My four-year-old son, Oscar, is a Covid kid. Born in 2017, he was two and a half when the world went into lockdown. Like the rest of his generation, he has spent a significant part of his formative years away from family, friends, classrooms and other aspects of public life.
Like everyone else at the start of the pandemic, we did our best: we pulled Oscar out of the small, at-home daycare he’d been attending for just three months and sheltered in place. I put my career aside and formed a pod with four other mothers. My husband and I took Oscar and his baby sister to parks, crossing our fingers they wouldn’t come too close to other kids.
We tried to compensate, but the challenge of meeting our children’s social needs and balancing our adult responsibilities was enormous.
I was eager to return to work – and our family needed the income – so when schools reopened for in-person learning this past September, we enrolled Oscar at our local preschool.
