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Parenting Advice - Covid Style

mom2dolls

Shiny_Rock
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I would love some feedback regarding this Covid related issue with my 17 year old daughter. She just came upstairs to ask if she could go away for the weekend with her boyfriend, her best friend and her bf's boyfriend's family to Havasu in a few weeks to celebrate the bf's boyfriend birthday. The parents will be going, renting an AirBnB. They will be sanitizing etc. Yes, parents have boats. They will be socializing with other people at sandbars etc.

For those that are not local to the area, Havasu is the hotspot for river peeps. It is extremely popular and has continued to be super busy even during Covid.

So my head was shaking even before she finished. My stance is hell no! Havasu is a petri dish and there is no way during Covid.

However, it appears I am the only parent in this group that has concerns. Am I being too strict?
 

MamaBee

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I would love some feedback regarding this Covid related issue with my 17 year old daughter. She just came upstairs to ask if she could go away for the weekend with her boyfriend, her best friend and her bf's boyfriend's family to Havasu in a few weeks to celebrate the bf's boyfriend birthday. The parents will be going, renting an AirBnB. They will be sanitizing etc. Yes, parents have boats. They will be socializing with other people at sandbars etc.

For those that are not local to the area, Havasu is the hotspot for river peeps. It is extremely popular and has continued to be super busy even during Covid.

So my head was shaking even before she finished. My stance is hell no! Havasu is a petri dish and there is no way during Covid.

However, it appears I am the only parent in this group that has concerns. Am I being too strict?

No you’re not @mom2dolls You are being a responsible and loving parent. No way would I let my child go....She will be mad at you but safe. I could live with that. Good job mama!
 

nala

Ideal_Rock
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I want to add that she is under age and that makes all the difference. It’s hard to tell adults what to do. I know a lot of adults who have embraced the new normal and have come to terms with their risk tolerance—but they are adults. These parents sound like they these types of people and that’s on them. A minor is different and you still have power over them and your house rules still apply. Don’t second-guess yourself.
 

TooPatient

Super_Ideal_Rock
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We went to a bbq with about 20 people. Mostly outdoors. The "indoor" area is a 50'+ long giant room (airplane hangar) with one entire wall (hangar door) open. Everyone had masks. Most wore them most of the time while not actively eating/drinking. I noticed that even with this, people forgot themselves and got too close while unmasked or licked deviled egg off their fingers.

One couple who was there just moved up from California. Their 24 year old neighbor died of COVID and many others in the <30 group had gotten it ranging from mildly sick for a few days to severely sick for months. The 24 year old died alone in the hospital.

No, you are not being unreasonable. Stay firm and do what you feel is right.
 

missy

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Not a parent of a human child but I hope it's OK to chime in. You are taking the safest and IMO the smartest option. Of saying no. She cannot go. Because as you say, it *is* a petri dish of germs and Covid is on the uptick. Better safe than sorry. There will be many more occasions in her young life to do this and enjoy under better circumstances.

IMO the only petri dish I want is one not of germs but gems. But I digress.

Good luck @mom2dolls !!!
 

Austina

Ideal_Rock
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Absolutely not, if the other parents are OK with this, that’s up to them, but it’s exactly this type of behaviour that’s causing all the new infections. Do they not understand this? Plus when she get’s back, is she happy to totally quarantine from you so that she doesn’t infect you, her grandparents?
 

missy

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Do they not understand this?

Yeah it seems many (not just children) think they are invincible and it won't happen to them. And if it does they think they will beat it no problem. And this would be OK if it didn't affect others. Which it does. Exponentially once it gets out of hand. Just No.
It's one thing when it's a kid and you explain it and say no. But when it's the adults doing the bad behavior. Sigh. :nono:

@selfishadults
 

ItsMainelyYou

Ideal_Rock
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Your course is wise. Stay the course.
 

lyra

Ideal_Rock
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I would say no. It's not just about the people going. The people staying at home shouldn't be exposed without a say in the matter.
 

Daisys and Diamonds

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Im not a parent but on behalf of the human race id say thank you
please keep your child at home

You have to keep your family safe, not just your daughter but all your family including yourself

its unfortunate for her to miss out but she has a long life ahead of her to catch up on the 2min of fun she might miss out on now
 

123ducklings

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From the info you’ve given I would not be comfortable with it.

That said, I would handle it by calling the hosting parents with an open mind to get an understanding of their plan. Sometimes things get lost in translation. If their plan is as you suspect, I would not try to change their minds; my goal would be personal understanding of the plan from the adults responsible.

