Kerry Dingle is a mother of two. She thinks masks should be optional for kids in schools and child care. And that makes her feel pretty lonely in Silver Spring, Md.
“As soon as you question ‘Is it a good idea to put a 2-year-old in a mask all day?’ you’re suddenly a psychotic, anti-vax right-winger,” she says. “Which really couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Dingle says she loves vaccines and thinks everyone should have them. “And the fact that high-risk people can protect themselves with vaccines and boosters now is fantastic and means that they should do that. And we should stop burdening little kids with protecting other people.”
Her 3-year-old son is in a preschool that mandates masking, although the children are almost always outdoors. “He keeps the cloth mask on, but he sucks on them and he chews holes through them,” she says. “Really, within five minutes of him putting it on, it’s wet.”
Her 6-year-old son, a first-grader, has a tic disorder that she says is exacerbated by a mask. “He makes facial movements that pull it down.” He kept getting in trouble for it until Dingle asked his pediatrician for a letter explaining that, but she says his teachers still correct him all day long.