The Path Less Taken

 Today my kids school reopened. We didn’t send our kids in - much against the general sentiment. Now don’t get me wrong - I very much think my kids would benefit from in person learning. It just happens to be that the school chose to open two days after one of the biggest holidays and people were moving and mingling. A lot of schools voluntarily went virtual for two weeks post holiday in order to avoid an outbreak but ours decided against. They have their reasons and I respect their choice. We just decided we didn’t have to agree or take the risk just because they did. 

Why am I sharing this? Everyone is grappling with school and how to and when to open. And honestly I think there are a lot of factors that go into these decisions. What I’m more focused on is the conversations We had leading up to this decision. I feel like we learned something about ourselves, our parenting and our choices in this process. That’s really what I wanted to discuss today. 

As you might imagine - our kids were extremely upset with this decision. Seeing all their friends reunite and not being there is extremely tough. At the same time - we had to do what we felt was prudent. Safe. Smart. Part of me wanted to tell them that their school was making the wrong choice. But that would undermine their trust in the school. 

So we grappled With how to present what we wanted without that tone of mistrust. 

Framing it: when discussing this with our kids, we stressed that many factors go into the schools decision making process. We are not privy to those factors nor can we use them to make our determination. We have to focus on what makes sense for our family and our situation. It’s not always necessary to agree with everyone, you just have to understand you don’t understand them. It’s all about whose shoes you’re standing in...

See it from our perspective: one of my kids kept using the Well know “it’s not fair.”  Instead of my usual tack of  Life’s not fair - I flipped it. Maybe it isn’t fair we’re being put in this situation - did you think of that angle? If the school would’ve made different choices, we wouldn’t have had to make a choice. It would be made for us.  Changing the perspective of the discussion can make them consider it in a different light. 

Delay is not a never: we really discussed how waiting a short amount of time, enough to ensure all the travelers didn’t bring anything unexpected back to our city, is not the end of the world. They’ve zoomed for months, a week or two isn’t going to make or break their school experience. 

More than anything - we stressed that we think about things. We make choices and decisions based on the facts at hand. Like everyone else during this pandemic, we’re just doing the best with the information we have. Risks have to be taken. Life must go on. But with this, as with so many other choices we have in life, we should choose to take them or make those decisions based on our own thought processes and not based on blind faith in institutions, leaders or anyone else. We make our own choices and take ownership of those choices.