Primary schools may not open this week. I understand that, and it’ll be ok. It is probably the right decision, hard though it is. However, I’m seeing a lot of people, both on social media and in real life, asking why on earth schools would stay open. Here’s why. (Long thread.)

People I know say that the only possible reason for not closing schools is that the government values the ability of parents to work above teachers’ lives. And I need to say why that isn’t the true picture.

Primary schools were staying open to save parents like me. Parents who were dreading the toddler and primary school years anyway, who knew that this age wouldn’t bring out the best in them.

Parents who took the decision to have children based on the fact that they would have a “village” to support them, and might have made a different decision if they knew all their support would be cut off.

Parents who know where the alcohol is and many painkillers there are in the house. Parents who feel the walls of their houses closing in around them.

And that’s without considering that many parents cannot be furloughed, that many have lost their jobs, or even acknowledging that the period of time when small children come along is often a time of penny-pinching already.

Primary schools were staying open to help children like my 4-year-old daughter. She doesn’t need to learn to read or write or count this year. She needs to learn to take turns, to share, to hold a conversation with more than one person at a time.

Children who crave the company of others their own age. Children slipping past the window for learning those social skills so necessary in life. Children regressing in toilet training. Children waking with terrors about the pandemic. Children lashing out without knowing why.

Childminders and nursery settings were staying open to help children like my 2-year-old son. Children who have spent almost half their life under covid.

(I know childminders are still open...for now.)

Children who can’t remember the last time they saw a grandparent in person. Children who have never been to toddler group or and have no recollection of the library.

Closing schools and/or childcare settings is probably the right thing to do. But please don’t blithely suggest that primary school children can learn via zoom, or that parents should be happy (or even grateful) to desperately try to juggle work, money and childcare.

There’s a reason we say it takes a village to raise a child.

There are too many people out there who say “but I’m following the science” any time you say that closing schools harms some children. Yes, I’m following the science too. It’s probably best to close schools. But please, PLEASE don’t demand that I like it.

I am so very grateful to my daughter’s primary school. They have managed the pandemic with grace and with clear, timely information. I know that they are weighing up the risks themselves — the risk to the children’s mental health and growth vs the risk to their own health.

We do not live in a rich area, and I know the teachers see the parents who are looking for jobs, the key workers, the extended families. Last March I had a panic attack at the school nursery closing and I was comforted in the best and most helpful way. The school is brilliant.

The school is the genuine centre of a community, and I trust their decisions more than I trust anything else.

We’ll be ok because my husband is good with small children. We have a wall chart with things to do, we have grandparents on speed dial, we have jobs which (although they need to be done) can be fitted into the evenings and early mornings. We will manage.

But please, it is possible to support a decision to close schools while recognising why primary schools have been kept open this long. Please, just acknowledge how much primary schools save both parents and children.

And please, don’t forget how much work small children are.