A Mask by Any Other Name

Carnival season is a dreaded time for us that comes around once a year and now the government wants us to live through this five days a week for five hours a day? Do the men in charge know what special needs are, or do they just want to shut them up with a surgical mask — or a nice and cute mask with cartoons on it?

Six months ago my high-functioning autistic child had enough trouble getting used to the school system and now he has to shift gears, forget the emotional knots that being shut-up in the house has caused him and go forth across the road to try again to fit into the system? A system that, by the way, is, for the most part, one size fits all.

In February we had achieved little but that little we did achieve we cherished. From March until now his world has become a place where bacteria crawl up his nose, in his eyes, in his mouth and the stickers on the ground pointing out where he should stand behind someone else have become his stomping ground. “Enough with this virus, I don’t like it, I wish this virus did not exist, I want to go and play, I HATE IT.” And that is just one tantrum, I don’t want to dig up the rest, I want to concentrate on the one at hand — the mask.

I will break down why the mask will undo everything we have been trying to achieve, how it will disrupt his already disrupted routine and how it will lock his childhood in a kind of Pandora’s box, where hope may not even want to remain.

Texture — the mask has a strange texture against his skin. The only way I can imagine it feeling like is having ants making a picnic park of your face.

Communication — the mask keeps his mouth covered. A mouth we have been trying now for four years to form sentences, to use correctly to say certain sounds, and become a form of communication. The mask keeps other people’s mouth covered. The phrase ‘use your words and look at me when I talk to you’ doesn’t make much sense now.

The monster under the bed — he already hates the virus with a passion. This is true of most of us but he is a child and no matter how many stories I makeup or books we read about how the king of all viruses will lose its crown when we wash our hands and don’t touch our face, the monster still growls under the bed.

Fear — anything out of the normal already puts a dent in his day. This is why we stay well indoors during carnival season — everything is different, people he knows and trusts are no longer people he knows and trusts. The mask will heighten his fear of half-normal reality, add a high-pitched school bell to the menu and there you have it, a recipe for rubbing his already sensitive sensory issues the very wrong way. Fear will follow and for a six-year-old saying ‘there is nothing to fear but fear itself’ will just not cut it.

There are other solutions, there are other ways to fight the pandemic but these solutions need money and time. The mask will not work, not for my kid, and not for any other kid in primary school. They are children, they have very little critical thinking, they are still at a very selfish stage and they are innocent. They will pick their noses under their half-worn masks, they will use them as slingshots, they will put the mask wherever when they eat during their break and they will make exchanging masks into a game.

Mr. Minister, tell me again how putting masks on young children will stop the spread of the virus.