From that point, if this is something I would allow in a non-pandemic context, I would acknowledge with my child that yes, it’s a bummer and it feels unfair, but these are unprecedented times of risk/danger and she will have to sit this one out. This is a hard time on everyone and I’d want to offer some sort of consolation — “that weekend let’s plan to [child’s favorite pandemic safe activity] and order in [child’s favorite meal].”

I’m sorry you’re having to navigate this one! It can be hard when you have to be the “strict” parent.
 

Karl_K

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While I was reading this thread a friend called me to ask that I help with his clients while he is out of town.

His younger step brother was out partying a lot went to visit his dad.
A few days later tested positive for covid.
A few days after that his dad had a high temp and passed away less than 2 days later. He had covid
 
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OoohShiny

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I am going to be contrary to everyone else because the statistics suggest anyone of that age is extremely unlikely to get ill, and even more extremely unlikely to suffer severe illness, so if they go, they should be just fine in themselves.

If anyone in your family are vulnerable (long term illness, immunosuppressed or comorbidities) then you may wish to consider restricting her and your contact with them after she has returned. Incubation period seems to be 14 days max so if a two week restriction on contact was workable, you could do that.

If you yourself are vulnerable, and your daughter is living with you, I would agree that it may not be totally wise for her to go, although if you have a large house and could dedicate certain rooms to each of you, you could 'quarantine' from each other in that way.

It is likely that you will both get it at some point in the future, what with it being endemic and likely to remain so even with any vaccine that may or may not arrive, so one could consider such a trip to be a 'controlled exposure' situation (where you know you both need to take extra precautions instead of being caught unawares, and are both aware of the need to seek medical assistance at the first sign of anything untoward instead of assume it it was just a cold or similar).


My personal risk tolerance is much higher than other people's generally, though, so take that on board and consider this advice worth what you paid for it.


While I was reading this thread a friend called me to ask that I help with his clients while he is out of town.

His younger step brother was out partying a lot went to visit his dad.
A few days later tested positive for covid.
A few days after that his dad had a high temp and passed away less than 2 days later.
Was the father in a high-risk group?
Did the father get medical attention as soon as he was feeling unwell?
Has his death been confirmed as being with Covid19? Of Covid19?
 

missy

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I am going to be contrary to everyone else because the statistics suggest anyone of that age is extremely unlikely to get ill, and even more extremely unlikely to suffer severe illness, so if they go, they should be just fine in themselves.

If anyone in your family are vulnerable (long term illness, immunosuppressed or comorbidities) then you may wish to consider restricting her and your contact with them after she has returned. Incubation period seems to be 14 days max so if a two week restriction on contact was workable, you could do that.

If you yourself are vulnerable, and your daughter is living with you, I would agree that it may not be totally wise for her to go, although if you have a large house and could dedicate certain rooms to each of you, you could 'quarantine' from each other in that way.

It is likely that you will both get it at some point in the future, what with it being endemic and likely to remain so even with any vaccine that may or may not arrive, so one could consider such a trip to be a 'controlled exposure' situation (where you know you both need to take extra precautions instead of being caught unawares, and are both aware of the need to seek medical assistance at the first sign of anything untoward instead of assume it it was just a cold or similar).


My personal risk tolerance is much higher than other people's generally, though, so take that on board and consider this advice worth what you paid for it.



Was the father in a high-risk group?
Did the father get medical attention as soon as he was feeling unwell?
Has his death been confirmed as being with Covid19? Of Covid19?

And statistics are just that. Statistics. A 28 year old doctor in good health died from Covid. She barely had exposure compared to many doctors as she was an ob/gyn and only did a rotation through the Covid ward. She contracted the disease and she died 2 months later. She wasn't a statistic. She was of flesh and blood and had parents who loved her. 3 sisters who adored her. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. All who are devastated at her death. And countless numbers of patients who will never experience her caring manner or her skillful expertise. A tragedy beyond words.

I’ll repeat. She was 28. In good health. And she’s now dead. From Covid.
 

Karl_K

Super_Ideal_Rock
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Was the father in a high-risk group?
Did the father get medical attention as soon as he was feeling unwell?
Has his death been confirmed as being with Covid19? Of Covid19?
Yes he was high risk.

All i know is if it were not for covid he would most likely be alive today.
I did not pry for details its not my businesIs.
I edited my post to make it more clear that he was confirmed to have covid.
 

OoohShiny

Ideal_Rock
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Yes he was high risk.

