Cadelyn is Humming Again
The journey of a COVID-teenager
Anyone who’s met Cadelyn immediately picks up on her fierceness, strength and confidence. Once you get to know her, you may also learn that she’s musically gifted, a political wonk that completely has a fan-girl moment every time she meets Senator Jon Ossoff (she’s met him 3 times), and has interdisciplinary interests ranging from trap music to Emily Dickinson poetry.
Recently, I’ve noticed that when she’s just toiling around that she’s humming. The first time it happened, it startled me because I couldn’t remember the last time I heard her humming. You see Cadelyn inherited Michael’s musical talent. She’s got an amazing musical ear with the gift of almost-perfect pitch. She’s a gifted singer, piano and guitar player, and can pretty much teach herself to play any instrument. And, she loves music. Like her father, she has a soundtrack playing in her mind pretty much whenever she is awake. Music is a soul-stirring element of life for her, much in the same way that water and fire are for me. So, when I heard her humming, it jolted me with the thought of we just might be coming out of this season of strife.
To unpack this a bit more, we need to start with the fact that Cadelyn is a COVID-teenager. Those of you with teenagers or who interact regularly with current teenagers will immediately know what I’m talking about.
So, what’s a COVID-teenager?
It’s the term that I’m using to refer to the kids who were between 12 and 14 when COVID hit and were suddenly thrust into an educational experience framed by isolation, unilateral learning, and a focus on risk avoidance. COVID-teenagers remain teenagers today in 2023, ages 15 through 17 and there are some common ways in which they show up in the world. I’ve heard people use the term “COVID-baby” to refer to a toddler who was born during the COVID-pandemic, so it’s sort of similar.
There’s a growing amount of research showing that kids between the ages of 4 and 5 and then 12 and 14 were the most impacted by COVID.
https://www.edutopia.org/article/covid-changed-student-behavior-how-are-schools-responding/
The research is rooted in the idea that these age ranges are moments of critical child development. 4 and 5 years olds are entering the educational system and learning how to interact with others, operate on a structured schedule, respect authority outside the home, etc. Likewise, those between 12 and 14 are experiencing adolescence and learning skills around resilience, leadership, empathy, expanding perspective.
For both of these groups, the shutdowns reaped long-lasting and deep impacts because the respective skills were delayed, hindered, or maybe not even developed at all.
So, my COVID-teenager, Cadelyn, presents some of the classic impacts of being 12 when the COVID shutdowns began. As a highly-social child at a key moment of her adolescent development, the inability to go to school, interact with peers, leave the house was debilitating for Cadelyn - especially when we didn’t know what was going on. Further, as a child that’s always struggled with executive functioning, staying organized, self-motivation and pushing oneself to stay on task, without the infrastructure of teachers in your face everyday, bells ringing, scheduled time for completing assignments, it became really easy for her academics and intellectual stimulation to slip. It didn’t help that for me:
I have always struggled to “coach” Cadelyn in her academics because she has an attitude of wanting to prove that she doesn’t need help, until it’s too late and she really needs help. So, me trying to help usually leads to conflict; and,
I did not (and still do not) understand this new math so was super unhelpful in trying to teach/tutor certainly in math.
As a result, pretty quickly, Cadelyn’s academics began to decline, yet it wasn’t apparent because at that point schools were just giving the kids a free pass because there was so much stress and no one knew what was going on. Still, that led to her not feeling confident or in control. This then unearthed and heightened pre-existing depression and anxiety symptoms that had been there, but at a manageable level that one typically expects for a child going through adolescence. With the added stress of a pandemic, things declined and they did so rapidly.
Yet, I don’t have to tell Cadelyn’s story and her comeback because in a very courageous way, she told her story herself as part of her 8th grade speech when she was just 13 years old. If you haven’t ever seen this before, it’s worth the 5 minutes and 28 seconds. If you have seen it before, it will make you smile to watch it again. And, yes, Cadelyn gave me explicit permission to share this.
Cadelyn’s story is the story of many COVID-teenagers, including those outside that 12-14 age range. COVID did a doozy on our kids and we will see the lasting impacts on them for decades.
Our struggle over here in Casa de Cade continues. I don’t want to give any illusions that three years after this speech that these issues haven’t come up again. They have. They came up just this week. But the joy is that:
Cadelyn is still here and looking forward to her future, which just a few years ago she couldn’t even imagine; and
We have been able to get the resources, support and programs that have kept her moving forward and equipping her with skills that will carry her through her adult life.
Cadelyn’s humming is an indicator of brightness returning, even as there remains an everyday, sometimes every hour struggle borne mostly by her, me and our village. But the humming brings the music back in those quiet moments and that is a powerful sign of better days to come.