My four-year-old son, Oscar, is a Covid kid. Born in 2017, he was two and a half when the world went into lockdown. Like the rest of his generation, he has spent a significant part of his formative years away from family, friends, classrooms and other aspects of public life.
Like everyone else at the start of the pandemic, we did our best: we pulled Oscar out of the small, at-home daycare he’d been attending for just three months and sheltered in place. I put my career aside and formed a pod with four other mothers. My husband and I took Oscar and his baby sister to parks, crossing our fingers they wouldn’t come too close to other kids.