I can't think of a single pedagogical reason that university courses must be received in a physical room. They say it's to do with CRPO guidelines, but there's a near-identical program at Yorkville that is entirely online. Unfortunately it's four times the price!! That wasn't the biggest stopper for me, though; it's that they'll only transfer over three of the seven courses I've taken so far, so I'd be pretty much starting over.

When I mention my concerns to friends now, they still insist I should be getting some kind of accommodations (so cute!), despite that not being a reality in any institution as far as I'm aware. If you can't physically come in to learn, then it sucks to be you! I can't wait to take the required course on Intersectionality (if I'm still in the program) and see them explain why those lessons on breaking down barriers don't mean we should be trying to actually dismantle disability barriers here, though.

One prof at York says, 

"Every university classroom that hasn't been updated for hybrid learning is a testament to this anti-social 'you do you' mindset." 

Absolutely.

The Dream Logic of Parenthood

Storyteller, writer, and podcaster, Jay Acunzo, has a great thread up on parenting. 

"I just spent 3 days with dear friends, all of whom have kids ages 8 month to 4 years. Something I need to get off my chest about being a parent of young kids and the culture we live in: 

What the culture shares and even demands you share about having kids/being a parent is that it's precious, it's a gift, it's a joy, etc. But this is not what actual parents talk about or how actual parents feel. Instead...We talked about the fact that our physical and mental health had gotten problematic. Our careers had taken huge hits. Our friendships were drifting. Our relationships with our partners felt strained (one person summed it up as: they're basically just the other parent I live with). We didn't sit around writing Hallmark cards to the joys of parenting. We sat around going HO-LEE FORKING SHIRTBALLS this is impossibly hard and every dimension of our life got worse: health, finances, career, love, etc. EXCEPT a new dimension called Loving Our Kids (10/10 great).

Now, the culture (and indeed, the voice in my head) is going... walk it back, man. Add asides like "(even though I adore them!)" But the way the culture talks about parenting is not how actual parents talk about parenting to each other. 

Neurodivergent with Hindsight

Maybe because I finally have some time to just exist without anything to plan or prepare, or maybe because I'm back in school as a student, whatever the reason, many childhood scenarios have been resurfacing, playing out in my head, and I'm all, WTF? No trigger warnings necessary - nothing like that. I was just so incredibly daft that it's amazing I've gotten this far relatively unscathed. And it makes me think of the many kids who are confused without direct explicit instruction and reasoning. 

On top of being autistic, I've also had many concussions from falling out of trees or off the top of our rickety wooden fence or from falling out of my stroller or wiping out on my bike before the days of helmets. When I was taking Neuroscience courses, every discussion of a different part of the brain brought to mind a different time I smashed my head just about there. I seemed to have zero sense of self-preservation. I remember my mom walking me out to the front lawn to actually teach me to put my arms out in front of my face whenever I felt like I was falling. She had to get me to actually practice tripping and protecting my face because somehow I didn't have that reaction instinctively. I would just fall straight forward, arms rendered useless dangling at my sides. 

And I remember arguing with my many older siblings about whether to put the shower curtain on the inside or outside of the tub. This was after I was old enough to have showers on my own, so I was likely school aged, but I still couldn't figure out which would better keep the floor from getting soaked, and even argued that the puddle on the tiles definitely wasn't my doing. My mom had to take me to the end of the tub furthest the taps and get me to peek in with the water running to show me how the water stays in the tub when the curtain's on the inside and gets on the floor when it's on the outside. Seriously, why couldn't a simple explanation suffice? That's never really changed for me. I need to see things with my own eyes to really understand them. It's likely why I love science labs so much. 

Why Take the Risk?

 If you read my blog and still don't take Covid precautions, why not? 

Justin Lee posted a list of his guesses of what people might be feeling when he asks them to take precautions (test, mask, maybe open a window) before in-person meetings. His list is slightly tidied up and numbering fixed - his had two number 6s - below. He adds he's not trying to impose any of these ill-will feelings, but merely trying to increase protections in order to have high-confidence gatherings:

1. They feel attacked. I must be implying that what they are doing now, choices, conduct, are inadequate. I must be implying a better than thou mentality. It's like a put down.
2. They feel threatened. For a brief moment they contemplate they could be at risk, as I must be implying they are at risk to ask them to take additional steps or change behaviors, and I've labeled them a threat to me. 
3. They feel inconvenienced. They're busy doing their thing, and the lifestyle adjustments I'm requesting are going to cramp their style. It's not often they go out of their way; they're not about to start.  
4. They feel controlled. As a grown adult, they decide what they want to do, when, and for what reason, and who am I to suddenly think I'm going to dictate their choices. Maybe I should go pound sand.

