If you’ve been reading this blog, you probably already know that Jacob was not really enjoying school that much last winter. French immersion, social isolation, a split class with a bunch of Grade 6 kids, winter…he wasn’t feeling it. So he was resisting big time in January and February, on top of the strikes that were going on.
The shutdown was like a dream come true for him. No commuting, less work, a new laptop to do everything on, no need to argue about recess activities, better lunch options. His teachers adapted and coped with what they had to work with, but there wasn’t a lot of support out there for them. The end of the year was a “thank god it’s over”-type moment.
Normally we celebrate first day of school and last day of school milestones. For the first day, Andrea takes pictures either at the bus stop or the front of the house; for the last day, we always leave early from work, go do something and then out for dinner wherever he wants.
For his first day back today, we were keeping it a bit low-key for a virtual return. Everybody else who is doing in-person is already back to school like his cousins and a bunch of his friends. Today was his first day.
As I said, I was initially trying to downplay the “bigness” of it and we told him in advance that it would be a big adjustment from going with relatively light structure and no work to suddenly 6.5h of class time, 9:00-3:30 essentially, although there are breaks in there of course. And a real full setup with the teacher actually “teaching” for a full day, as opposed to his spring options which were about 30 minutes per week of live feed and the rest by email.
My mind totally futzed on the french immersion side of things, namely that he had been doing hardly any french since March except for schoolwork, and even then, very little “active listening”. Today was a wall of full french immersion with a new teacher who talks fast.
For anyone who has learned French as an adult, or English, we know what that’s like when you haven’t spoken it in a while and suddenly WHAM, you’re back in. When I was on french training, and we had a vacation or break, it was like coming back and starting from scratch almost.
As soon as I realized he was hitting that wall, I also realized we had underplayed his return for the wrong parts. Or rather we had tried to reduce his stress levels while totally forgetting to extra-celebrate his start of Grade 6. We had already made sure to take the pictures this morning, with his commute simply being our stairs (!), but by 9:30, he had hit that linguistic wall. We rearranged our dinner plans a bit for tonight (mostly reviewing what we had already thawing in the fridge) to let him pick anywhere he wanted to go for dinner to do an “extra” celebration of his new school, new virtual life, new grade, etc. Plus we “stopped by” his desk multiple times during the day to see how he was doing.
I’ve reached out to introduce ourselves to the teachers, do a little of the dance with them on social inclusion (seeing basically if we can lay some markers for him for specific people he can do group work with), and Jacob was thrilled today to see who was in his class. He knows 8 other people from Knoxdale, and I would say at least 4 of them are people he actually likes (not always a guarantee). So he’s part of the Knoxdale Nine (my nickname for them) in this new virtual school, and he hung out with some of them after school today in the Google Meets. He REALLY enjoyed that part. Plus the English and Math which were in English.
For dinner, we celebrated his first day — and his survival! — with Lone Star as his choice. Like me, we love their fajitas. We know they HAVE more things on their menu, we’ve just never ordered many of them.
Then a game of cards, and it was crash-y time for a tired little boy. A good day and I’m glad we recovered in time to celebrate the whole day, not just the start of the day. Hard to remember normal stuff in a COVID world, but we did.
That doesn’t sound like a very exciting topic, does it? So I played a game? So what? How is that a decision that warrants a blog post about making choices?
It seems weak, to be candid, even to me. But here’s the thing. Andrea and I worked all day, and Jacob was pretty much on his own for most of it. I was even tied up over lunch, so mostly ate snack stuff. To be honest, I ate like crap today. But I digress.
Anyway, after supper, we were looking down the barrel of about 2 hours before the cub would head to bed, and we are in the middle of watching Eco-Challenge Fiji with Bear Grylls (we had watched the first two episodes so far). And we watched American Ninja Warrior last night.
Which is something we tend to do. We watch a show together…when I was J’s age, I was watching TV shows probably every night with my brother or parents. I read a lot, but we didn’t break out games very often, more on weekends or holidays. Or I’d be out with friends. Remember that? Going out to play? Sigh.
But the only one who really watches anything on his own is me. I watch a lot of shows in the basement, including a lot of current TV. It’s my thing, to watch and review every September when the premieres start, which ain’t really happening much this year, btw.
