The New York Times asked parents to share how they were handling their schools’ approaches. Hundreds responded, almost all of them mothers. Their answers varied widely in specifics but mostly boiled down to: Not well.

“I am screaming inside,” wrote Cathy Nieng, the Chicago mother.

“I cry a lot,” said Juliana Gamble, whose children — ages 2 and 7 — have been in school and day care in Boston for just 11 days in the past eight weeks. “I feel a total loss of control of my life.”

Kate Hurley, of Minneapolis, sent her 7-year-old daughter to school on Monday with a KN95 mask but kept her 4-year-old son home because he isn’t eligible for a vaccine yet. “When we started the pandemic, parenting and teaching while working remotely was hard,” she wrote. “Now we are tired and drained and nearly two years in. Doing it all over again feels insurmountable.”