December 17: Love in the Mail (Part II)

Rhyming Prompt: December 17

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night

*Nor pandemic sickness nor other blight*

Stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

Their work this year has known no bounds.

They’ve brought us packages big and small,

And I for one have loved them all.

Let’s say thank you to the delivery crew

Who have brought the stuff that’s seen us through.

Download the prompts for December 17-20 here as a PDF or here as a Microsoft Word Document.

An image of the prompt for the day. It is printed on cream cardstock with a green border and a gold wax imprint of a frog. It is nestled in a lit Christmas tree.

Other Materials:

Whatever you’d like to thank your postal worker/delivery person. For us, this will be a card and a clearly labeled basket of packaged snacks we will put out for all of our delivery people (granola bars, and a few other snack packages and some canned seltzers). USPS employees are allowed to accept gifts worth less than $20, but not cash or anything that can be converted into cash, like a check or gift card.

Suggested Pose:

Frantz the Frog is dangling from a bannister, surrounded by holiday cards that are pinned onto a festive ribbon garland. The daily prompt is balanced on his shoulder.

Frantz is hanging out with our bannister of holiday cards. They’re such a nice reminder of all the joy our letter carrier has brought us this year!

Activity:

Work with your kids to find a way to thank your delivery crew. This can either be with snacks, with cards or drawings, or just with waving. Anything to let them know you appreciate them.

Rationale:

An image of a Tweet from @123SaySpieeeze that reads “There’s really only 2 types of days in quarantine: days packages come and days packages don’t come. I found this meme through the great Laurie Rogers.

This one is just about noticing hard, often thankless work. I imagine this year has been really hard for delivery people. If you are part of the USPS, you likely spent much of the year worrying about your job security, even while working extra long hours during a pandemic.

Book Recommendation:

We’ve talked about other gratitude books here before, but today I want to recommend The Thank You Book by Mary Lyn Ray and Stephanie Graegin. You can watch a read aloud here. I also love the Ezra Jack Keats A Letter to Amy about just how special the mail is (and how challenging it can be to deliver it). You can watch a read aloud here.

An image of the cover of The Thank You Book by Mary Lyn Ray and Stephanie Graegin.

December 9: Thank a Healthcare Worker

Rhyming Prompt: December 9

This year has been hard on us all, I know,

Though you have been brave and upbeat even so.

The sickness that’s made it so hard to go play

Is toughest on one type of person each day.

The nurses and doctors and hospital staff

Are risking their lives and its on our behalf.

They work very hard to help us be well

And they’d love some good cheer from us all, I can tell.

Of course we wear masks and stay home and wash hands,

But let’s make them a present to show that we’re fans!

Download the prompts for December 9-12 here as a PDF or here as a Microsoft Word document (you may have already printed these—I’m just re-posting them here for convenience).

A close-up of the December 9 prompt. It is printed on cream cardstock with a green border, and there is a purple wax impression of a frog, highlighted in gold, on the upper right corner. The card is nestled in a lit Christmas tree.

Other Materials:

Paper, crayons, whatever crafty card making supplies you have on hand.

Suggested Pose:

Frantz is wearing his mask because he values the welfare of healthcare workers! He’s also hiding under the Christmas tree with the presents.

An image of Franz wearing a rust-colored facemask. He is nestled against some wrapped presents, and the prompt for December 9 is on his lap.

Activity:

Today we’re going to thank a healthcare worker! When I reached out to my friends who are nurses, they both said essentially the same thing: “home made cards or words of support are wonderful ways to cheer us up!” and “If the girls want to make some special art work for the nurses I will bring it to work and hang it up for all to see!!!!” I’ll be letting my kids choose a papercraft to say thank you. If your kids would like to make some art for this purpose and you don’t have a special healthcare worker in your life, and you live in Eugene/Springfield, reach out—I am happy to collect art in town to send with my friend at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend.

Rationale:

As hospitals in Oregon and beyond are reaching capacity, many healthcare workers are feeling depleted. It has been a long and arduous year for us all, but many healthcare workers have been exposed to risk they never anticipated while sequestered away from their families. Taking some time to say thank you to frontline workers is important because it may comfort the people who are risking their lives not just because of a deadly virus, but also because that virus has become devastatingly politicized.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, recent research suggests that the resistance to taking basic precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is, in fact, an empathy problem. In a transnational study, researchers from Aarhus BSS found that it is in fact empathy for people in high-risk groups that motivates us to wear face masks and physically distance. They also discovered that when empathy was induced narratively, by showcasing the stories of people most impacted by COVID-19, prosocial willingness to distance and wear face masks increased.

Would we be in this mess if empathy were more highly valued in American society? A recent analysis of global COVID-19 responses suggests that individualism complicates disaster response and recovery where collective action is an urgent necessity, and goes on to lament that the U.S. repeatedly ranks as the most individualistic country in the world (Bian et al., 2020). The fight against COVID-19 requires us to sacrifice individual preference to achieve a collective goal, and it’s not hard to see how much our failure to muster the empathy required to do so has inhibited our national pandemic response. If we can’t turn back the clock and prevent the thousands of unnecessary deaths that have been driven by a lack of national empathy, we can at least make sure our families aren’t part of the problem. I plan to remind my kids of why we’re doing all this—giving up in-person school, playdates, and family holidays—because our desires must not eclipse another’s right to live.*

*N.B. Please note that if you have to go out and work during this pandemic, or send your kids to in-person childcare to continue working, I am in no way suggesting you have a lack of empathy. That burden falls on the government that has not found a way to make staying home feasible for so many.

Book Recommendation:

I love The Thank You Book, by Mo Willems, and so do my kids. This book helps them see how fabulous a simple thank you can feel, and it stars all of their Mo Willems favorites. I have also really been loving We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga, by Traci Sorell and Frane Lessac, which introduces some Cherokee vocabulary and shares cultural traditions surrounding gratitude and challenges. You can watch a read aloud here.

An image of the cover of We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga, by Traci Sorell and Frané Lessac.

References

Bian, B., Li, J., Xu, T., & Foutz, N.Z. (2020). Individualism during crises. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3626841

Pfattheicher, S., Nockur, L., Böhm, R., Sassenrath, C., & Petersen, M. B. (2020). The emotional path to action: Empathy promotes physical distancing and wearing of face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Psychological Science, 31(11), 1363-1373. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620964422