Mother: “Loneliness and Fear Are Crippling Our Children’s Spirits”

When he was born, he came out so fast that I was denied drugs to help with the pain of my labour. That should have been a sign of the person my son would become. He was walking and talking by eight months. At the age of four, he was balancingalong the top of the fence around our yard. I couldn’t watch. It terrified me. But no matter how much I begged him to stop, he kept doing it.

The difficulties had started with night terrors and my son’s refusal to sleep by himself. I remember holding him at night, crying with him and talking soothingly, until he calmed down enough to fall asleep. Otherwise he would throw violent tantrums. My husband built a sidecar bed in our room which I slept in with my son till he was two years old. He would wrap his pudgy little arms around my neck and push his cheek to mine; I would lie as still as possible till he fell asleep. As difficult as it was, and exhausting, it was a blessing and gift that he gave me. I look back on those memories of us sleeping cheek-to-cheek with fondness and gratitude.

When my son was four, he started having really long temper tantrums – one to two hours long. Sometimes several in a day. He was inconsolable during these episodes and nothing I said or did could reach him. But he was incredibly brilliant. He created masterpieces of Lego cities that extended throughout our home. He forbade us to take them down and I catered to him because I was impressed with his skills and grateful when he was focused on a task so that would relieve me for a few minutes from the insanity of mothering him.

By age 5, things were getting worse. My son started becoming violent with his older sister. He called us names like “idiot” and “stupid.” We didn’t yell in our home or use these words, so we couldn’t understand where his behaviour was coming from. He also said heartbreaking things like “I hate my life” and “I want to die.” How could a five-year-old feel this way when he was so loved and cherished?

Around that time, a TV show called “Nanny 911” was popular and my husband liked watching it. My husband insisted on trying her techniques which bordered on abuse, in my opinion; but we tried them and nothing worked. The behaviour issues ramped up and I could not leave the house with my son or send him to a sitter because he was so out-of-control. My little baby boy who had slept with me cheek-to-cheek was turning into a monster and I didn’t know what to do. His father and I separated during that time and people blamed me for my son not having a “strong, male influence” in his life. They believed my son was acting out because he needed more discipline. But I knew that discipline didn’t work with my son. If anything, it made his behaviour worse.

Then I remembered a quote my mother had told me. “Children do well if they can.” It occurred to me that my son was doing the best he could; that it was possible he had no control over his behaviour because something external was causing it. Could food be the cause? Through much trial and error, I found a diet (Feingold Program) that changed our lives. Within days, my son went from being an out-of-control, depressed and anxious child to a calm, well-behaved thoughtful one. The transformation was incredible. Overnight, our life became peaceful. Our home wasn’t a battlefield anymore. My son still struggled with Attention Deficit Disorder characteristics (which he had been diagnosed with) but as long as he was engaged and interested, he learned faster than anyone I’d ever known.

Over the next several years, my brilliant son thrived. He became a straight-A student. He was identified as “gifted.” Wesigned him up for musical theatre, at his request, and he became the lead in every public performance, singing and acting. He took an interest in magic, film-making, and novel writing. He was on fire with passion for life and he was well-liked by other children. The future looked very bright from his perspective. But in March 2020, all of that changed very suddenly. It was two weeks to flatten the curve and we all know how that went.

The first challenge for my son was online learning. As brilliant as he is, he does not learn the way they were teaching online. I assumed it was because these were teachers unaccustomed to teaching this way, so they didn’t know how to engage the students. I reached out to my son’s high school for support but the teachers and counselors were stressed to the max because of Covid. Instead of helping my son, they blamed him and shamed him. I was shocked at the way previously kind and supportive staff who loved my son when he was thriving, were now making him feel like a loser and a failure for struggling.

The next challenge he faced was social isolation. My previously charming and outgoing son became despondent and developed social anxiety to the point where I was forcing him to walk into stores without me, just to get him out of the house and among other citizens. But fear was ramping up in society and in the citizens around us. Being around so many terrified people was difficult. It brought us all down, and all four of my children, but especially my son, retreated into themselves and wouldn’t leave the house if they could avoid it.

