Some thoughts on the band-aid approach

Mental health and letting kids be kids are the buzzwords the government is using for removing masking on Monday in schools. And yes, they are as empty as any buzzwords of our era or before when spoken at this province’s covid briefings. Let a Doctor of Psychology ramble for a bit to you:

1) Kids being Kids. Kids are always kids. The bubble wrap popped, and that is where the problem lies, there was no ability to effectively control and schedule every single minute of your child’s life so they could not be bored and discover curiousity and imagination. Was there troubles during this shift change? yes. But there was also amazing blessings, older neighbours getting to know the kids on the block as we were all outside. Taking time to get to know the families your kid’s friends exist in, so collectively we can make decisions for health and safety. Intentional relationship cultivation, and after years of existing in a social media world that perpetuated relationships beyond where they would naturally end, it provided space for that end.

2) Kids being kids. It got kids off the hyper-adulting treadmill we as society had placed them on. It was great to hear the giggling and laughter again.

3) Reilience is the ability for the good to outweigh the bad in short form. Resilience is an overused buzzword to basically not invest in communities, schools and our children by governance. One of the blessings from c-tine, is there was authentic resilience if you took time to engage and cultivate where the gratefulness was and why daily, and to aid in processing through the change/grieving (and yes part of growing healthy resilience is understanding healthy grieivng when change happens).

4) Metnal Health- empty words. Where is the true investment in growing the system? Investing in expanding public libraries? Free community youth and children arts & sports programs? Robust investment back in public schools so they can offer courses beyond the core? Where are community healthy nurses? School nurses? Mental health workers-counsellors-psychologists? No mental health ward should ever be full, yet they are, as a by product of a mishandled situation that allowed the bully to use the pulpit, and continue to use the pulpit, with no understanding of social or human psychology and how to navigate change in healthy ways, and allow for proper grieiving and mourning from the loss of life collectively with covid, opioiod poisonings, and the cancelled care due to the health care war the provincial government inflicted before March 2020 and continued…

So no, kids being kids, and mental health, are not the reasons this is happening, for if it was, this would not be simply a stroke of the pen, but many spending, recruitment and build announcements… That is if the provincial government invested in our communities and children as the constitution states they are to.

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