Despicable Anti Dementors

[Mascotte]

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Evening all. I live in one of the cities that's flat out refusing to consider opening schools at the beginning of June, and I've just had a little angry cry about this as I have a DC in yr 1 who could have gone back. I'm as middle class as they come and have the capacity to provide all sorts of homeschooling and educational activities (when not desperately trying to work from home), and guess what - none of that is a substitute for school with kids of his own age, and the heady thrill of being inside a building that's not his house! I really feel children are being thrown under a bus here, in service of politcal point scoring and the delusion that it's ever possible to make things totally safe. Ironically his school never seemed to care about infection risk before, rapping parents on the knuckles over absence figures when tummy bugs were ripping through the school etc.

And isn't the rise in the R almost entirely localised to hospitals and care homes? I doubt there were many care home residents out at street parties.

So much honesty here.
My mum is 80 and I'm her carer, as I've said previous. She's also been sober for 12 months after a lifetime of dreadful undiagnosed MH problems, DV, substance abuse - she's basically lived a whole misery memoir. And she went into rehab after she fell at home and broke her shoulder and lost the use of her arm (too old to survive the anaesthetic to repair the damage) came out a different woman.
That means she's has 12 sober months of a family she loves very much and a relationship with us which is...fragile. She spent the first couple of weeks of lockdown in dreadful distress afraid that she would be literally trapped in her flat with people in masks and gloves dropping off her necessities and walking away, cut off from any kind of human interaction. She would have started drinking again, of course, and it would have killed her: she would have died a lonely, disturbed death, lying in her own waste, unable to get up, vomiting blood. (That's how I found her last time.)
Presumably the Dementors don't think she matters, though.

DD1 doesn't want to come back from grandparents as it's boring being in lockdown with me.

Result Cattermole. Leave the DD with the grandies!

Can't leave them there forever - but thanks to the fuckwits my position as "jailer" is now embedded in my child's brain.

R-seholes.

Just to back up what @ThatLibraryMiss said. You do need to actually fill out the form, you can't just have discussed your wishes with your family. I've been in the situation (twice) where we as a family were telling doctors "please stop, they wouldn't have wanted this" but there was no way for us to prove what their wishes really were. It was agonising.

@beentothecoastalready

We're in North Yorkshire. You can palpably feel the difference between how uptight we are on the coast and how relaxed it was where I've been today.

I have to admit I'd had one gin already on the way there and had a little cry at how normal it was to see the ice cream van there, as normal. My kids were looking at me like what do we do now? Mum's flipped!..

I wish some of the School Dementors who are suddenly so desperately concerned about giving the Tories a kicking teacher safety could also spare some concern for child mental health. If they did, they might actually realise the implications of what they are asking children, particularly only children, to do. If schools don’t return in some form before July, my daughter will be isolated completely from all other children for six months. Why is this not seen as unacceptable? Who is going to pick up the pieces when children inevitably don’t cope?

Actually I might as well say it - if the schools don’t go back before Sept I will break lockdown to allow my DD some socialisation. The police can fucking fine me - I don’t care.

Most of the schools dementors I know are people who aren't parents and I'm guessing think children don't need socialisation? Or can be put on standby and stored safely in a cupboard for six months maybe?

Yes - the worst offender on my FB feed doesn’t have kids.

I was talking to my Mum yesterday about all this.

One of the phrases she hates most is "taken before their time" in relation to older people.

She said to me: "Shodan, I'm 85 years old. Obviously I hope to hang around as long as possible, but "my time" should probably have been before my quadruple heart bypass. Or before I had a kidney removed. This is a virus. It might get me, it might not. But if it does, it definitely won't be 'before my time'".

She has a very stoical attitude to the virus threat, but is (rightfully, imo) baffled that young and healthy people are getting so hysterical about it.

Think that's exactly it @GoldenOmber they want to lock the kids up until it's more convenient for them to exist. Like those egging the stores on banning children from entering - lock them up and mothball them until a more convenient period of time.

Unfortunately our kids aren't like this.

Your Mum sounds awesome, Shodan.

@shodan my nanna is 95. She's pissed off being stuck inside and decreed that everyone over 85 should be "stuck in a paddock" and left to get on with it.

Yes, Domina.

At least the Victorians were prepared to see their children even if they didn't want to hear them.

We now live in a society that wants children indefinitely hidden from view, regardless of the risks to them.

@KateTheShrew it's crap isn't it? And I can't tell DH yet that DS isn't going back.

Someone had just said well lockdown over winter again and things won't be normal until December 2021. Well if that is true I would rather catch covid and die. There. I've said it.

Yes! There seems to be so little thought about actual, real children. That’s what pissed me off about the Guardian article I mentioned earlier; it made a vague show of being evenhanded (a brief mention of how hard it must be for children and working parents) but was really all about bashing the government. And on the other side are right-wingers bashing teachers and the unions. Who gives an actual crap about the children?

Agree with the poster upthread who said that it makes claims of inclusion seem quite hollow. There are so many children with SN but without EHCPs, so the schools are not obliged to provide any provision and they are falling through the cracks.

@KateTheShrew it's crap isn't it? And I can't tell DH yet that DS isn't going back

Why not @Minnie Mountain ?

Ive just been on a nonchalant massacre in Tescos!
Accidentally went the wrong way up an aisle so obviously I murdered 50 care home residents and 2 entire ICU wards. Then I bought some haagen Daz ice cream so thats what?- 3.5 grandparents?

Phew! All this murdering and killing is exhausting - I need a lie down now, or a glass of wine (that will kill approx 2 nurses but fck it!) I need wine!

Domina I wouldn’t worry too much about what your DD said, I’d guess what it actually translates to is “I’m enjoying my change of scene” not “mummy is boring”. When my DD was about five she told me “mummy, I wouldn’t mind if you died then I could spend all my time with daddy”. I took a sharp intake of breath, but realised what she was actually saying was she missed her dad, he spent an awful lot of time abroad with work, not that she really wanted me dead. She’s twelve now and I recently reminded her of this thinking she’d find it funny, but she immediately burst into tears instead.

There seems to be so little thought about actual, real children

Yes. I feel children are really not getting treated like actual people woth needs beyond ‘not dying’ in all of this.

And I’m fed up seeing schools dementors saying “would YOU volunteer to work in a school at the moment?” Yes! Yes I would! I’m looking at taking unpaid leave from my job anyway because I’m hitting my limit with WFH with kids around, and I’m already disclosure checked, I would absolutely volunteer if there was a way to. I couldn’t actually teach them like a qualified teacher obviously but if they just want an adult to be close to the kids while their teachers stand 20 feet away in full PPE, please, give me the option to sign up and I will do it. And I bet I’m not the only one who’d volunteer if it’s the only way for children to get some socialisation with other kids this side of a vaccine.

I would also volunteer to help in a school if I thought it would be useful.