Jonah! Do you want to wear your mask to school or “mask in your bag” for school?
(He’s gonna be so excited to not have to wear it!!!)
But Jonah looked at me like I had just asked him if he wanted to go to school stark naked today.
“…wear mask to school.” (Duh)
Haha dad. Very funny.
Our state finally lifted its mask mandate over the weekend and today was the first day of school for Jonah without it in place.
When the mask mandate was instituted in 2020, I immediately got Jonah a medical mask exemption. With all the other changes that happened during the pandemic, mask-wearing was not a battle I wanted to fight.
But I quickly grew tired and frustrated fighting the “mask battle” with places REQUIRING masks be worn at all times without exception for ANY reason.
Was Jonah CAPABLE of wearing a mask? It would take weeks, if not several MONTHS of hard work, but yes, he probably could if we made it a developmental priority.
But it was not worth the effort to me since we had no definitive timeline of when the mask restrictions would be lifted. It could be just a couple weeks or it could be a month or two. We tried getting him to wear a mask a couple of times, and he fought us. ADAMANTLY.
We actually stayed with some relatives and started the 2020 school year via Zoom in a whole different state with more lax restrictions so we could just play on a playground and not have to worry about “looks” from people because my kid was unmasked.
One of the first times we finally got Jonah to wear a mask, his reward was “getting to go to a water park” (think Great Wolf Lodge). That was the only incentive big enough for Jonah to even TRY wearing a mask.
When the schools went back to “optional in-person” learning (masks required), I told his teacher that if she could get him to wear a mask, then great, but not to make it a point of contention if it caused anxiety since he did technically have an exemption.
She said they would work on it.
I was amazed. It took less than a week for Jonah to learn to wear his mask at school (his teacher is AMAZING). She got an accommodation for him to have special “swings” time by himself at the end of the day if he wore his mask all day appropriately (during a time the whole rest of the school couldn’t even go to recess). He was the ONLY kid in the whole school who got to play on the swings ALL day, if he wore his mask.
He felt SUPER-SPECIAL to earn that privilege.
So… now wearing a mask at school is as natural for Jonah as wearing clothes.
In fact, to him, it is now a REQUIRED article of clothing. And it has been SO positively reinforced, that NOT wearing a mask to school for Jonah just feels “wrong.”
I mean, you wouldn’t go to school without a shirt on, right?
So, I told his teacher that we would do whatever makes Jonah comfortable and helps him learn at school.
She said he is adamant about keeping his mask on. So that’s what we’re gonna do.
I thought that after all this time, Jonah would be excited to not have to deal with “mask-wearing” at school anymore.
I was wrong.
Crazy world huh?