Yet Andrea rarely watches anything on her own and Jacob never does, unless it is YouTube videos about gaming. I’ve been trying to hook him on some TV series, but nothing has really grabbed his interest yet. Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Fraggle Rock, The Flash, Star Trek: The Next Generation, etc. A bunch of different types of shows. I still have A-Team, Macgyver, Airwolf, Night Rider, The Six Million Dollar Man, Charlie’s Angels, etc. He likes mysteries so I’m trying to see if he would like some of the old stuff that was cleaner / more censored and had a weekly mystery, all wrapped up in 44 minutes. Murder She Wrote, The Murdoch Mysteries, a few others are possibilities too.
Of course, though, I feel a little silly pushing him towards the boob tube, but it’s better than isolating himself in YouTube videos.
So we could have just watched a couple episodes of the Eco-Challenge. He loves American Ninja Warrior, Titan Games, Amazing Race Canada, etc. But I also don’t want him binging that one out and being “done”.
And tonight I thought, “Okay, maybe one episode, but perhaps we can start with playing a game as the three of us first.”
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t that unusual. We have games sitting on our kitchen table at one end because we play regularly throughout the week. Moonshot Euchre has been in our rotation for quite a few months now, partly because it is a game all three of us can play almost equally. Jacob takes more risks, Andrea plays more conservatively at times, I take stupid risks. 🙂 But we all generally win at different times. Andrea hasn’t won many lately, just luck of the draw, but it averages out over time. Sometimes we have other games sitting there too.
But tonight I thought we should make an effort to play a game before heading to watch a show. Just more interactive, more talking, more “us” than vegging. Andrea and Jacob had already been interacting earlier, before supper, it isn’t his only social thing, but it was about the only socializing I did with him. We’re struggling, or at least I am, to balance my work schedule with taking breaks during the day to spend time with him. And his previous routine of having at least one class a day with OutSchool dropped off because he was supposed to be back at school and we didn’t schedule anything new. Now it looks like the 18th before he’ll be back at school, depending on what happens with some labour-related lawsuits by teachers.
Tonight I choose to play a game with my family before sitting down to watch TV together as a family.
Since I broke my TIC series chain at 12 yesterday, I start series D today. And today’s is about taking the day off to spend time with Jacob and Andrea. Our original intent was Parc Omega as the main plan, and we didn’t plan it very well earlier. You need to buy timed entry tickets, and by the time we realized that, the only openings were for lunch or afterwards. I would have preferred to be there earlier in the day, eat lunch afterwards or during, and then stop somewhere like Petrie Island on the way back. But no worries, we bought for 2:00 and planned to go mini-golfing in the morning after basic errands like groceries.
Except by the time we were ready for mini-golf, it looked like it was about to rain. And the forecast for the afternoon for both here and Montebello showed a high probability of showers. Would the animals be equally “out and about” if it was raining? Was it worth the trip? In the end, we rescheduled both activities and stayed home.
For the morning, we went with playing board games, namely Centrix (which we bought through a kickstarter campaign). Plus a few games of Squarrels (like “squirrels” but you are having quarrels over acorns, hence the name). Then we had a brain wave…what about Lone Star for lunch? We had been talking about it for dinner sometime soon-ish, at Jacob’s request but with no objection from Andrea or I, and we substituted in lunch. While it wasn’t “fast” for prep, it was really good, as always.
By the time we were done, it was time for a chess class for Jacob that we had expected to have to skip but he could do since our vacation day was now a staycation day. When we finished that, Andrea and I were ready to play Dice Forge, the big board game we play when we have extra time for setup and play. But Jacob wasn’t up to it, and instead wanted to play video games.
Generally, that doesn’t work well for three of us with a big split screen, and the first attempt — regular Minecraft — was a bust for screen size. But we could play Minecraft Dungeons together, and Andrea didn’t mind it. It’s a bit mindless running around stabbing and shooting things with arrows, but as a cooperative game play, it’s highly functional. It worked well, and we played together for 90 minutes or so. Jacob was happy. 🙂
In other news, while Jacob was doing his chess class, I wrote a blog entry for my big astro reading project, Astro Echoes. And it turned out okay, even with 2500 words to cover the year 1941. Some really interesting stuff, and I think the project will be really fun and enlightening as I go. I even edited it slightly and sent it off as a draft submission for our local astronomy club’s monthly newsletter.
I feel good about the variety of choices made today for family, for my blog, for fun in general.
Today I choose to take the day off to spend time with family.