SARS #1 and Collective Amnesia

SARS #1 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) was a deadly coronavirus that hit Canada in February of 2003. It started in China in November 2002 then entered Toronto in a traveller flying in from Hong Kong. 

SARS #1 differs significantly from SARS-CoV-2 because the OG killed people faster, so it was easier to contain! It took 44 lives, but the first cases succumbed fast enough that the city shut down tight, so there were only 438 cases in total in Toronto from March to August 2003. 

Symptoms included a high fever, severe cough, and difficulty breathing. The first patient in the hospital, the son of the traveller who had died just two days earlier, waited in the ER for hours, unknowingly infecting others. He died within a week. Toronto hospitals closed ERs and refused new admissions, then public health jumped into action to contact trace and quarantine suspected cases. Toronto hospitals suspended non-essential services, restricted visitors, and created isolation units for SARS patients. Health care workers were put in "work quarantine" and were not allowed to use public transit or go anywhere besides work and home. 

It was able to die off completely because of drastic public health measures, but also because it was primarily contagious through people who were sick. It didn't spread much from people pre-symptomatic, and didn't have a third of all cases hiding quietly in a carrier, and finding and isolating sick people is easier that isolating anyone who might have had a contact. 

I was untouched by it all, just 90 minutes away, and would likely have no personal memory of it except I had planned a class field trip to Toronto months before that had to be cancelled, and it caused some outrage. Even back then, some parents thought they should be able to override public health concerns. One memorable mom was beside herself because this field trip was going to be part of her daughter's 16th birthday celebration! Sorry, but we have to follow public health rules. 

Compared to SARS #2, only 1 in 1,000 die, not 1 in 10, so it feels like less of a problem in the short term. But that very sentiment makes it more of a problem long term. 

What To Do If Our Classrooms Aren't Safe

I'm getting these types of questions over and over: What should I do if other students and the teachers won't wear masks? What do I do if my child gets Covid? It's the hardest question to answer because there isn't a clear solution when people in charge are ignoring or oblivious to a harmful virus being allowed full reign in classrooms. Public health strongly encourages wearing a mask in indoor public places, but stops short of mandates, possibly to avoid a backlash from the loudest protesters, some with a menacing presence. We have to be louder.

Here are a few suggestions that might work for some parents and in some schools. I understand the privilege some of these measures require, so if you've got it, use it to help the rest of the class! It's frustrating and discouraging that I don't have a better answer, and I'm sorry for that.

Love and Sorrow

I've recently started reading Martha Crawford's blog and following her on Twitter. She's a therapist in remission from cancer. I want to keep this particularly beautiful and timely thread to revisit from time to time:

"I try not to participate in war and game binary metaphors of victory and defeat, success and failure, but it's challenging when this was fed to me as staple food by the culture around me. And the place that this haunts me most profoundly is in my role as mother. I can still get caught up in trying to pursue 'successful' parenting -- even though I know it is only parenting. 

And when the world makes it impossible to guard or protect my children, I feel 'failed.' I feel so personally failed that I have been unable to protect my children from covid and reinfection -- like I failed them, failed their birthmother, failed my maternal mandate somehow.

It's all gibberish but still excruciating.

It's an attempt to control the uncontrollable by personally 'taking on the burden of the badness' as Fairbairn would say. But the world and these young adults' conflicting needs are not in my control. The irrational burden hangs there, unmoved by logic. 

Only grief releases it. 

Also: super essential to learn to avoid talking to other parents caught up in this game because it's catchy. Also, the drive to parent 'better' than your own parents is another form of this game -- even if your parents sucked. It's not a game. There is no winning. 

Just love and its eternal companion sorrow travelling through, back and forth. No kind of game at all."

I'm feeling all this in trying to give my kids the best opportunities I can and the most enriching lives possible within a limited budget (single mom now retired) and during a pandemic. There are always other kids that have more and better, and it destroys me when that's overtly pointed out. I don't tell them that, of course, because they're grieving their own losses and regrets - from missed lessons as kids to the unlikelihood of ever owning a home, and I don't want to get in the way of that with my crap. And now there are year-end celebrations being missed because of Covid, which is frustrating because they could be made safer with masks, but that spoils all the fun. 

I'm just no fun. 

So far, I've kept 2/3rds of them virus-free, but not without complaints and evidence of how "normal" people live, regularly going to restaurants, concerts, bars, and parties, hanging out with friends without a second thought, in and out of each other's homes, all without masks. I know. They're free to go anywhere they want if they isolate and test afterwards, but that's not worth it to them, which is their decision to make and own. 

As many parents do, I also grieve when they grieve. Their pain is always shared. Even when I cause it.

(And then I feel pathetic since we're all fed and housed and healthy enough to do most things. Who are we to regret the path that led us here or grieve the trappings of what's just out of reach? But there it is, the sorrow, hanging around in a line up of things to deal with today.)

