@edwina958 I hear you. We have a 5 year old (in kindergarten), a 2 year old, and a 3 month old. Husband and I are both double-vaxxed and will be boosted when it comes our turn (not yet where we’re at).
Given that we decided that homeschooling was not the best option for our eldest, we had to accept some degree of risk in her riding the schoolbus and attending kindergarten. Thankfully, she can now get vaccinated in our area.
We focus on mitigating risk rather than eliminating it, and we try to balance risks & benefits in multiple domains - particularly our children’s development, and all of our emotional and mental health. The data is very very clear that parental mental health has a substantial impact on children’s development (if you want sources let me know - I do children’s mental health as a day job when I’m not on parental leave so I could gather a list)- so I often ask what will keep us all sane and healthy. We also change our behavior based on current case rates in our area and changes in our situation.
Examples: our 5year old will likely do outdoor soccer in the spring but we’re not frequenting indoor swimming pools/gymnastics right now. We swam all summer at an outdoor pool, but we totally closed down our social get-togethers three weeks before my due date so I didn’t go into labor with COVID. We had few visitors and very clear boundaries for the first eight weeks of baby’s life this fall during our delta wave. We enrolled our eldest in French immersion kindergarten which has smaller class sizes (we’re so lucky!! Eleven kids). Bonus: she loves French. Risk: it’s in a neighboring town so she has a longer bus ride. We keep our social circle small, and with like-minded people (quality rather than quantity) and as much time as we can with them. We’re still gathering with family for Christmas - this is our biggest risk “splurge” of the year as my family is pretty large so it’ll involve 18 people total, some of whom are not vaccinated - and I sent out a message to everybody in an effort to get some buy-in on precautions we can all take to stay healthy “so we can enjoy our time together.” This last one is tough, but we were previously a close-knit family who have a great diversity of perspectives on covid (to put it charitably). We live 8 hrs drive from them so day/outdoor visits aren’t an option and after two years of watching from a distance as more than half my family drowned in (or dove into, for some of them) the conspiracy rabbit-hole, we strongly believe that we need to get face to face with them to rebuild trust. We’ve been involved in two unvaccinated family members choosing to get their shots - primarily through face to face conversations - and I have hope that we can be a helpful voice and stop the vaccine-hesitant echo chamber if we are present with them this year.
We likely won’t fly anywhere until the omicron wave has peaked, but we’re debating a trip to see my husbands family in May (a 2 hour flight). We’ll see what omicron does…??
Sorry for the rambling wall of text….