Most of my posts in this series are about “my” choices, things that are mostly within my span of control. Things I do with my computer, for instance. I don’t have to consult anyone, it’s not a “joint” decision, it is just me.
But with schools in Ottawa re-opening, the question comes from the school board as to whether we intend to send our son back in September or not and that is not a decision that “I” can make on my own, it’s a joint decision of mainly Andrea and I, but Jacob is involved too. We wanted to know what he is comfortable with, what his concerns are, etc. And it helps that all three of us independently came to the same decision in this case. Jacob will do remote learning in September rather than return to school.
During a broader discussion with family during our vacation, when we were still mildly “on the fence” while hanging very firmly to the “stay home” side, I was asked, “What would I need to see to feel comfortable sending Jacob back?”.
A great question, and perhaps not a fair one to answer, as I’m not sure even with all of the best scenarios in place that I would choose to send him back. But I want to work through it, even just as a mental exercise.
I had thought about looking at the variables more holistically in terms of what makes sense for safety for teachers too, but I haven’t. I don’t need to, that’s not my responsibility to decide. I don’t mean that harshly, I just mean that I don’t have to imagine a full solution, just my part of it. And my part is just my kid. School boards and teachers are in far better places to gauge what they need to do for their own safety. I don’t need to figure out their risks for their families, budgeting for the school board, rules around opening and closing with individuals, or even if they need to check for a kid’s temperature every morning. I could, but that really doesn’t affect much of my own decision, and since the local schools aren’t doing it anyway, it’s kind of all been decided.
I didn’t need to frame the decision for EVERYONE, just for us. And here’s how I saw it for my part of the joint decision.
Understanding risk
I confess that I have a bit different understanding of risk than most people, partly as I have managed corporate planning in government for a number of years, including risk. This means that my view of risk is a bit more nuanced.
Most people fall into one of two categories for understanding risk:
Those that think risk is primarily about probability i.e. what are the chances of something happening?
Those that think risk is primarily about outcome i.e. if something does happen, what impact will it have?
So for COVID-19, the first group wants to talk about low infection rates, incident rates, flattening the curve. The second group wants to talk about the potential for death if they do get it and the differentiated impact on various groups such as by age.
But, to me, the risk around COVID-19 is a lot more complicated when applied to an individual situation like my household, and more specifically, my son returning to school, than a general population risk.
For us, there are a number of specific variables:
P/E: This is the probability of being exposed to the virus. If you’re in quarantine, the risk is low, since you’re not coming into contact with anyone. If you’re hanging out at a bar with all your friends, the chance of coming into contact with someone with the virus goes to high. In a school environment, I think we can safely say that the appropriate rating is probably medium (possibly high for SOMEONE in the school to be exposed, not necessarily high for an INDIVIDUAL in the school to be exposed directly). Not guaranteed, but not zero either. There is no way to keep it to zero, you’re dealing with other people. Of course, if you take into account the number of families involved, and that many of them have younger kids who will not social distance (variable 4), the likelihood of spread is almost guaranteed, but that doesn’t mean a higher grade like Jacob’s (Gr. 6) will see definite exposure. On the other hand, if the schools were checking temperatures every morning, that would be a pretty big way to reduce the P/E from the population rate to a specific school rate.
SoG:The next variable is the size of the group. Obviously, the scale is linear. If you are exposed to 0 people, you’d be low, just like P/E. But whereas P/E is more about macro indicators, this one is more about cohort size. If you have 0 kids in your classroom, you are low; if you have 15 (a common recommended size by medical people), you would be medium; and if you have 30 kids, it goes to high.
T: T is for time. The duration of possible exposure increases the risk. Coming in contact with someone briefly is unlikely to result in infection, it isn’t airborne in the normal sense. So, let’s say minimal contact is low, sustained exposure is high, and anything over probably 20 minutes up to an hour is probably a medium.
SD: This is the social distancing variable, but because it is a mitigating technique, the scale seems almost reversed. If you are fully socially distanced, the rating would be high (fully mitigated); if you’re not socially distancing, it would be low (no mitigation); and in the middle is medium mitigation. For a school environment, I think this completely varies by grade. Up to grade 3, I think most teachers, parents, social media, everyone except the die-hard “school must open!” fanatics would agree that kids up to grade 3 are unlikely to fully respect social distancing. They’ll do their best, both the kids and the teachers, and inside of a week or two, it will be a complete failure. They just don’t have the mental discipline or judgement to overcome basic social instincts. But how kindergarten kids handle social distancing is not particularly relevant to my decision, as Jacob is going into Grade 6. There’s still the contagion effect from members of his cohort having family members in other grades, but that in and of itself is not directly relevant. Within Gr. 6, I think there will be enough peer pressure to relatively enforce social distancing. I have less confidence when the kids are in the bathroom or at recess, but Jacob is not a highly social animal.
