I feel like we have all hit a new bump in facing this COVID pandemic. I think there are several contributing factors to this greater sense of discouragement and even despair that we are experiencing.
The one-year anniversary of this quarantine is fast approaching, and that may be contributing to this feeling. After a year of being stuck at home together, our families are at our wits’ end with too much togetherness.
For those who live alone, the struggle is one of loneliness, fear, and the lack of social contact. A year of either extreme is devastating.
We had been looking forward to our kids being able to go back to school. But when the schools sent out videos explaining what things would be like when the kids went back, many of us changed our minds.
In our district half of the families had indicated they wanted their kids to go back once hybrid learning started. But once we knew how restricted school would be, many parents decided to keep their kids home. The class sizes now range from 1-4 kids, because parents don’t want to make their kids deal with all of the mandatory restrictions unless it’s absolutely necessary.
This realization that the kids will not be going back to any type of “normal” school this year is part of what is hitting us all so hard.
I have several friends who work full-time, some at home and some away from home. While they do not have the issue of being with their kids all day, they are facing other problems related to school. Their kids are failing their classes, have incompletes for some of their grades, and are being threatened with truancy letters. And once again, there is no end in sight for this mess.
Another factor contributing to this “bump” we are experiencing is the cold weather. It is limiting our ability to spend time outside in nature or exercising. And it is also limiting our ability to meet and socialize with friends outdoors.
I have heard recently that while the suicide rate went up after the quarantine started, it has spiked again recently. And no wonder! Kids who were happy, kind, and hardworking are now feeling depressed, grumpy, and unmotivated.
And that is not just a few of the kids. It’s nearly all of them! How sad is that? Our kids’ lives are going to be forever changed by this social experiment in which we are all being forced to participate.
I am overwhelmed by the enormity of the damage this pandemic and quarantine are doing to us as individuals and families. I honestly don’t know who in the government has good but misguided intentions in imposing all of these restrictions and who is just doing it for the power or money. But either way they seem to have no concept or concern for how they are hurting our children and our families.
We need to bring the power back from the out-of-control, power-hungry federal government to the local level where there will not be such a disconnect between those making the decisions and those being affected by them.
We need to take back the control from our federal government by calling an Article V Convention of States in which we propose amendments that will impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, place limits on its power and jurisdiction, and impose term limits on its officials and members of Congress.
Join us by signing the petition at conventionofstates.com.
