Kids: Grownups Owe You an Apology

Mom, I miss my friends…when can I have a sleepover?

Mom, I miss lacrosse.

Then, the real stunner:

Mom, I miss school.

And the best responses I can give?

I don’t know. I’m so sorry. And…I think I get that.

Kids, all of you. I’m gonna tell you what I told my own kiddos a few weeks ago when COVID cases started to spike again.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry grownups have completely screwed up life. No Prom. No spring sports. No graduations. I’m sorry you missed out on important face-to-face education and interactions with your friends. Your education and your personal growth and development have been stunted because of adults engaged in gross denial of a real world problem.

And I’m sorry for all the crowded gatherings and other adult-driven-or-sponsored activities and retreats done in full disregard of the seriousness of a global pandemic. Because now your schooling (and peer interactions and extracurriculars) this fall will be watered down, again, because we adults couldn’t get a grip and do the right thing.

This is no way fair to you. The mismanagement of a health crisis will affect your family dynamic, making the day-to-day ever more stressful with increased and continued time stuck under one roof. And perhaps with struggles to make ends meet, much less enable y. I’m sorry you, as our nation’s…no…our world’s next generation, have been an afterthought.

But there is good news. Not all adults have failed you. Your parents are frustrated. They are worried about providing for you, maintaining stability and getting food on the table and the heat running in the winter. Your teachers feel helpless in an educational system that they feel they have no control over, and they want to do their jobs and support you in your educations. And now they shoulder an anthological set of COVID rules under which they must teach you. But they will do it because they want you to have the best possible shot in a world that is rapidly changing under new, scary, and still unknown circumstances. And all these adults are doing our darnedest to see to it that the world emerges from COVID and racial unrest learning from our mistakes and doing better.

But I still will apologize, yet again, for bad grownup decisions getting in the way of doing better. Because, it’s not only the right thing to do, but because it is asking you to avoid making the same ignorant mistakes, burying yourselves in the blanket of denial. Because you have learned all too well what bad hand is dealt when adults fail to do the right thing.