The Impact on Children

All People Need Some Breathing Room

Social distancing on the Schuylkill Banks.

My three-year-old grandson lives with his parents in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn. They're in a nice two-bedroom apartment in an old brownstone, and they're all doing pretty well.

But there have been some adjustments. My grandson is not seeing his little friends in preschool these days. Or his teachers either. There are five playgrounds that I know of within walking distance of the apartment. He's not going to any of them. They're closed.

The family can still go to Fort Greene Park. Prospect Park is a stretch, but they've done it.

And the coffee shops are closed. He likes coffee shops, and behaves very well in them. His grandmother and I love to take him to a coffee shop and buy him a cookie.

The world is becoming smaller for all of us. I think it's particularly hard for children. After all, one of the main jobs for a growing child is to grow, not shrink. This applies to the body, the mind, the child's world.

My grandson loves to go outside and move. Today, going outside and moving mainly involves the sidewalk in front of his house. As always, he needs to be careful of cars - Brooklyn drivers are notorious, and there are still quite a few of them around. And now he has to be careful about touching things. The coronavirus, you know.

He has fears. His parents try to help him deal with them, but they also need him to be careful. It's a balancing act.

Much of the country seems ready to rush blindly into a mass reopening of the economy, but my concern, in Philadelphia, is that we will err in the opposite direction.

Children and grownups do need to get outside and move. They need space to do this. And the city government in Philadelphia is unwilling to provide this space. In fact, I fear they will start closing open spaces, like the Schuylkill Banks, that are often swamped with visitors who basically have nowhere else to go.

Shutting down even further than we already have will, in my opinion, be counterproductive. Yes, it's not as bad as opening wide and letting the disease rip through the body politic.

But both of these options are, to my mind, symptoms of intellectual laziness. We need a balancing act, with constant monitoring and regular adjustments. More work for our leaders, who have other things to do - and I do think they're terrified that we will become the next New York. I share their fear.

There's a wonderful scene in Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio. The prisoners are let out into the yard after a long period on lockdown. At first dazed, they slowly start to bloom like flowers. The music is amazing. (For the Prisoners' Chorus, click here.)

I think we're going to be living with this virus for a very long time. A year, two years - I don't think anybody knows. But my grandson may be five years old by the time this is all over. I want him to have a life between now and then.