We Let Our Kids Attend a Kindergarten Playgroup After the Coronavirus Lockdown and Now Everyone Is Sick - Slate

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Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here or post it in the Slate Parenting Facebook group.

Dear Care and Feeding,

I want to update you on my situation. I am the “Koronagarten” dad from a couple of weeks ago. When I showed my wife your letter, she reluctantly agreed to stop taking our daughter to kindergarten playgroup. Four days after that, one of the moms urgently called around to the kindergarten moms to say that her kid, who had been attending playgroup, had tested positive for COVID-19. Out of the eight kindergartners and ten little siblings in the club, including my own, six kindergartners and seven little siblings showed symptoms of COVID-19 within a week. I am reasonably confident that my 4 and 6-year-old already have it, and the rest of us are likely next. The first playgroup kid to get it, a little 5-year-old girl, was taken to the hospital yesterday and is fighting for her life. The doctor said there is a good chance she will not survive this, as she has some kind of condition that made her more susceptible to COVID-19 complications. From updates I’ve been hearing, some of the other kids are devolving into being sick enough to need to go to the hospital too. All of us with kids in the playgroup now cannot leave our home for anything, even to go for a walk or get groceries, and are facing the impending (but thankfully somewhat unlikely?) possibility of our children dying from this.

My 4-year-old has asthma, and we are terrified. We can’t even relax for a second because we’ll hear one of our kids struggling to breathe and have to rush to their side to make sure they’re not dying. My wife is beating herself up for taking the kids, and I am beating myself up for not putting my foot down before the kids went to the first day. All of this happened so that the kids could have learned a week of reading from a first-grade teacher in a group setting, instead of from a first-grade teacher over Zoom. I, and my wife, will regret these events for the rest of our lives, even if all of our kids pull through it like it was a cold. Please, stay inside, and remember that your children’s safety should always come first over anything else.

— Koronagarten Dad

Dear K.D.,

This is a devastating update, and though these are exactly the circumstances that I and many of our readers feared when we read your letter, it doesn’t hurt any less to hear that much of the worst-case scenario has come into fruition. Thank you so much for sharing this information with us; I truly hope that stories like these will rattle those who continue to play fast and loose with their families’ health. I also hope that you and your wife can begin to stop focusing on the guilt you feel for failing to act sooner and instead, center your energies around supporting one another and fighting for the survival of your family. Wishing your entire community all the best.

Dear Care and Feeding,

My teenage daughter has a friend who has a difficult home situation. “Katy” has been basically been living with us for the last few years. Under normal circumstances, she would visit her mother and younger siblings somewhat frequently, at times spending an entire week with them. The main issue she has at home is with her mother’s boyfriend, so these trips take place when he isn’t around. He isn’t working at the moment due to the shutdown, and as he’s around basically 24/7, Katy hasn’t had any interest in going to see her family. However, her mother recently informed her that the boyfriend will be returning to work soon and that she can come see everyone while he’s out the house.

If this does happen, what boundaries are reasonable to set in terms of Katy traveling back and forth between our house and her mother’s? I obviously cannot stop her from going to her family, and I cannot imagine not letting her return to our house when her home situation is so tenuous. She is a good kid, but she is a teenager, and I don’t think she (or my kids for that matter) quite grasp the seriousness of this situation. She has been talking about going over there every day when the boyfriend is at work. To me, ideally, she would not be going over to their house at all, but I think if I try to set that boundary she will rebel and potentially end up in a more dangerous situation. Am I overreacting? I always feel anxious for her when she is at her mother’s house, so is this just the coronavirus compounding those fears?

— Caring for Katy

Dear C.f.K.,

First, I just want to tell you, in case you haven’t heard it recently, that what you are doing for Katy is awesome. Many of us see things that are going wrong in the lives of children around us, but few go as far as to step up in the way that you have. Kudos to you; Katy (and your daughter) may not fully appreciate your efforts now, but they likely will as they reflect on this when they get older.