M: M is for the masks. Any barrier to the transmission is part of mitigation, same as SD, and I think we’re talking the same scale…no masks / no mitigation = low; full PPEs / full mitigation = high; anything else is in the middle at medium, even using non-medical masks. For Grade 6, I think we’re in the middle.
S: In addition to social distance, and masks, your other mitigation is regular sanitization of not only the space but also simply washing your hands. If you can wash regularly, HIGH mitigation; if not, LOW mitigation.
RII: This is the risk of individual infection. There are lots of macro details about how likely a kid is to get sick, blah blah blah, but that is a population estimate. I don’t need to know that, I need to know what the risk is of my son getting sick. Is he more prone to illness? Are there behaviours or conditions that increase his individual risk of infection? Since we’re back to the main variables, not mitigations, this scale is normal (low for low, medium for medium, high for high risk, completely straightforward).
ROI: This is the risk of specific outcomes for the individual. Separate from the risk of infection, if the person is in frail health or has a compromised immune system that might let the disease run rampant quickly through their system, then they have a much higher risk. Another way to think about it is directly related to long-term care facilities with the elderly. They might not individually be at higher risk of infection, even with some of their health concerns, BUT they are at much higher risk of experiencing the worst outcomes of the disease i.e. death, if they do get sick. They won’t simply get bad flu, they’ll die. And so it makes no difference if there is a macro indicator that says the survival rate is blah; the only thing that matters is whether that specific individual will be at risk. Obviously, low/medium/high is the simple scale again.
RIG: This is one of two variables that gets closest to “high-risk” households, separate from any risk to Jacob himself. In short, what is the risk of infection within the group i.e. our family unit? If Jacob is perfectly healthy, but I’m really prone to infection, then the contagion effect for him to me is really high. If we’re all super healthy, it’s low.
ROG: The second part of that “high-risk” household is what is the risk of specific outcomes for the group Jacob is part of…even if we can generally fight off infections, BUT once infected, if we’re prone to things going through our body fast, then we’re high risk.
A formula for comprehension
While I’m not talking about doing any real math here, there is a way to quantify those risks:
Risk of school = [Probability of Infection {P/E, SoG, T} – Mitigation {SD, M, S}] X Impact {RII,ROI,RIG,ROG}
So what does that mean for the option to send Jacob back, taking into account what they have in place?
On the probability of infection, we start with the probability of exposure, and I think we’re talking MEDIUM risk of direct exposure. It won’t be 100%, won’t be zero, and there’s not much you’re going to do on it outside of macro indicators for the neighbourhood or city. It is, in short, what it will be. Unless, again, they were to test temperatures at the door every morning. In effect, screening out high risk cases on a daily basis before they even enter the classrooms. Without it, it’s just the population estimates.
For the size of the group, the province has done nothing to cap class sizes. Which means up to 30 kids. That is a HIGH risk by my evaluation. It isn’t entirely clear to me if they will be truly cohorted either, and by that, I mean with a single teacher. Or if instead, the teachers will still rotate. If it does, it’s kind of like the warnings about sexually transmitted diseases…you are having sex with every person that your partner has ever had sex with before. So, your kid might be in a class of 15 (great!) but if their teacher is rotating to other classes, the exposure vector isn’t really for a 15-person class anymore. They are exposed to every kid that your teacher has taught in the last two weeks. Lots of comments were received in the consultations where parents were concerned about options for “family cohorting” i.e., if they had a kid in grade 2, 4, and 6, could they all be in one class (like a one-room schoolhouse of old) so that they would only be exposed to the same kids, not three classes. Nope, no such mitigation. But since it is already HIGH, and family cohorting only exacerbates the problem overall, I don’t have to worry about “extra” risk.
Time is a crapshoot. Literally, anything over an hour is problematic, and probably 20 minutes. There is virtually (no pun intended) no way to avoid that risk, and so it has to be HIGH in my view.
