As part of this year’s treatment of B2S in mainstream media, something I found most objectionable were several articles in which health-care professionals were urging readers (in this case, parents) to discount stress that kids may be feeling about returning to school and over-ride it with other guidance. In one case, it was basically advised that parents just need to ensure that kids go to school no matter what; in the other a doctor opined that such stress was normal.
I’m sorry, these are incredibly facile responses and doubly questionable to come from alleged health-care practitioners.
As a parent and career-educator I trust kids, and especially my own, around their sensibilities about schooling. To some, schooling is indeed a delight and a helpful oasis; to others, it is justifiably the opposite: punitive, mind and body-numbing, and potentially traumatizing. For kids for whom school is the latter, to suggest to them that this is “normal” is tantamount to doubling the fear and ill-health that may arise of long or short-term immersion in a harmful environment.
Indeed you may have to re-jig your life a little, you may have to advocate for more home-learning options, and you may have to do some research about this, but these options are viable. I know, I’ve been working on the front lines of home-oriented learning for 20 years. And I remember what that stress felt like.
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