Onward. As it’s been said countless times at this point, one of the most critical things we can do right now for ourselves and our loved ones is to limit contact with people outside of our living quarters as much as possible. When Katy’s mother’s boyfriend goes back to work, he will potentially expose his household to the virus, and if they are exposed, visitors are at risk and then their own households are at risk. Though the mother’s home is technically Katy’s home, her close relationship to the people who live there does not make her visits any safer than, say, going to visit a good girlfriend out of boredom.

The other option would be for Katy to return to her mother’s care during this period of time which, considering your anxiety about those visits in the past, sounds like it could be a very bad idea. I’m certainly curious to know the nature of the issue with this boyfriend, and hoping that what sounds to be (at the very least) a cordial relationship between Katy and her mother is an implication that it isn’t related to any abusive behavior on his part. If you feel that she is in danger if she finds herself in the presence of this man, then you should discourage visits to the home all together and should begin to investigate what sort of steps can be taken to keep Katy away from him permanently.

Perhaps this is “merely” a matter of an asshole boyfriend who is allowed to be a jerk towards Katy unchecked by a mother, who has opted to choose her partner over her child. If things are so tenuous between this young lady and her mother’s partner that her mother has allowed her to leave her home to stay with a friend, then the mother ought to be understanding when it comes to your need to protect your own family (and, theoretically, her family as well.) Do the two of you communicate well? If so, you ought to speak to her about your concerns, making it clear that this isn’t out of a desire to separate her from her child or Katy from her family. If not, you’ll need to focus your efforts on getting Katy to accept this reality and to embrace video chat and other safe ways to stay connected.

I hope that you are able to convince this girl (and her mother, who ought to defer to you here just as she has allowed you to step in and do what she has failed to do in providing a safe environment for her child) that these are not “normal” times and that we can’t operate as we normally do just because we miss the people we love. Best of luck to you all.

· If you missed Tuesday’s Care and Feeding column, read it here.

· Discuss this column in the Slate Parenting Facebook group!

Dear Care and Feeding,

I have 5-year-old twin girls. One who eats when she is hungry and stops when she is full. If she asks for a sugary snack, and I offer fruit instead, she is lovely with this. My other daughter wants food just because. She wants meals all day and will be genuinely emotionally devastated when I won’t let her eat. She is the same height as her sister but is close to ten pounds heavier. I don’t want to speak to her about her weight, but I’m concerned. I will often talk about how certain foods aren’t healthy, and others should only be eaten in moderation because they don’t help you grow and be healthy. One of the only times she seems content is when she’s relaxing while eating a snack. How do I handle this without making it more of an issue than it already is?

— Twin Mommy

Dear T.M.,

While you absolutely should limit sugary snacks for both girls, do not discount the possibility that your two daughters simply have different metabolisms and different appetites. It is conceivable that one is overeating as a coping mechanism or a response to boredom, but that isn’t the only scenario that could be true here, and you don’t want a 10-pound weight differential at 5 to spark actions that inspire an eating disorder (or, perhaps, exacerbate one that already exists).

Are you feeding her filling items, such as fiber-rich fruits and veggies, and drinking adequate amounts of water? Perhaps try giving her mini meals throughout the day as opposed to three larger “squares” with snacks in between. Speak to your pediatrician about the girls’ eating habits, and ask for her take on how you can keep your hungry little one satisfied without overindulgence or using food as an emotional crutch/way to pass time.

If, in fact, your kiddo is reaching for crackers and cheese to cope with something, what might that be? You’ll need to figure out why your child eats more than her sibling (be it mere hunger or a tendency to seek comfort through nibbling), and if there is something legitimately wrong with whatever the reason may be, in order to address this. Best of luck to you.

Dear Care and Feeding,

My partner and I have been caring for a teenager for nearly two years. Initially we agreed to have him live with us for his senior year, after which he’d move out for college or the military. For a variety of reasons that are sort of his fault and some kind of not (financial aid issues, sports injury, the absence of hustle when it comes to job hunting), he’s still living in the basement. Even though my partner and I get frustrated with what we sometimes perceive as a lack of effort on his part, we do think he’s doing the best he knows how to in terms of trying to find a job. In essence, it’s just a super crappy time to be looking, and he isn’t a particularly active job hunter in the first place.

