Triggered by lockdown

[user64827723]

It can't just be me.

I just replied to a thread about small age gaps and was triggered. During Covid I had a 1yr old and a 2yr old. We lived in a flat with nothing to do and no where to do.

I cried most days and I still get so upset and mad about it now, those precious first years completely lost. 2 years of nothing to do, no swimming, no baby classes, wearing a face mask at soft play and even then the cafe was closed and numbers were limited.

Life with babies and toddlers is bloody hard but nothing will compare to trying to parent in lockdown.

I felt at the time, and still do feel, that parents of very young children were completely forgotten in the madness of covid lockdowns.

Anyone else feel like this?

Oh gosh that is absolutely horrific. I'm so sorry.

DS was just shy of 2 years old when the 1st lockdown happened. My marriage crumbled. Work stress was overwhelming. 2 adults wfh under extreme pressure with a 2 year old and no garden, no childcare, unable to see friends and family. Apocalypse going on globally. No cars on the road, every thing closed. Threat of food shortages. Terrifying news alerts. Weird weird times. My life has changed beyond recognition now. I feel like a completely different person in a way I cannot even describe.

Same.

That Argos mat story is pretty fucking appalling.

Basically the world went mad.

And some people are still mad. I went for my maternity scan this year and when I declined to wear a mask, the woman asked me if I wouldn’t mind putting a paper towel over my face.

I’m so sorry. It was madness.

Your post really moved me.

I remember being unable to go into the shops once as I just broke down over some shitty announcement.

It is, but plenty of people are on this thread saying that they had to go out to work so were terrified; maybe that's where this woman was coming from. We've no idea what she was dealing with.

I relate to this so much. I had a 2 year old and 3 month old at the start of lockdown and a partner in the emergency services.

I can't look at photos from then without feeling sadness and guilt at how much I cried and felt I couldn't cope. we sing lots at home now, and there's music all the time. We never sang then, I just couldnt manage a nursery rhyme without crying.

I referred myself for therapy due to PND but didn't end up doing it as when I was able to get back to work and things opened up I felt better so it was largely lockdown related.

It's still appalling. There isn't any 'but'.

That said, I agree the wider context is important too. The deliberate government attempts to make the population more afraid always seemed to me to be particularly cruel to people who didn't have any choice but to continue in public facing roles.

I will never forgive some of the aggressively pro lockdown people on here.

This place was a cesspit of uncontrolled fear and anxiety delivered with pseudo virtue signaling 'compassion' ("Saving lives"). They say fear does funny things to people and that is the only way I can explain what happened. Such was the deliberate drumming up of fear by the government and the media that people could not see past the moment they were in and everyone became a potential 'killer'. There seemed to be no ability to see beyond this one single issue of COVID and being infected with it. People who were really at no risk at all of dying and only at risk of being ill for a couple of days / weeks, depending on your specific circumstances, spending all their time avoiding it at the expense of literally everything else, being unable to remember what it means to be human, and what humans actually need to be holistically healthy (not just free from disease).

It was mass psychosis, at a global scale, of which we have never experienced before - only possible because of the global connectedness via our new media technologies. The first time that basically the whole world was drawn into the same media / govt narrative. And what it brought out in people was an actual totalitarian type approach to life, understandable because people wanted to reduce the anxiety that had been whipped up via the media. I say totalitatarian because censorship via the media became the norm, snitching on neighbours the norm, protests banned (except BLM), strangers shouting at and judging other's previously normal behaviour, voluntary compliance with 'the rules' out of a need to reduce the anxiety. There developed a total inability to process anything other than their immediate emotions. No thought of other possible consequences to 'the rules' - economics was dismissed as cold hearted (we can all see why economics matter immensely now though!), playgrounds, well play is simply unimportant when compared to the 'risk of being infected', education - well yes, that is just a series of words that can be transmitted perfectly via a screen so no problem there either!