When my son’s depression became so bad that he was crying every day and begging me to help him, I worried about him hurting himself or worse. I felt so helpless trying to work and provide for my family but also meet their emotional needs.That’s when I pulled my son out of school. I told him, “The stress of online learning while they’ve taken everything else away from you is not worth your mental health.” He’s a headstrong young man and it took some convincing but I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t care if he graduated from high school. To me, we were living through extraordinary times and normal expectations could be tossed out the window. I couldn’t stand to watch him being dismissed and criticized by teachers any longer when he was obviously struggling because of the circumstances they were forcing onto him.

We tried a distance learning program but it was online too. I had hoped that as regular “online” teachers, they would be able to engage my son more. They were a Christian-based program that held occasional youth events. But my son refused to go to the mask-faced, social-distanced events with the children he didn’t know. He continued to struggle with online learning. These teachers, although less hostile than the ones at his brick-and-mortar school, were just as apathetic to what he was going through.

One-by-one, we dropped his courses off his schedule till he had only a few Grade 10 classes to finish. It was a constant battle to get him to do the work. He would beat himself up over it daily and I couldn’t stand to see him suffer. I started doing his work for him. And in a short time, I was so burnt out that my own depression was developing at a rapid pace.

About a week before my son’s 16th birthday, he said to me: “You know, Mom. I thought I would have had my first kiss by the age of 16.” It broke my heart. My son is missing the best and most carefree years of his life because of a disease that won’t(didn’t) kill him. Shortly after his birthday, our family succumbed to the covid flu. It wasn’t fun but we all survived. In fact, we put in a home gym and painted our kitchen during our isolation. This experience further disillusioned my son about all of the mandates and restrictions for children and youth. He lost his excitement for his future because every time the government pulled back on the restrictions, they re-instituted them again, often with more confusing rules than before. As an extremely intelligent young man, these bewildering and harmful restrictions troubled my son intensely. He followed the science, as instructed, but the science didn’t support the restrictions. My son realized that he couldn’t trust adults to follow the science. It was a paradigm-shifting experience for us all.

At the beginning of this school year, my son decided to return to his brick-and-mortar school. The other children have been getting sick of the isolation and they are slowly beginning to ignore some of the social distancing requirements when they get a chance. My son informs me that many students have become phobic over showing their faces. We live in a community where generations of families live together. Many of the children in our community are traumatized and live in fear every day that the simple act of breathing could kill their grandparents.

Most of the children my son knows are still not allowed to go to each other’s homes or hang out with friends. So, my son continues to be cut off from the normal experiences that teens should have at his age. He says it’s hard to connect with people when they are hiding ¾ of their faces with masks. I feel that too. I almost don’t even see people when I’m in public anymore. I just see clothes with masks walking around in my peripheral vision. Our world has become so disconnected that I’ve started to make an effort to chat with people when I’m out, just so that I don’t lose my humanity.

When I was a teenager in the 80’s, kids my age were lonely and afraid. We were past the age of long hugs and cuddles from our parents, but not yet adults receiving long hugs and cuddles from our spouses. But the loneliness and fear of our teenagers today is next level compared to my youth. Our kids have less connections, less hugs, and less practice socializing and learning how to succeed in friendships and relationships. Our kids are “Generation Pandemic” – a stark existence with only video games and Netflix to comfort them. Last night, my son’s friend wanted to kill herself. Teen suicides have increased dramaticallydue to Covid restrictions, according to authorities. My son sobbed in my arms, helpless and distraught. We hugged for a long time and I sent a silent prayer that our children will be free again soon. Loneliness and fear are crippling our children’s spirits. This must come to an end as soon as possible.

Covid restrictions were sold to us as a way to protect us from a horrible and deadly disease. But it is a disease that doesn’t severely affect children and yet, it is being used as an excuse to abuse and isolate them. If the government cares so much about our health, then why are food colourings allowed in children’s food? Food colourings were the main culprit in my son’s anxiety before we changed his diet. In many European countries, food colourings are banned. It’s no secret in science that food colourings exacerbate anxiety, behavioural issues, and other learning challenges in children.

The government doesn’t care about food colourings in our children’s food and they don’t care about our children. TheCovid mandates and restrictions are doing more harm than good. It is time to unmask our kids and tell the government where to put their experimental injections. As parents, we are our children’s only advocates. It is our job to protect our children from those who choose profits over people. It’s time for us to stand up for our children. They are crying out for help. Let’s show them that we are listening and that we care.