Juris My Diction Crap

This Matrix clip has been at the front of my mind since I started looking into how to get a booster for my youngest, who's 17, because I question if recent orders around delaying boosters for the 12-17 and around getting kids back to school in nine days are really for our protection! 

My oldest caught the covid from their partner who got it from an ill-advised trip into Shoppers Drug Mart, and my little bunny is very sick, and it sucks so much!! (Wear N95 masks, and wear your googles, too, kids!!) But we've been lucky that the oldest's bedroom is in the basement with their own bathroom, so they're relatively easily contained, and the rest of us made it to day five unscathed and testing negative. My biggest worry aside from the well being of my triple vaxxed oldest, who doesn't have the strength to get out of bed, is my unprotected teenager getting it. 

Parenting in the Time of Covid

He was on his way out the door, to walk around with a new friend outside. 

Me: Rapid test, masks, or walking 6' apart? Which are you doing?

Him: It bothers me that you ask. I shouldn't have to live with your anxieties. You just ask because you're anxious about it, and your anxieties shouldn't have an effect on my life.

Me: You're going to hang out with someone and then come back into the house with other people who are vulnerable. Omicron is far more contagious, so being outside isn't enough. There is a very real risk that you could catch and spread the virus walking outside next to someone if you're both unmasked. You have to choose one of the three. Either she tests before you go, or you both wear masks, or you walk far apart. 

Him: But that fact that you ask means you don't trust me. I know what I'm doing. I read the research.

Me: I read the research too, which says that we need to start masking outside. I trust that you'll follow your own risk assessment. But I think we have different risk levels that we're comfortable with. I accept far less risk because your sister is way past needing a booster. Once she gets it - if that ever happens - I might be less inclined to check that your risk levels are in line with mine. Right now, I want some reassurance that your plan is in line with my lower level of risk comfort. 

I'm at the "My house - my rules!" point in the pandemic. It makes it very difficult to live with adult children - for everybody. He said he'd be gone an hour; he was out for five hours. I'm happy he's meeting people and getting out there, but I'm also really glad that I pushed him to wear a mask! Here's hoping that he actually kept it on!

ETA:Turns out, she was on it. She insisted on rapid testing first and wearing a mask outside. Thank god for small favours!

On "Fixing" ASD

I watched a course-load of videos by Dr. Alok Kanojia (@HealthyGamerGG) this past summer. He's a therapist specializing in addiction in his day job and focused on gaming addictions online, but he has broadened his videos to encompass many other issues. He doesn't do therapy online but "coaches" people instead. And typically right there I'd be out. Coaching?? It all sounds a little goofy and new-agey. But I got hooked when I first saw his video with Natalie Wynn (aka ContraPoints) the previous October because of his openness to really listen to her experiences and learn from them before asking the precisely right questions necessary to get her to understand herself at further depth. And then they meditated. It's a mix of Freud and a mountain top guru; at the very least I'm learning lots of Sanskrit words in the process.

I appreciate how he let Natalie explain her experience as a trans person, BUT then I saw a more recent video with a streamer, DesMephisto, taking about being autistic. Dr. K focused on fixing their ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). He often uses an addiction analogy to explain that, generally, first we need to understand and accept who we are, like we have to accept being an addict, but we don't stop at acceptance; the next task it to change ourselves so we can better live in the world. And then he asked Des what many consider an offensive question: "If I gave you a pill that would make you no longer autistic, would you take it?" 

Yikes. 

If that doesn't seem offensive, then imagine if he had asked Natalie that same question about being trans. It doesn't even make sense. 

Unforeseen Custody Issues: Who Could Have Predicted THIS?

I'm generally a worrier. If my kids don't text back after a few minutes, all sorts of images bombard my brain. Sometimes they don't text back for hours, and it always ends up being because they were sleeping or - back in the good old days - at a movie theatre with their phone actually off! So there's the voice that says, "They're dead in a ditch," but that's always being countered by the voice that says, "Don't be silly. This happens all the time, and it's always nothing!"  

But now Covid has ramped up that negative self-talk to 11.

I was finally able to relax a bit knowing that high schools are online only for three full weeks after the break. Just one week in the building, and then I expect to be teaching distance learning for the rest of the year! But then Christmas brought its own obstacles.

Oh--What's a Teacher to Do?

Starting next Friday, secondary students in my board will be forced to be in a room with about 15 other students they might not know, many of whom will take off their masks for a 45 minute mid-morning snack deemed necessary to get them through to lunchtime dismissal. They're not exactly forced, since they can choose, instead, to be exclusively distance learning, but that comes with a risk of losing their electives and possibly a more difficult time with complex instructions. So that's not much of a choice. And once they choose to be with a teacher in a classroom, then they're not permitted to leave that room while others unmask. 