So our PoI = MEDIUM, MEDIUM, HIGH. Of course, that is assuming no mitigation in place. If you send the kids back with no mitigation, large numbers of people in close contact for long periods of time, yep, you’re going to get infections. You don’t need math to understand that situation, you just have to watch the news.
But the main thing that allows people to send their kids back to school is mitigation.
For social distancing, this is going to be related to a bunch of things. If there was a cap at 15 kids, you’d be able to space out in a classroom. At Grade 6, I think J would be able to show enough discipline to be able to maintain that space. Would it be pleasant? Nope. But he could do it. Except that is NOT what they gave for mitigation in the schools. No cap on sizes, so social distancing can’t be done in the classroom. There just isn’t the space for it. If it was 15 kids, great. But without that ability, the mitigation is LOW.
On a related note, the options for buses are a giant mess. Great that they are on the bus for, on average, less than 20 minutes. So exposure is limited. But the buses have multiple age groups so not all will be wearing masks, social distancing will be impossible without extra busing being available, and enforcement may be non-existent since the driver has to actually drive the bus. There was NEVER a chance I would let Jacob take the bus, I don’t think. I just couldn’t see ANY mitigation that would compensate for the intense risk of exposure during the commute. It’s the same thing for my wife…she doesn’t drive, but she will NOT be taking public transit, I will drive her wherever she needs to go. If she isn’t taking public transit, Jacob is not taking a school bus full of kids.
Of course, the second option in the mitigation is about masks. And their intent is for the students to wear masks. Generally speaking. Great. Except Jacob is struggling with his mask. As most informed people know, “Just Do It” is great for a Nike slogan, not so good when you’re dealing with anxiety-based disorders or asthma-like symptoms. It isn’t just a question of mind over matter if you can’t control your mind. He feels like he can’t breathe in the double-layer cloth masks; he’s relatively okay in the disposable surgical-style masks. But Andrea and I can go about an hour before we’re dying. And Jacob is going to wear it for most of 6 hours? Yeah, that ain’t likely. So while masks are great, when it comes to Jacob individually, I would say that the mitigation will be LOW for him.
Sanitizing everything sounds awesome. Even with the likelihood of it being done the way most schools are done now which is as cheaply as possible. And I read a stupid math attempt by a teacher who thought all her kids would line up to go to the bathroom at the same time six times per day and wait while each one washed their hands so it would take literally hours per day. Except that is the stupid math that prevented people from doing assembly lines. You don’t have everyone go at once, you have one person go and do it while everyone else keeps working. They don’t spend 15 minutes in line each time while other people are washing their hands and they don’t wait until everyone is done to go back to their studies. Maybe in younger grades you have no choice. But I can trust my son to go wash his hands and come back. But more importantly? Why would that be the model anyway?
When I go to my local computer store, and I walk in the door, they have a portable sink right there. It has water in it, I can wash my hands, good to go. Portable toilets have options for sinks with water in them. I don’t need my kid going down the hall to a common washroom for 300 kids and touching everything in there. If he has to go to the washroom, sure, there’s not much choice. I don’t see them coming up with mitigation where every classroom has its own portable toilet somewhere (although, if you were in a portable classroom only used by that cohort). But washing your hands regularly? You don’t need to leave the classroom to make that possible.
Would Jacob’s classroom have that? Nope. So I have to again give it a LOW mitigation rating.
So at this point, we have MEDIUM, MEDIUM, HIGH probability less LOW, LOW, LOW mitigation. If I was exceedingly generous, I could say that comes out to a MEDIUM risk overall. But when dealing with probability, you go to the highest rating and the lowest mitigation which is almost non-existent in some cases. I think, in all honesty, Jacob’s risk goes to MEDIUM-HIGH.
The impact on the household
This section is a bit more challenging to write as some of the details are not mine to share. So let’s sum it up as the risk of infection for the individual is probably LOW, risk of outcomes for the individual is MEDIUM, risk of infection for the group is MEDIUM, and the risk of outcomes for the group is HIGH. As an example, I have aspects of diabetes (I bop around the near-to diabetic group and pre-diabetic group, but not formally in the diabetic group), family history of heart disease, and blood pressure issues. There’s other stuff going on, but those are the main factors. That likely puts me in the MEDIUM-HIGH category just for me, before I even take into account some respiratory issues.
