“Mask-wearing.”
What has been your experience with it?
This is something that has caused more anxiety for us than any other issue in the last few months.
Businesses are starting to open up, but most places are requiring people to wear masks.
This is fine for those who are able, but for us, it is not so simple.
Up until very recently, Jonah would not wear a mask. AT ALL.
Any attempt was met with a hard refusal.
Was it a sensory issue? Was it just a “new routine” issue?
Who knows. Maybe a bit of both.
But it has kept us from trying to take Jonah to a lot of places.
“Was ‘mask-wearing’ something I could teach Jonah to do?”
The short answer to this question is “probably, yes.”
But the BIGGER question would be:
“Is the effort involved worth the ‘payoff?’”
Like, teaching Jonah to do something he flat does not want to do is something that can require months, if not YEARS of work.
In most cases I won’t teach Jojo to do something he doesn’t want to do AT ALL, but some life skills NEED to be learned if at all possible. (Things like toilet-training, wearing clothes, bathing, etc…)
So I was torn about even trying to get him to wear a mask.
Because “Is this a mandatory ‘life skill?’”
Some would argue, “yes.”
But of all the things I would want to expend THAT kind of energy teaching Jonah, mask-wearing ain’t one of them. I knew it would take a TON of work and there was a lot of uncertainty about how much longer people would be required to wear masks.
I felt more inclined to just “wait it out,” and go out in public again when masks were no longer a requirement to do so.
Because…
Would it be worth the anxiety the “mask-wearing” learning process would cause?
For me? No.
So how much anxiety would I be willing to put Jonah through to learn how to wear a mask?
Short answer? None.
Reducing the spread of COVID is, of course, important, but I was not willing to put Jonah’s mental health on the line for him to “do his part.”
So early on, I decided this was not a battle worth fighting.
Jonah just didn’t wear a mask and that was that.
We only went to outdoor places. We visited every outdoor park in the city and surrounding areas on a daily basis. We found birds, animals, and critters to play with all day.
We discovered geese.
We went on hikes. We made our second home the beach.
We didn’t even try to venture to indoor venues, not even to go to Church or to the store.
“You could always get him a medical exemption, right?”
Yes.
And we did.
But for me, having to answer the “why isn’t he wearing a mask” question on top of the standard “why is he doing what he is doing (and all that)” question was something I simply didn’t want to do.
I just didn’t have the “spoons.”
Like, I have enough anxiety just having to explain “Jonah” to complete strangers when they encounter us in our Ausome glory.
Being potentially refused entry or service because of “a mask” (or lack thereof) was not a battle I cared to fight, even if he was completely within his right to be maskless.
So for months, that was our life. We only did things outside. Rain or shine.
To try to get a reprieve from it all, last month we drove hours just to go to a water park in a whole different state with more lax COVID laws.
And so the perfect opportunity arose for us to at least make an attempt to get Jonah to wear a mask, so long as it didn’t cause any anxiety.
So how did we do it?
Well, for Jonah to stomach “wearing a mask,” for even a short time, the payoff for him would have to be HUGE.
And we had “that” kind of payoff to work with.
- It was a new place without ANY established routines. Which meant we could make some new routines without protest. Plus, nobody there really cared if you were masked up or not, so failure was not a big deal.
-
It was not only an indoor water park, it also had a gondola that would transport people up an entire mountain to a ski/snowboard/sledding resort.
The gondola trip by itself would be intriguing to Jojo, but to also get to play in the snow?
🤯🤯🤯
So, all of this fun stuff was right at his fingertips and all he had to do was wear a mask for the 5 minutes it took to walk between our hotel room, and the entrance of whichever attraction we were enjoying that day.
And since Me, Mama, and Jonny all were wearing masks, it became something he was willing to put up with.
And so for the 3 days we were there, Jonah practiced wearing a mask. And he didn’t protest having to wear it ONCE. Because ALL THE FUN, YALL…
But then we came home.🤪
Jonah didn’t have quite the aversion he did before, but he still didn’t want to wear a mask in most instances.
And I wasn’t about to push him.
In-person hybrid school started up a couple weeks ago requiring students to wear masks and Jonah didn’t wear one. He was (and still is) medically exempt.
But then, when Mama and Jonah were at the beach that weekend, Mama asked Jojo if he wanted to go get some ice cream (there is an ice cream shop at the beach)… Jonah was enthusiastic about it.
So, when Mama told him he would need to put his mask on to go inside the ice cream shop, he was happy to do it.
So that gave me an idea…
To summarize it, we made a new routine.
We have been to that same beach every day for like 21 days in a row. Rain or shine… And EACH time we go, we make sure to visit that same shop to get some ice cream.
And Jonah is sure to put on his mask. EVERY TIME.
And get this
Last weekend, Mama took Jonah to the mall for the first time in over a year. He was able to go to the Disney Store, and the Lego Store and went up and down the escalators over and over. He came home with quite a “haul from the mall,” but he also wore his mask for over an hour.
🤯😲
Yesterday, when I picked Jonah up from school, he was wearing his mask. He took it off when he got in the car, and is now completely fine with it.
The possibilities of what we can now do indoors as things start to reopen is staggering.
Bowling. Restaurants. Malls. Movies. CHURCH!
Even just being able to take him with me to the store or run some errands is huge!
We have a lot of anxieties still to deal with. That list is long.
But mask-wearing was a big one. A HUGE ONE.
And I think we can finally check that one off the list.