I do think people should take some time to reflect on their behaviour and tendencies when they were experiencing the (whipped up) fear and anxiety - do you look back and think that you handled the fear well, behaved well to your other humans? Were you still able to think critically? For example, were you able to question whether this was right that developing children were essentially being deliberately deprived of normal development for a disease that posed zero risk to them (and likely you)? Or did you become an unquestioning supporter of more rules, follow the science without question, quash your internal fears for your children? Go along with the belief that a child can learn through a screen even though in your heart you knew that was bollocks? Did you become convinced that play was unimportant, like they said, even though you could see your child wasn't really fairing well?

I hope we never forget the importance of play, of connection, of peer learning for our children to such an extent again.

I am so sorry for the (entirely predictable) awful stories on this thread and I wish all the very best to your families

And I will never forgive some of the anti-maskers and idiotic conspiracy theorists. Some openly said they didn't wear masks because they didn't want to. Maybe such a person passed on Covid to my family member who died.

Schools had to close to avoid exposing vulnerable teachers and other staff to the virus. It's all very well saying children were usually OK if they got it - adults often weren't. Not worth the risk in the early days.

Once it was known how the virus was transmitted then there was no need for play parks and other outdoor spaces to be so restricted. If such a pandemic happens again maybe the government will have more of a clue.

The country was hopelessly unprepared and mistakes were made but erring on the side of caution is what had to happen.

Some children thrived with online learning, most didn't.

Far too many otherwise healthy people died. Without lockdown it would have been a lot worse.

I see we were allowed ONE PAGE discussing the impact on kids and their parents before it was derailed again and the discussion shut down.

ONE PAGE

OP - you're not the only parent who felt like that. Was talking to a colleague who had his first baby in the middle of it all and they really struggled as a family with the utter isolation of it and I think he's only really realising just how much they struggled now they've had a second back in a slightly less bonkers world. Lots of people at work tell similar things now - and these were key workers who had school places and provision in place throughout, so not those desperately trying to WFH while explaining what a fronted adverbial is, while wondering what the fuck a fronted adverbial is.

Mine were older - but they went into it all still believing in Santa (DD2 was very concerned after the first lockdown started that the Easter Bunny was still being allowed to operate in a Covid-approved manner... we were at the GP for something that could have been clinically a big thing - so actually allowed in face-to-face - and bless him, the GP played along and blagged some stuff about Government guidance had been issued to the Easter Bunny for her) and came out of it as tweens. Huge percentage chunk of childhood made into a very abnormal set of circumstances for them - however hard you worked as a parent to mitigate it, no one could fully.

DD2 at the moment is currently being seen by CAMHs and some of what they're trying to work on is processing the pandemic for her - and apparently what she's displaying is fairly typical of what they're still seeing. Level of need for SALT is off the scale fucking bonkers - and some teams are running at like 50% capacity because they can't recruit there - because lots of students dropped out because of crappy online learning, disrupted placements and generally it being a totally shitshow in terms of providing you with tools to do the job (I trained during the pandemic and we worked out at a reunion recently that we lost about 1/3 of the cohort that year - just people who broke with online learning and fucked up placements and stuff). DD1 has just turned into an incredible cynic - but she spent half of lockdown trying to work out how she could form a political party with the manifesto aims of getting her school back open and flushing Boris Johnson down the toilet - so possibly had a more healthy attitude to fall back on there (and possibly a worrying political career ahead of her).

I think there's a lot of underlying parental trauma that will come out as kids readjust, appointments for intervention happen (hopefully they happen) when that's needed, and the "kid stuff" gets back onto an even keel which (fortunately or unfortunately) means that parents get time to think and process it all. For me the last big "hit" I had of it was DD1's leaving assembly at primary last month where they did the huge PowerPoint of all their time in school and there's this massive huge timeskip in the middle of it around y3/4 where the images just suddenly jump from being little kids to almost-teens as that chunk of their normal childhood is missing.