All i know is if it were not for covid he would most likely be alive today.
I did not pry for details its not my business.
That is unfortunate and due respect to the situation is wise.

There is a wider discussion about deaths 'with Covid' and deaths 'from Covid', and I can see both sides of the coin.
 

Karl_K

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That is unfortunate and due respect to the situation is wise.

There is a wider discussion about deaths 'with Covid' and deaths 'from Covid', and I can see both sides of the coin.
I know of someone who had been told they only had a short time to live. Got covid and passed away a lot sooner. Some people say he did not die from covid. I disagree.
In my opinion if someones life was shortened by even 1 day by covid they died from covid.
 

OoohShiny

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And statistics are just that. Statistics. A 28 year old doctor in good health died from Covid. She barely had exposure compared to many doctors as she was an ob/gyn and only did a rotation through the Covid ward. She contracted the disease and she died 2 months later. She wasn't a statistic. She was of flesh and blood and had parents who loved her. 3 sisters who adored her. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. All who are devastated at her death. And countless numbers of patients who will never experience her caring manner or her skillful expertise. A tragedy beyond words.

I’ll repeat. She was 28. In good health. And she’s now dead. From Covid.
No-one can deny that the death of a person, of any age, is a loss to those around them, and it is a loss regardless of whether the death was quick and unexpected or drawn out and known about well in advance.

However (and please be assured I am in no way trying to belittle the story you relate) as someone much wiser than me once said (and I likely paraphrase), a single death is a tragedy, a thousand deaths is a statistic.


In my mind, one key question is whether a Covid death is more important or more tragic than deaths from other things. Over here in the UK vast swathes of NHS services are still running massively below capacity 'because Covid' and there have been thousands and thousands of missed cancer appointments and other appointments, both in terms of diagnoses and treatments.

Is the death of a person from Cancer 12 months from now, because they didn't get diagnosed early enough (or at all), or didn't receive the treatment they were promised, less important than Covid?

I recall reading a story on the BBC about a 31 year old mother who had her cancer treatment stopped due to the pandemic response and she subsequently died. Is her death less important than a Covid death? If not, why is the NHS not fully back up to speed yet, seven months from the start of all this?


I ask partly facetiously, of course, but right now it seems as though only Covid matters, and everything else can just be brushed under the carpet, yet there are now only around 30 deaths a day with it here in the UK.

The other 1,570 daily deaths in the UK no-one appears to give a **** about - there certainly isn't wall-to-wall daily coverage about them, and there isn't totally disproportionate proposals to spend £100 billion per year testing every single person in the country every morning to see if they are 'safe'.

The entire annual NHS budget is £130bn (IIRC) - imagine the good that extra £100bn (almost doubling the NHS budget!) would do if targeted at cancer research, neonatal research, alzheimers research, 24/7 in-home care for families with 100% dependent family members, targeted dietary and exercise training programme for the high risk, smoking cessation campaigns and 1:1 support networks, driver training and accident reduction programs...


We are probably all going to get Covid, in the same way we all get Flu at some point or another. Some of us may even have already had it but had no noticeable ill effects from it. It is, if you'll pardon the blunt choice of words, just something else we might catch each year and something else we might die from each year, and some of us are going to be unlucky enough that we don't cope well with it (for a range of reasons).

We are all doomed to die, it is our destiny from the moment we are born, so we must make sure to live our lives as best and to the fullest extent we can, and if our time is up, our time is up. We should be grateful that (I believe I'm correct in saying) the majority of us on this board are luxuriating in low mortality, high healthcare, low risk Western / Developed World environments, where living to 80 is now (rightly or wrongly) expected.

Those people dying at 50 (if they're lucky) in some African countries with despotic leaders and zero proper healthcare provision, dream about living to 80. 100 years ago, before antibiotics, we could die from Tetanus caught off a rusty nail on a wooden gate, yet now we routinely expect to live to well over 80. We must take care not to take such amazing improvements for granted! We must also start having more conversations about death, as the Victorians did - it is a fact of life, but here in the West we are very good at pretending it is not.


In the meantime, while we are here, we must LIVE our lives, not live in constant (media-fuelled) fear of a virus that, from what the figures are suggesting, has something like a 99.95% survival rate averaged across all age groups, with something like a 99.9999% survival rate for the under 30s (to bring this post back round to the OP's question).

We can't get our time back, and kids of 17 should be doing what kids of 17 do - making mistakes, having fun, working towards a future they want. Right now, it seems that item three out of those is the only thing they can do, which is a tragedy in itself - being alive only to work and stay at home is not living, it is just an existence, and we have already seen depressive thoughts triple in the young in the UK since the (response to the) pandemic started.

