How has Covid affected your kids?

[glassbottle55]

I thought my DS aged 13 and and DD aged 11 got through Covid OK and weren't at such tricky ages when it happened - Year 3 and Year 1. But more and more I'm thinking perhaps they were more affected than I thought. They happily default to Covid type days of PJs and TV and it can be hard to get them out for activities. Small things overwhelm them. Perhaps this is normal for the age but it's hard not to think Covid might have had an impact.

It was illegal for DS to have birthday parties for 2 years due to an awkwardly timed birthday that hit both years of full lockdown conditions. He went from the generic class party age 6 to inviting a cluster of friends round for an activity age 9, and missed the transition phase of parties scaling down in size.
Plus missing out on peers' parties.

It is a loss of social experience and skill.
It's one of those layers that makes it harder to evaluate is it coz covid, or is he ND like his sibling and makes it harder for concerns to be taken seriously by professionals.
If he is diagnosed, he'll be about 4 years older than his sibling was.

I knew that his sibling's behaviour aged 7 wasn't age appropriate and was worth referring, but for him, my concern when he was depressed and sobbing was because of the direct problem that it had been illegal to go to school or play with other 7 year olds for months. At that point he hadn't developed friendships secure enough that I felt comfortable to contact parents to arrange some casual law-breaking.

My GC were aged between 11 and 15 when it kicked off. I'd say they were definitely affected at the time but looking at them now the youngest is still the one most definitely disadvantaged.

I mean mine were affected at the time. One of them lost out from doing head boy stuff at primary, missed a residential, school were slow putting on school trips again. But they missed out on nice to have stuff so nothing that had a lasting impact. They enjoyed the time off school and we were lucky as I was working part time at home.

(Younger 2 ) Social development and big chunk of education that teachers are supposed to magically fill. older one exam results were estimated and they think you can sit home and do nothing for ever 😖

It's difficult to know, but I suspect it has had some impact on my child who was just under 1 when covid started. All of the parent and child activities were suddenly cancelled so he didn't mix much with other children as he was only in nursery a couple of days a week.

He was a very anxious child between the ages of 4.5 and 6 and we had some challenging times in reception. Now closer to 7, he is much better at socialising and is more confident and happy at school, but he still needs a lot of reassurance.

Awful, absolutely awful - but a lot of it we didn't realise until much later.

Ds2 was year 6 abd diagnosed autistic in 2020. Coming out of lockdown was horrific. He would refuse to eat or drink anything if we were going out, until we had returned home. Lost loads of weight and reduced our already limited list of safe foods. Transition to high school traumatic but got there in the end with the support of school.

Ds1 was always an anxious baby / toddler but it seemed to disappear as he got older. He was year 10 in 2020. He loved lockdown but lost a lot of social skills / emotional maturity. Stopped doing clubs afterwards. Did gcses, a levels and went to uni - and completely fell apart. Would spend days in his room alone. Managed to finish 1st year but has now been at home for almost 2 years. Doesn't know what he wants to do. Very, very anxious. Reluctant to interact with outside world. Not many jobs about. Has friends but all away at uni. Started some voluntary work last summer 1 day a week. Has just started a course with the kings trust which is about confidence building / team working/ cv skills / work experience. He's in week 3 of 12 and despite some initial kickback (which we expected) it seems to be going ok. He's also put in ucas applications for next september so hopefully we can move forward a little.

And on top of all that my dad died of it - which i know isn't the point of this thread.

19yo thrived as an autistic girl who found school overstimulating, public transport anxiety inducing but loved learning. She was free to learn in silence from her own space. Although she will never be happy with her GCSE results, which were definitely affected (she got all over 7s but is a perfectionist).

16yo could not cope with the lack of routine and the isolation, so much so that they had him back in school. His mood improved but then once Covid was over, he never coped with the return to normal school, which he then found overwhelming and overstimulating. He never made new friends, and as he'd swapped schools at the end of year five, he didn't have any enduring primary friends either. He did well in his exams and is at college now and thriving, with a good friendship group, but secondary school was all a negative experience as a result.