
Students are heading back to school in New South Wales and Victoria this month, and a huge number of mums and dads are breathing a sigh of relief. Learning from home has been stressful and exhausting for a lot of parents, and many have also been worried about their kids missing the social aspects of school.
But not everyone is feeling the same way. Some parents are anxious about the return to face-to-face learning.
Watch: How To Tell If Lockdowns Are Affecting Your Children And What You Can Do About It. Post continues after video.
“I am worried. My daughter is in Year 5, and I just don’t believe she is old enough to be responsible to ‘socially distance’. I know that I’ve been isolating but I don’t know about others. Then at the same time, my daughter is really struggling and I can see that she is so desperate to go back and socialise. I’m so torn on how I feel.”
“I’m in VIC and worried about my unvaccinated kids going back to school and catching COVID from the kids of unvaccinated families (and I realise vaccinated families may also catch and transmit COVID but it is less of a risk). I’m desperate for them to go back too but just very scared that we will be back in and out of isolation because not enough people are vaccinated. That is going to be very cruel to these kids and our families, almost like a false sense that this is all over when we really have months of pain to go.”
“I’m in ACT and am quite scared (my daughter is in daycare, not school) so am keeping her out until the end of the year to see what happens – with the help of grandparents so we can work. I hate that we don’t know if other families’ parents are vaxxed or not. There’s still a lack of evidence on the impact on young children of contracting COVID and my daughter has respiratory issues.”
“I’m a teacher and a parent. I’m relieved as well as terrified at times and then the rest of the time I’m too exhausted for feelings. The hoops our schools are jumping through to reopen are out of this world. My daughter’s kindy classroom has to use a baby gate on the door to keep bush turkeys out so that there is appropriate air flow! That’s quite a cute example but the list of adjustments we are making in my school to try to protect our staff and students are a mile long and many are unachievable or almost impossible to enforce. But there’s a part of me that is looking forward to just jumping in and working towards getting back to a world that feels more normal.”