We are additionally frustrated because he says he wants to enlist in the military. We visited a recruiter a year ago, but the kid hasn’t followed up on ASVAB studying or dropping the utterly reasonable amount of weight he was told he needed to lose. After perceiving a lack of motivation on his part, we set a deadline of June for him to be financially independent and move out. He FINALLY found a job—which promptly fell through due to COVID-19. He’s still looking for employment and has filed for unemployment benefits, but we have no clue how long it’ll take for him to get enough financial stability to pay rent. With June just around the corner and no end to the economic crisis in sight, what on earth do we do?

My partner and I lived together for just a month before kiddo moved in, and we’re ready to have some space to just be a couple. We can’t have him living with us forever, but financial stability by June seems pretty unlikely. What would be a reasonable deadline to set for him to move out? And under what circumstances do we finally just tell him he’s got to move out, with or without a job?

Additional context: The kiddo is unrelated to us, but we have a close relationship with him and his family, and he needed stability for his senior year of high school. His mother has no income and is still caring for his two younger brothers. She lives about four hours away, so it would be somewhat of an ordeal to move him down there. His older siblings are emotionally supportive, employed, and living on their own nearby, but don’t have the financial ability to take him on either. We’ve got a pretty good setup ready for him in a house owned by a friend of ours, with housemates we all know and trust. He’d be able to walk over to our place for dinner if he and we wanted, and we’re right down the street if he had an emergency or needs support. We can afford his security deposit, and honestly could afford the extra rent if we had to, but that would cut into our savings for our wedding and honeymoon. The original reason we set a deadline of June was that we were getting married in July, and we want to start our marriage child-free. We have now postponed the wedding for another year due to COVID-19, so the reason for the deadline has now passed. But I still would like some couple time ASAP!

— Failure to Launch, COVID Edition

Dear F.t.L.,

Much like the first letter writer in today’s column, you and your partner deserve kudos for opening your home to a child who needed one to provide safety and stability.

It’s great that you are able to help this young man with a security deposit for a place of his own, but you cannot reasonably expect for him to relocate until he’s able to secure steady work that will allow him to pay his rent without fail each month. In the meantime, you both should talk to him about what you are willing to do in order to help him get on his feet and what he needs to do on his own behalf to make that happen. There should be some accountability, be it regular updates on how many jobs he’s applied for in a given week or a (healthy, safe) deadline for him to lose the weight necessary to enlist. You should be prepared for him to remain in the house longer than you’d have preferred, but you should not resign yourself to the idea that he must stay indefinitely and create terms that all parties can live with in regards to his need to find his own place once it is feasible for him to do so.

Search for jobs with him, share information that would be helpful with his employment hunt, and make it clear that being proactive about his own future is a condition of remaining in your home. Also consider that a kid his age who had to leave his parent’s care to stay with an unrelated couple was dealing with a challenging set of circumstances before coronavirus came through and turned everyone’s lives upside down, so be gentle and empathetic. I hope you are able to reclaim your space soon, but do remember that this is a temporary inconvenience, one that could be saving lives.

— Jamilah

More Advice From Slate

My grandparents had three biological children and adopted two. One of their adopted sons, “John,” was 9 when they took him in, and had been seriously abused before being sent to a series of foster homes. As he got older, he suffered from depression and schizophrenia and tried to self-medicate with drugs. He eventually ended up in a care facility where he remains to this day. My grandmother speaks to him once a month or so and says he is doing well. I have never met John because my father and his other siblings do not understand mental health problems. They have written him off as if he doesn’t exist. My grandmother has been very sick lately and I brought up the question with the rest of my family: Who will tell John when she dies, and will anyone help him attend the funeral? According to my father, aunts, and uncles: no one. This seems cruel to me. I do not know his mental capacity, but I’ve worked with adults in long-term care like him, and I know he will at the very least notice when his mother no longer calls him. Should I try to get more information on his whereabouts so I can contact him myself?

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