Oh yeah, and since the pandemic - our local self-referral (albeit with a humongous waiting list) talking therapy service has been decommissioned, so there's fuck all for low-level MH intervention in the area.

We've got another disaster looming over the next couple of years when people have time to move back from survival mode to reflecting on it all mode. I fear there will be a lot of people who fall apart when they have time to think.

DD1 has just turned into an incredible cynic - but she spent half of lockdown trying to work out how she could form a political party with the manifesto aims of getting her school back open and flushing Boris Johnson down the toilet - so possibly had a more healthy attitude to fall back on there (and possibly a worrying political career ahead of her).

Sounds like the youth icon we need!

100%. My son was just over 18 months, nursery shut & myself and my husband had to work from home in a tiny 2 bed house - we did have a tiny (non child friendly) garden. Not seeing my parents was awful, my mums my best friend.
I'm definitely changed after that 1st lockdown. Horrible times.

When I opened the papers this morning and see yet another innocent baby killed by its parents taking advantage of the lockdown it makes me angrier at lockdown zealots.

The UK did have a pandemic strategy which was adopted by Sweden. As sorry as I am for your loss the fact is that the fallout from lockdowns, school closures etc is far greater than a virus that for the majority was harmless.

Indeed, User2346. Lots of people said at the time that child abuse would increase during lockdown because kids were locked up with their abusers, but they were ignored. https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2023/aug/04/covid-lockdown-england-child-abuse-jacob-crouch

It’s made me an anxious mess.
DD was born just before the lockdown, I was looking forward to doing all the baby groups and the fun soft plays, swimming for the first time but no, she spent from 3 months to 18 months stuck inside. I feel like I’ve been robbed

As sorry as I am for your loss the fact is that the fallout from lockdowns, school closures etc is far greater than a virus that for the majority was harmless.

Have you forgotten how many people died from it? Not just my relatives - one of whom was in their 20s.

We'll have to agree to differ. The initial lockdown saved many, many lives. If it had come earlier more would have been saved. Schools closed to stop the spread of infection and to protect teachers and school staff. They couldn't be expected to just carry on as normal in the early months.

There was no choice - there is a debate to be had about the second lockdown but the first was essential.

And what about the babies who died due to domestic violence, the suicides from young people, the cancers that were missed, the heart attacks and strokes that were not treated due to people being too scared to get help?

Most of all look at the stats of how many people died with rather from covid yet cause of death was certified as covid…..

My son worked in the research into Covid from the very beginning and finds that people would have survived illnesses if they didn't also have Covid, he feels the deaths were underestimated. Stats don't tell the whole story, always.

Sadly parents kill their babies with or without lockdown, wives are beaten by abusive husbands and young people have mental health crises. If lockdown brought on an increase then it is still the people themselves to blame. Not the virus.

You seem to think there should have been no lockdown at all, that's ridiculous.

This thread really shows how the strongly many feel about the traumatic effects of both COVID itself and the lockdowns. I am very thankful that my DC was secondary school age when lockdown one started and was able to do virtual lessons and keep in touch with friends via XBox, If he had been younger it would have been much more difficult. What stays with me is how my DH was very keen on keeping to the rules at all times (I got a massive telling off once for going up the wrong "one way" aisle by mistake in the supermarket).
From a work point of view, I worked with antenatal services and we had to implement rules meaning women getting 12 and 20 week scans could not be accompanied by anyone, even a partner they lived with. Partners had to wait in car park. This applied even when bad news was involved. I still get a physical reaction to remembering how this affected people.

No there should not have been a lockdown apart from the first 3 weeks perhaps.

What a horrible disregard for the mental health implications of lockdown and I note that you haven’t answered my question on missed cancers etc.

My elderly mother had a mental breakdown because of the loneliness of lockdowns. I'm so fucking angry that I obeyed lockdown rules while politicians partied.

Soooo angry.🤬😡🤬

Fuck sake guys can you start your own thread in which to bicker.