That means the overall impact on the household, if Jacob gets infected and likely infects us, comes out HIGH.
An almost no-brainer for our family
So HIGH risk and HIGH impact? Yeah, that was almost a no-brainer for us. But here’s the thing. It is also devastating for social interactions. And Jacob already has some isolation factors to deal with, with COVID exacerbating them. We WANT him to be back in school, but we simply can’t take the risk. And we are fortunate enough that we’re working from home, but that doesn’t mean it is easy by any stretch of the imagination, it is definitely added work to keep him on task, even as he enters grade 6.
Other parents will have different interpretations of risk, different factors, and truly “your mileage my vary”.
But today I choose not to send my son back to school in September and instead do virtual learning. It helps that both he and my wife were of the same view, I can’t imagine households where they differ and how you resolve something so fundamental. As one popular mean put it, there are no good options.
Will that be my decision until a vaccine? Possibly. Or maybe something will change. To go back to the earliest question, for me to even have considered it more actively now, I think I would have needed to see:
No busing. The risk of transmission is just way too high, and not just for those using it.
Temperature checks on every student entering the building. A parent saying “Oh, I’m sure they’re fine” as they drop them off is NOT sufficient. And to be honest, I think the parent should have to wait until the kid is “approved” to enter. The school can’t be responsible for tracking down a parent who has left for work and can’t come get the kid. And if the kid has a temperature, they should be gone for 3 days minimum before they return, assuming no other symptoms. If that’s not feasible for a family to manage that level of uncertainty, they need to find another solution rather than transfer their risk to everyone else.
True cohorting limited to 15 students with a single teacher for the day. The cap on the student size allows good social distancing and a single teacher protects everyone.
Sanitation solutions in the classroom. Ideally, this would be a portable sink, but barring that, some sort of formal hand sanitizer option could be sufficient, I suppose.
Mandatory masks. This would likely be a deal-breaker for Jacob, but I don’t see much way around it. Certainly, if they are out of their desks, the masks should be on…for going to a washroom, or a sanitation stand, travelling anywhere in the school, they need masks. If, while at their socially-distanced desk, they want to remove, I think that would have to be allowed.
Desk-based resources. If you are using equipment or reference materials, everyone needs their own copy somehow. You can’t be sharing resources.
Time-based outdoor breaks or vastly improved ventilation. I don’t know if it will help, but I think fresh air every 45 minutes would be helpful. No idea how that works when raining or when the snow comes. Maybe it’s a large covered area outside that stays dry and snow-free. Maybe it makes no difference. Maybe improved ventilation would be sufficient so they aren’t trapped in a bubble of exhalations, like getting off an airplane.
And yet, with all of that, it wouldn’t change our high-risk household. And that might be the only factor that matters in the end. Even if it is “low-risk” in the forefront, like going grocery shopping, it would still be an “optional” risk. I still need groceries, but Jacob has a perfectly safe virtual option to learn from home. It’s not a good choice, it’s just a safe choice.
My son is not the type of kid who always asks for stuff as soon as we set foot in a store, and he never has been. Sure, he has some great toys in the way of an XBox One S, a number of games, and a new laptop a few months ago for his time for school-from-home, but he isn’t a particular hoarder of anything commercial except books. He isn’t generally very materialistic.
But he is going through social withdrawal or cabin fever of being cooped up. Because our house is at higher-risk than average for COVID-19 impacts, we have minimized most vectors pretty aggressively. Andrea rarely went out in the first 12 weeks; Jacob didn’t go anywhere commercial at all. I’m the sole vector and my outings tend to be for food or groceries. Or to work twice to pick up and drop stuff off. We’ve gone for a few drives around the city, but that’s about it. Oh, and visits to friends out on the river to go kayaking and have a BBQ night.
Today, he hit a bit of a wall. He’s bored, and lots of little things around the house that Andrea and I are doing are not a lot of fun. We’re in a minor purge mode, and that requires cleaning up and cleaning out certain areas of the house, like parts of the playroom, where some of the stuff is his. And I know that pain.
