I was in Target today, and I saw a mother of three young children, the oldest looked about ready to enter second grade at most. She was pushing her cart through the store, the two older boys walking nearby with the youngest, a girl, sitting in the cart. All three children dutifully had their masks on, each a different style. The oldest had a no-nonsense, disposable, nondescript mask, the middle a black cloth mask with a superhero logo, and the youngest a pink sparkly sequined mask. None of the children were fussing with their masks. They just seemed to accept them as much as they accepted the clothing they were wearing. They were simply a necessary part of their outfit when they are out in public.
Kudos to that mom!!! She has obviously spent some time and effort training her children about the importance and necessity of wearing personal protective equipment in this COVID-19 riddled world. She made me start to question some of my strongly-held personal beliefs about the ability of my students to follow the CDC guidelines regarding social distancing, hand washing, and mask wearing. Maybe I’d been too hasty. Maybe I’d not given the children or their parents enough credit. Maybe it WOULD be possible to have a group of twenty first graders in a classroom for eight hours per day, five days a week, follow protocol and learn safely in a deadly virus-infested world.
A few minutes later, I was checking out my purchases at the register. I heard them before I could see them: a handful of unmuffled children’s voices, one taunting another and apparently successful, based on the full-throated scream that followed. Curious about the clarity of their voices, I shifted my position slightly to get a better look at the children making the ruckus.
Another masked mom was pushing her shopping cart, surrounded by her three small children, the oldest of whom was probably entering first grade, the youngest toddling next to the shopping cart with its pacifier dangling from its mouth, barely able to keep up. All three were out of control, touching everything in sight. The one thing that was no where to be seen…a mask.
In that moment, all the doubt, the recrimination, the reconsideration I had been giving to my views about the age-appropriateness of expecting my students to wear masks all day long just flew out the window. I was right. I’d been right all along. It’s too much to expect of them, too much to ask. I just happened to catch that first mom at a good point in time. I’d lay bets that even her kids, at some other point, had given her fits and refused to wear the PPE.
Does that mean that the first mom shouldn’t bother to teach her children to mask up? Of course not! I still give her kudos, and she should still continue the good work she’s been doing, because it’s the right thing to do. It’s keeping her family healthy. It’s keeping me healthy. It’s keeping you healthy. It’s helping starve the virus from devouring its next victim. It’s bringing the virus under control more quickly than it would be otherwise.
But if you’re one of those people demanding that schools reopen immediately, despite the ever-rising numbers of new COVID-19 cases being reported daily, and you’re demanding to know why they aren’t, this is why. Even if you could reasonably expect six-year-old children to keep their uncomfortable mask on all the time and to always remember to never approach their friends closer than six feet (and you can’t), you can never count on all parents teaching their children to wear their masks, even when they don’t want to, and to keep their distance from other people, and to do the right thing because it’s the right thing, especially when it is inconvenient or uncomfortable, to think of the good of other people and maybe, once in a while, even put other’s needs above their own.
Unless parents are willing to do the hard work of parenting, and it IS hard work, I know, children will NEVER learn these behaviors. Students can’t be expected to magically start to exhibit these behaviors at school if parents have not first taught them at home.