[acdha]

This argument works both ways: parents who wanted to politicize mask wearing made a far bigger deal of it and over-exaggerated the impacts. I know a fair number of people with small children, including those born during the pandemic, and the only ones who allegedly had problems uncoincidentally have parents who get their “news” from Facebook or Fox. Everyone else barely even mentions it because it’s no harder than all of the other things kids have to get used to, like toilet training or the oppression of wearing clothes.

[0x0nyandesu]

Eh I'm on the opposite side of it seeing my future mother in law raise a 5 to 7 year old through this whole thing and at first she liked it cause he's more of an introverted quiet kid so it seemed like it helped him at first but then we started to see small social issues with him start to come out and likely due to him basically missing his entire first and second grade. Kid is probably irrevocable fucked up now. The mask thing is just more icing on the cake.

Working from home the most I had to wear the mask is flying somewhere and I fucking haaaate it. And I say this as a trans person that enjoyed for once not being misgendered in public. The truth is me and my very liberal girlfriend are fucking over it and we don't care anymore. We're triple vaxed and fuck it. We've been going clubbing at maskless down town LA parties for months now and haven't caught it yet.

The fact that kids have to do more than I do as an adult is baffling to me. I legitimately feel bad for them.

[acdha]

> Kid is probably irrevocable fucked up now.

My wife is a teacher, and we know a bunch of other teachers, and I'd like to say please do not give up on this kid — they're more resilient than adults often think, and family support is really important, even if it might not seem like it's doing anything now. The problems you described sound like they're more due to other pandemic-related disruption rather than wearing a mask and whatever you can do to be there for him is going to make a difference.

> The fact that kids have to do more than I do as an adult is baffling to me. I legitimately feel bad for them.

I completely agree. Our national policy has basically been to write off children to keep high-risk businesses open for adults and I would in a heartbeat take a blanket vaccination mandate and other risk mitigation measures for high-risk businesses explicitly based on the goal of keeping normal schooling open (e.g. link high-risk activities like indoor dining or drinking being open to community spread rates).