This is my daughter’s and my own story on the pandemic aftermath. This post only tells one of many family struggles dealing with a youth at home.
I say “aftermath” as if it’s all over and done. But I call it this way cause we are just starting to struggle our way back out of it, and trying really hard to find our true selves all over again.
Before the Pandemic
My daughter always had friends over, or she was always invited to their place. Sometimes, their was more than one friend over at a time. It would get so loud with laughter and screaming, my boyfriend couldn’t handle it and often would just go to his place where it was quiet. And that was ok. It was a happy place.
Sleep overs where at least once every weekends, sometimes twice on long weekends. She was very well surrounded with friends, and would easily make new ones where ever she went.
After her playdates,
my daughter was a real chatter box.
Telling me every little detail about her day, what fun things they did and how they have plans the next week for another playdate. She was loving life, and I was enjoying her being happy without a care in the world.
As for me, I have lived two different scenarios in my workplace.
Scenario A – Having a job, that I don’t particularly like and that I can handle. Working with awesome co-workers that makes the day go by fast and amusing.
Scenario B – Having a job I liked but didn’t have a close relationship with the others I was working with. Although, I loved the actual work, the co-workers were not so friendly to work with.
I’m happiest in scenario A. Scenario B is a miserable place for me to work in, in my opinion.
I love going to work and catch up with my colleague’s weekends or just daily chitchats. My colleagues are important to me in a workplace. Regardless the type of work.
Then every thing crashed.
All students were send home. Classes were now on zoom calls.
Not long after, my company send us home to work remotely too.
During the Pandemic.
Being extroverts, the pandemic didn’t do my daughter and I any good.
My company, along with many other companies, have send us home to work remotely.
It was fun at first. New and exciting. Just like everyone, I felt freedom in my new work place. I could eat fresh at home, make a load of laundry, work overtime, and the commute was no longer a thing to worry about and make it home on time to make supper.
How could any one not love this new life?
It didn’t take long I was missing my co-workers, and my daughter was missing her friends.
I was missing my co-worker, Karine, with whom I had become real close with. Our daily updates slowly became weekly updates. We still talk to this day, however we lost touch a little. We still had the occasional phone call conversations, and there wasn’t much to say anymore.
The spontaneous funny laughs following jokes where gone. The “venting after a bad phone call” where no longer shared. I was missing my good friend and co-worker, Karine.
A few months into the pandemic, this miserable life was slowly creeping up on us.
The New-Brunswick government had asked that each house whole have only one other house whole that they could get together with. A Bubble they would call it.
I never followed “the bubble” rule.
My boyfriend and I had different homes, and we didn’t move in together. To make it worst, we each had tenants we share our homes with. 3 tenants each. It didn’t stop us from seeing each other every weekend.
I refused to not see my parents. And my mom wasn’t following the rules either, she was close to her sisters and she wasn’t gonna refuse our visit during that time.
So did my sister.
My daughter had made a close friend. And I had become great friends with the grandmother.
So we were visiting and seeing them too.
My daughter only had one friend she could hang out with, while I had a handful.
Every time we tried to get one of her friends over, the parents of those friends wouldn’t allow them to. All her friends were only allow to one friend in their bubble and my daughter was not one of her friends choice.
She was left out from all of them, except for one and that wasn’t enough.
My daughter had a few connections with her friends on her tablet. I could hear her talk and laugh in her room sometimes. Hearing your kid laughing is music to any parents ears. But just like my friend Karine, the conversations with her friends became less an less.
Soon, there was no more laughter coming from her room.
A digital world
Zoom calls, online gaming, Tiktok and Facebook became every ones hourly way of communication with the outside world.
My daughter’s tablet was becoming old and didn’t have much space in it. Her father and I had decided to get together and get her a gaming computer for her comfort.
She made all kinds of new friends all over the world with online gaming. Yes, I have given awareness to my daughter about not sharing too much information online and not to share pictures with newly friends.
A few laughs occasionally comes out of her room again.
I’m not sure if getting her the most updated gaming computer was the best solution. She had no reason to get out anymore.
The government had cut down all activities for kids.
She would lock herself in her room exploring all kinds of new online games with my approval.
She wouldn’t get out of her room.
She would come out to grab her food and shower when I told her to. Even after asking her a few times, she wouldn’t bring her dishes out to the kitchen, it had became a hard task to do.
She would have trash all over her floor, more than usual.
She got so lazy, she started peeing her pants and wouldn’t change until I would notice, and ordered her to take her shower, twice sometimes three times a day, in my dismay.
She became a very unclean pre-teen hermit. I would force her out of her room to eat in the living room with me sometimes. I would get her engaged into picking a movie to rent, only to get her out. 30 minutes in the movie, she would get bored and go in her room.
Flash forward, she was diagnosed with depression and anxiety just two weeks ago.
Ironically, I had just given her room a gamers make-over. She will be 13 next month.
Pandemic Aftermath
As a parent, you feel quilt for not noticing this slow process of emptiness and unhappiness, happening inside your kid.
We all heard sad story of how a parent lost their teenager due to suicide. What brought the victim to that breaking point. How the parents had no clue about the issues their kids were going through. Or how the kid didn’t know how to communicate with adults and just made the drastic decision of ending their lives.
It’s a dark subject; Children and teenagers committing suicide. It seems that was all you heard during the first year of this awful pandemic in the year 2020.
I could feel the sinking feeling of the parents as they would tell their stories on my facebook feeds.
I remember thinking how lucky my daughter was for connecting with her friends online. Being aware of how difficult it must be for her not being with her friends, I would occasionally ask her how she felt. But little did I know or understood that kids may not understand these empty feelings like an adult would. Kids do not communicate their feelings like an adults do. she most likely never understood the question I was asking her to begin with.
My daughter did not committed any attempts of suicide. She did however told the counselor, she often thought it would be better if she wouldn’t be around.
We will both start consultation next week, and we will both get out of this pandemic aftermath.
Mental health and suicide often go hand and hand, reach out.