I’m going to assume this is in good faith, but frankly? Hearing that it’s “fallen off your radar” is very much why this piece was written.

You’re a parent. Your kids are watching you for how to interact with the world. You’re not modeling COVID safety, an eye to disability justice, or community care by acting like masking is something you’re simply too harried for.

The point of this piece is it is not about you. Masking is about taking care of those who are more vulnerable. And that should include kids.

One in five children suffers from long COVID, and yet it’s “not on your radar”. I guarantee your kids know someone whose social and emotional development have been hampered by this disease and by grown adults not protecting them from it. I personally know disabled children who cannot leave their homes because it’s just too much for other families to care about putting a piece of cloth over their mouths. Grown adults can’t be fussed to care about hampering kids with postviral symptoms for years to come because oh it’s simply too much to think about.

I’m not impressed. Parents have presumably signed up for parenting because they want the satisfaction of shepherding young lives to adulthood. Part of that is teaching them about keeping themselves and the peers safe, part of that is demonstrating doing something you don’t want to do because it’s the right thing to do, and part of that is teaching them that the right thing to do is not easy, but we do it because that’s how society works.

Every disabled person lives with these concerns on top of nondisabled people’s abject apathy. We don’t get a choice to LET it fall off our radars.

-a person whose parenting dreams were destroyed by long COVID