I too am getting decision overload on some of the clean up where every item is a question mark…do we want it, do we need it, are we going to regret getting rid of it…we’re not stupid enough to ask if it brings us joy, but well, it’s a painful time for 100s of mini decisions in a row where the consequences are not super high, just annoying. In many ways, it’s also about making choices about how we want to live and want we want to prioritize keeping. We play a lot of board games, so that’s a big area of our storage in the playroom, which has caused us to shift a bunch of stuff out of there like CDs that we never listen to anymore. At least not in CD form. Almost all of them are ones I have ripped and copied to iTunes, and if we don’t, well we have an iTunes subscription anyway. It’s not like we can’t hear a song or album we want just about any time of the day (with a few small exceptions like if I get a Garth Brooks hankering one day). But we also have Amazon Prime, free versions of Spotify and this little thing called the internet.
But I digress. I’m just saying that without friends to play with on weekends, as most aren’t on Fort Nite then, he gets a little rangy. And it’s cumulative. This afternoon it hit a peak. We were supposed to go get new sandals, but we pushed that to tomorrow. I was going to go to The Butchery for meat and Canadian Tire for a small bookcase, but that was not exciting him. In short, he just had a combo case of cabin fever and boredom, and moving well nigh into the mopes.
Time for Plan A.
We’ve been working on it for the last couple of weeks. He does NOT like wearing a mask, he says he finds it hard to breathe, and with his asthma and/or small lungs, that’s not surprising. He can get out of breath pretty easily and the psychological triggers don’t help contain it. So we’ve been working on looser fitting masks, pushing him a little more and more each time we go out, and I even bought a bunch of disposables that are lighter than his cloth one. Not as effective of course, but well, we have to work with what we have.
We took him to convenience stores yesterday for popsicles, and while it was a bit of an initial bust, that probably worked in our favour. He went to a pharmacy near our house, a pharmacy at College Square, and a dollar store at College Square, each one brief intros to shopping with a mask, and then finally guaranteed success at a Mac’s store. I almost said Mac’s Milk, but it hasn’t been called that for years, I know.
With those experiences in place, it was time for the big guns.
Today we went to Chapters. And we made a big production out of it too. Or, well, to be honest, I made a big deal about it. He brought some of his gift cards that he hasn’t used, I brought two that I had, and in we went. We were on a hunt for books for him that go beyond his existing series. He has a whack of books that were the next ones in his series but I’d love to find him stuff beyond the core series he reads now. Heck, if I could get him watching Star Trek, there are literally hundreds of books in those series. I might be able to get him on to Star Wars though, food for thought.
Anyway, when we arrived, we headed to the kids section but Jacob is pushing the upper boundary of his reading for the 8-12 set, so perhaps it was time for teens. A guy working there asked if he could help us find something, and while Andrea and Jacob were inclined to say no, I saw it as an opportunity to make it big. So I said, “Yes, please!”.
I explained he had read a whole bunch of series in the 8-12 range, from magical animals to dragons to anything with gods and demi-gods. But we had no idea where to start in the teen range, and we wanted to avoid getting into the sex and romance side of YA/Teen. As an aside, Andrea and I read a series called the House of Night, and it had a bit of a Harry Potter feel to its premise of a new vampire going to a vampire school, which lasted until about Chapter 3 when the main character saw her arch-rival performing oral sex on her boyfriend in one of the darkened corridors in the school. Not exactly Harry Potter! Andrea’s not sure he’s ready for The Hunger Games, but the guy did a great job of giving us some other ideas (teen versions of Cat Woman and Batman origin stories, for example) and then roping in another coworker. They asked Jacob lots of questions, came up with several new series to try and shut down potential interest in others (one was a little too adult for middle-grade in her view, and maybe even badly categorized).
But we went big. Lots of new books, Andrea went and found one too (The Tattooist of Auschwitz, oh that’ll be a light beach read!), and I found a couple that are for Jacob but I’ll read them first to make sure they’re okay for him. I Am Number Four, The Fifth Wave, and an animal magic book called Wild Magic. I remember the #4 movie, and it blew chunks as I recall, but the staff assured us before I even mentioned it that the books were good and to ignore the movie.
All in all, a very positive upbeat outing, we got some good stuff, renewed our Chapters membership just so I don’t order everything from Amazon, and we broke his “mopes” for awhile. More importantly, he succeeded in going out for almost 30 minutes or more with his mask on, and while it was pushing his limit, he did it. Not exactly a “normal” outing, but a lot more normal than anything else he has done in four months.
And his success with the mask bodes well for going shopping for sandals tomorrow. We’re all good. All it took was a little spoiling, with a bit of ulterior motive delivery in the background.
Today I choose to spoil my son to help break his boredom.
