Mothers went through hell during confinement. For some of us it's not over

My four year old son Oscar is a Covid child. Born in 2017, he was two and a half when the world went into lockdown. Like the rest of his generation, he spent a significant portion of his formative years away from family, friends, classrooms, and other aspects of public life.

Like everyone at the start of the pandemic, we did our best: we removed Oscar from the small home daycare he had been attending for only three months and took shelter in place. I put my career aside and formed a band with four other mothers. My husband and I took Oscar and his little sister to the parks, crossing our fingers that they wouldn't get too close to the other kids.

We tried compensate, but the challenge of meeting the social needs of our children and balancing our adult responsibilities was enormous.

I was looking forward to getting back to work - and our family needed income - so when schools reopened for in-person learning classes last September, we enrolled Oscar at our local preschool.

From the start, our son exhibited behaviors that his teacher and administration described as concerning.

< p class="dcr-3jlghf">He couldn't write his name. This is the first issue they brought to our attention. His teacher told me he refused to hold a pencil in his hand, so she gave him a marker. Oscar took it and drew on his face and on the desk. The teacher showed me pictures she had taken with her phone, which she described as "documentation".

I stood there, feeling a bit exposed. I didn't know what to do with this information. Oscar was by no means what I would call an obedient child, but we got things done and life in our home was happy and harmonious. He knew not to draw on himself.

When they told me he wouldn't stand in line or sit not at his desk, I thought, of course, he wouldn't. He is four years old ! Wasn't it their job to teach him how to do these things?

And the day he undressed while waiting in line for the bathroom, I I was unfazed. "I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner," I said. "My child hates pants."

Difficulties continued, so we cooperated with eight weeks of behavioral interventions. Sticker charts, rewards and punishments - none of that worked on Oscar.

At first I wanted to blame it all on giftedness. He was a talkative and precocious boy. Maybe he wasn't getting enough attention in a room of 20 kids. When I asked him why he wouldn't just do what he was told, he said it was too boring. He's understimulated, I thought.

A few months later, we got a more accurate picture of my son. According to an educational evaluator, he moved around the classroom, completely non-verbal, ignoring any redirects. “Overwhelmed” was the word used by the evaluator. He was sometimes destructive and distracting to the rest of the class. If an adult tried to redirect him, he became aggressive.

The week before the Thanksgiving holiday, Oscar's manager called an emergency meeting. On Zoom, she explained that the school lacked the resources to take care of him, and so they were reducing my son's time in the program from five to two hours, starting the next day.

It was the necessary move for school, but it wasn't the right move for our family - and it had a deleterious effect on Oscar.

After his hours were reduced, getting him into the building each morning became a physical struggle. At the end of his abbreviated day, another paraprofessional silently handed my son over to me, and he quietly sobbed all the way home.

Home my once cheerful child became more and more provocative. Normally kind and protective, he started hitting his little sister. Even though he had been potty training almost a year before, he was getting wet. He started gnawing on his toys and clothes. He repeated weird phrases, like “I love you but I don't love you” or “it's red but it's not red”. He said "I don't know what's going to happen" and "I like you, mom" at least a hundred times a day.