I don't say this to be Pollyanna about this pandemic. I say this because we did learn a lot from 2020 and how hard it's been. These are life-long skills that, as long as we actually learn them, we can take into the rest of our lives.

This pandemic and all of the struggles it's brought us are a great example we can share with our kids about how to survive truly hard things.

Here are a few of the "silver linings" of the pandemic - lessons we can share with our kids:

• A lot of things didn't happen the way they used to happen. A lot of us were very disappointed that our after school activities were different, or didn't happen at all. This helped us learn what kinds of things really matter to us! Maybe we realized how much we love school because we get to work in small groups, or we love to play games outside because the fresh air feels so good. Sometimes missing things shows us how much they mean to us.
• Many kids did school from home for at least part of this year. We learned that our teachers work very hard for us and that some grown-ups aren't meant to be teachers.
• Our parents worked at home too. We learned that sometimes we shouldn't interrupt people because they are trying to do other stuff.
• Because lots of people stayed home, lots of people didn't get sick. We learned that sometimes we have to do things we don't want to do, for a very good reason.
• We also learned how nice it is to be with our families, playing games with them and spending more time together. We might have also learned that different people need space at different times, and that's okay!
• We also learned that when big things change or we aren't sure what to expect each day, it can make us feel some really big feelings. This is true for grown-ups, not just for kids! And that's why it's important to talk to each other about how we are feeling, no matter what is going on in our lives.
• We wore masks to keep ourselves healthy and other people healthy too. We learned that doing small things that we don't like very much can make a BIG DIFFERENCE for other people.
• We couldn't be with people outside of our families, which was SO HARD. We missed our friends and our grandparents and our aunts and uncles and family friends. This helped us learn how important those people are to us, and how much we love being able to be close to people, and giving them hugs.

What lessons have you learned from the pandemic so far?