Would you be comfortable discussing 2020 with your future kids?

Let’s all just admit it, 2020 has been a whirlwind year. Especially with the monster called COVID-19, aka Coronavirus. Thanks to the pandemic, businesses have closed down, many people have lost their jobs, doctors and nurses are working endlessly to cure infected patients, and you are now legally required to wear a mask in public. Luckily, my parents are still employed and I was able to land a steady, work from home position as a research analyst for 6 months the moment lockdown began. My sister can attend school in-person too, as long as all the students and staff follow safety regulations to wear masks and sanitize your hands when entering a room. But it doesn’t end there for anyone. With more people returning to work, they have to worry about co-workers testing positive. Now that we are in the second wave, Ontario and Quebec, two of the largest provinces in Canada, are in lockdown again. And with Halloween fast approaching, can trick-or-treaters handle queueing in line for every house they visit in order to follow social distancing rules? Not to mention the cancellation of many social gatherings, including Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners (as an introvert, even I have been missing social events like crazy). Don’t even get me started on how Black Friday shopping could go down in the US, one of the world’s biggest COVID hotspots. Sadly, this is our new reality and until we have an official vaccine, we do not how much longer we will have to follow these restrictions. Since 2020 will now go down in history as the year we survived the great Coronavirus, is it something we would be comfortable discussing with our future offspring?

For anyone who does not have both kids and grandkids at the moment, would you want to discuss with them the deadly pandemic that forced people to wear masks wherever they went? It could pop up as a history subject in school, so it is still inevitable. But would it really be a year worth noting? For those of us who are more realist/pessimist, we should tell them just to prepare them for what pandemic we might have to deal with in the future. For those who are more of optimists, we would rather not. This is not a year we would want to look back on fondly at all but at the same time our future kids would admire our determination and bravery for having survived the deadliest 21st-century pandemic since the H1N1 influenza in 2009. Even though I was only 11 (going on 12) years old at the time, I still remember the rules about hand-washing and wearing masks, but never anything about a lockdown. And if I remember correctly, it was only around for a couple of months as we got the vaccine at the end of that year. Coronavirus has been around since last year (hence the 19 at the end of COVID-19), and we still have no confirmed vaccine yet. And this is a bit jarring, knowing that scientists have even more technology and resources now to properly develop one. Not to mention Dr. Theresa Tam predicted that even with a vaccine, we would still have to follow restrictions such as mask-wearing and social distancing. Even when our kids grow old enough to understand this pandemic, would we really want to scare them for what’s to come in the future?

I’ve always been looking forward to having kids ever since birth. I look forward to all the anecdotes about my past that I can share with them as well as some of my embarrassing moments. But wanting to discuss the Year We All Survived Corona with them? No way. I know I’d rather be a realist more than an optimist but regardless of how old they are, I would simply tell them it is something I’d rather not discuss.

We all have different outlooks in life, but at the end of the day it’s how we handle things that matters the most. If you want to discuss this year with your kids just to prepare them for something similar that could come in the future, go for it. If you would rather not discuss it with them, that would be an even better idea. We have all been through a very turbulent year and it is going to be a welcome relief once we finally get a vaccine. Wanting to give our kids a scare about a deadly disease is the last thing we would want to do especially if it means reliving the debilitating anxiety we all had to deal with this year.