A working vaccine might arrive or it might not. It might work thoroughly or it might not. Either way we can't end our entire way of normal life because of Covid IMVHO.


If you've made it this far, thank you for indulging me to wander through my thoughts.
 
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OoohShiny

Ideal_Rock
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I know of someone who had been told they only had a short time to live. Got covid and passed away a lot sooner. Some people say he did not die from covid. I disagree.
In my opinion if someones life was shortened by even 1 day by covid they died from covid.
I can totally understand that point of view.

I'm not sure how the medical community determine which condition a person died from if they have several, but it seems as though Covid is in many cases 'the straw that broke the camel's back'.
 

Cluless

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@mom2dolls No, you are not being unreasonable. Stay firm and do what you feel is right. There is an old saying '' I would rather you cry now, than I cry later'' That would be my go to mantra with my 2 when they did not want to listen to reason. lol
 

Karl_K

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missy

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In my mind, one key question is whether a Covid death is more important or more tragic than deaths from other things

Is the death of a person from Cancer 12 months from now, because they didn't get diagnosed early enough (or at all), or didn't receive the treatment they were promised, less important than Covid?

Here, in the USA we are fortunate in that we are able to (so far) attend our doctor appointments in person as necessary. Back in April I was seeing my endocrinologist despite the pandemic being quite bad in NYC at that time. I agree that we cannot/should not let others die because they cannot get to their physicians/hospital etc to get appropriate medical care.

However, I do not agree that we should all go out and expose ourselves because we are all going to get Covid.
We are probably all going to get Covid
Getting Covid once doesn't mean you won't get it again.
Hopefully there will be a vaccine that is successful.
Hopefully the pandemic will end.
Going out and getting Covid and not knowing how you will fare seems quite irresponsible IMO.

YMMV and obviously it does.
I wish you well and I hope if you get Covid you get over it easily and without lasting consequence.
Sadly I know too many people (not statistics but real people) who have not been so lucky and have suffered consequences. Sometimes the ultimate consequence. :(

We are all doomed to die, it is our destiny from the moment we are born, so we must make sure to live our lives as best and to the fullest extent we can, and if our time is up, our time is up.

Yes, But that has zero to do with this conversation. Nice way to divert attention to the topic at hand though.
If you've made it this far, thank you for indulging me to wander through my thoughts.

You're welcome. Take care @OoohShiny "They" say that "G-d watches out for children, drunks and fools."
So you might be A OK no matter what. LOL JK, I mean about the quote. :lol: I hope you and everyone here stays well and is safe and makes it through this pandemic. I am fond of all of you. Yes, you too @OoohShiny :)
 

chemgirl

Ideal_Rock
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You’re not being too harsh at all. Nobody should be going to crowded vacation spots with groups of people.

If it were me she wouldn’t be allowed to see her boyfriend for at least 10 days after he returns.

It’s shocking how lax the US is with covid.
 

missy

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chemgirl

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I know of someone who had been told they only had a short time to live. Got covid and passed away a lot sooner. Some people say he did not die from covid. I disagree.
In my opinion if someones life was shortened by even 1 day by covid they died from covid.

Totally agree. If someone would be alive today if not for covid, then the died of covid.

I know a 42 year old who passed away from covid. He was a type one diabetic and his condition was under control. People have the audacity to say he had a pre-existing condition and he died of diabetes. Like his life was worth less. He would still be with his family if it wasn’t for covid. It killed him.
 

FL_runner

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I’ll also add that young people getting sick and inadvertently infecting classmates has caused schools to close back down or prevent reopening. And causes families to have to miss work, infect family members at risk, etc. So it’s not just about the individual young person most likely going to be OK. And many people who were ill but survive may have long term health complications. I understand necessary travel or careful time spent outdoors as a family unit, but right now being a part of large gatherings with strangers, unmasked (which will happen with people boating and gathering on sand bars) is just not a good idea. I am a doc in an area of the country that’s had consistently high rates, have lost patients and run a contact tracing team.
 

FL_runner

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I can totally understand that point of view.

I'm not sure how the medical community determine which condition a person died from if they have several, but it seems as though Covid is in many cases 'the straw that broke the camel's back'.

It is and the disease has interplay with chronic illnesses (lung and heart disease for example) and the treatments wreak havoc with others (high dose steroids and diabetes). It’s heartbreaking.
 
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