It's like telling kids they can either get a ride to Toronto for a concert or watch it on TV, but if they take that ride, then they have to take off their seatbelts while they're on the 401. The car's not going to pull over to let you out if you change your mind! So, what's it going to be? Sure, it's a choice, but many kids will make the riskier choice, such as kids are. And, sure, they might all be totally fine. But they might not be. And then it will be our fault. It's ultimately Ford's and Public Health for approving this plan, but the board has to take some responsibility too since neighbouring boards don't have a secondary nutrition break. And teachers, on the front lines, also bare responsibility. 

On Coddling Our Kids

The Agenda has a video with Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist. I watched it with my kids, and we had a good discussion about it. Haidt published a book, The Coddling of the American Mind, with Greg Lukianoff, CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a few months ago to very mixed reviews. He has a few interesting ideas, but many are rehashed or questionable.

His concern with the iGen or the Gen Z group, anyone born after 1995, is that they grew up with social media, which has messed them up. It's mainly the same story we've already heard about cell phones and helicopter parents. But then he said that boys aren't doing so badly since they mainly play video games and bully physically, but girls are really affected by calls for perfection and psychological bullying that happens more online. My kids jumped on this claim with their own stories, but I cautioned that they just had anecdotal evidence from their own lives, and this guy likely did more thorough research. While it's good to consider how much an idea 'rings true,' we need to evaluate the research. I didn't read the book, but one of the citations is Pinker, which makes me a little bit dubious. Then he said the suicide rate for teen girls has gone up by 70%, but not for boys. One article says the CDC says the rate increased 70% for white youth and 77% for black. The CDC site has this graph, which clarifies how much higher the rate for males is to begin with:

On Anxiety

I just finished John Green's Turtles All the Way Down, which I read because he claimed it was his way of trying to put words around what it's like to live with profound anxiety, and then I saw this article asking "Why are more American teens than ever suffering from severe anxiety?". I was raised with most my sibs affected by some kind of mental illness or disorder, and now my children are in the same boat. Somehow, I've made it this far relatively unscathed by the ravages of anxiety, so I'm ever eager to really get my head around what it feels like from the inside.

Green's book is just what I was hoping for. There's nothing to read below the surface here, which might deny it any book awards, but it does an excellent job of giving us a clear and straightforward  first-hand glimpse of the inner thoughts that drive anxious behaviours. Like David Sedaris's Naked, a collection of hilarious personal essays about OCD, it can help the reader really get why anyone would do or think those things and then begin to empathize with that curious drive that all but obliterates their free will.

On Rising Anxiety Rates

A couple weeks ago, CBC ran an article about a high-school guidance counsellor, Boyd Perry, concerned with the increase in anxiety in students, and I've been dwelling on it ever since. This is crazy long as I'm just figuring all the angles here. Perry thinks we need to assess anxiety differently because these kids, some of them in kindergarten, aren't disordered but merely ill-equipped due to the bubble parenting that's become a trend, the swooping in to fix every little thing rather than letting kids feel the pain and learn to cope. According to an annual survey of counselling centres, the most common issue raised by students used to be around relationship concerns. In 1996, anxiety took over as number one spot, and it's stayed there gaining a wider lead ever since.

I agree parenting trends and misdiagnoses are an issue, but I also think it's more complicated than that.

I raised a similar concern a year ago; maybe mid-winter is the season to discuss our discontentment. My students last year were quite sure school is significantly harder than ever before regardless my claims to the contrary backed up with binders of old assignments and exams spanning the decades. I don't think they felt like it's harder just because life has been too easy for them because of overprotective parents, though. At the time I said it's also because of their parent's anxiety over the job market, the demands social media have on their time, and everyone's heightened expectations of themselves and their lives including, but not limited to, the quest for a gratifying career that allows them to work to their potential in a field they find fascinating. Today, I'd add the decrease in face-to-face interactions and feelings of community, the umbilical cord of cellphones that prolongs separation anxiety (with friends as well as parents), unceasing change that keeps us in a state of perpetual turmoil, concern with the state of the world, and even pollution. There are numerous societal, environmental, and personal factors intertwined that are pushing this trend.


WHAT IS ANXIETY

But what does anxiety even mean? A separate issue is that 'anxiety' is a word like 'cancer.' Decades ago I saw an interview with an oncologist (and sometimes comedian and philosopher), Robert Buckman, who insisted that we should use the word 'cancer' the way we use the word 'infection'. Both are very broad terms that could mean someone needs a minor procedure or they're on death's door. You might need a benign mole removed or a blister popped, or you might have pancreatic cancer or AIDS. We don't generally gather family together to tell them "I have an infection" because that's meaningless information. We're more specific about it. We need to apply that specificity to cancer discussions always including the location, the spreading potential, and the stage. The word has become too loaded, typically cueing people to think the worst.