Children thinking lockdown lasted years 😢

[Mayflower282]

Was talking with my kids about Covid (they were in primary school when it started, now in high school), they asked how long lockdown lasted and I couldn’t actually remember, but I said around 6 months…they were shocked and said they thought it was 2-3 years. I guess their perception of time at that age it felt longer. Felt so sad hearing this 😢

Anyone else had similar from their kids?

You could say those who were furloughed had it easier than those who were working

Those who were trying to work from home while dealing with kids had different stresses to those going out to work.

Oh yes I forgot SonIL was working from home. We were retired so I was home with disabled DH. Some weeks the only person I saw to speak to face to face was the Sainsbury's delivery man. We did lots of internet contact though. We managed to avoid COVID untill I got it in March 2022 when I got it quite badly and was unwell for months. I think caring for DH might have contributed to how long it lasted.

Covid was weird it was spring 22 when we got it too.
My oldest never had it, despite the kid beside him in school getting it.

I think lots of people found it very lonely. I also realised children are useless on the phone, they'd giggle for a minute then not know what to say to each other, boys especially.

Girls seemed slightly better, DS and friends DD spent ages on a video call one day showing each other their teddies 🧸.

People were allowed 3 days of Christmas in certain areas and it may have been more lenient in others. In others (London?) Christmas was cancelled.
I remember people racing to get their loved ones from the stricter areas before that came in.

New year gatherings were not allowed.

My daughter and friends tried to meet up over zoom once. They all came off really deflated and never tried it again. It was upsetting listening to how awkward and miserable the call was.

For the school arrangements at the time (child was year 5 to year 6), I remember there being several stages that were a long way from how school had been in the year before this all closed down.

The first was home schooling, which had a term of worksheets and the expectation of a certain number of tasks each day, plus spelling and reading. Then a term where there was a class check in and teaching over Zoom - but this felt more harsh because I remember my DC having to do the work of the day up till about 5pm, which was more like an adult's work day.

On the return to school, I think that there was still a system of maximum number pupil bubbles that alternated in the classrooms with the chance to clean the desks and so on in between. One pupil per desk, 2 metre distancing, packed lunch eaten at the desk, major organisation of toilet trips, and much more restricted things to do outside. No year 6 transition opportunities. Windows open and coats in winter. One day there was a drop off and a call about 15 minutes after the bell to collect, because of the report of a positive covid test in a bubble. It was well organised, as good as a response as was possible, but really weird and uneasy to be present in school. So these memories will not be fully carefree ones, to say the least.

An addition to the message above - I remember watching the film 'Educating Rita' in 2021 or 22, a film I really like. There is a scene when she walks into a large university exam hall with people waiting in a huge grid of little square exam desks. At that point it caused a sharp intake of breath because the desks were spaced at 1 metre (as had been normal for a long time) and that would have been doubled in classrooms - 1 metre each side before the next person looked instinctively wrong by then.

Ah that’s true. Yes many people pissed if as we were told we could spend Xmas. Then couldn’t

I’m Kent and was a no then said about bubbles

Here's another wtf Nicola idea
Part-time schooling

So some kids keyworker kids in full-time
The other kids Part-time

God only knows how that was ever going to work.
The full-time kids would end up bored shitless listening to the same lessons with both lots of Part-time kids.

They binned that idea after schools had spent hours trying to figure it out.

Lockdown was a very mixed experience for people, children included. Of the children I know, some loved it because it gave them a break from school, which removed a lot of stress from their lives, and allowed them to spend much more time with parents who otherwise worked long hours. Others found it hard due to boredom, isolation or missing their friends. Most commonly it was overall neutral: some parts were good and some were bad, it was different but ultimately no better or worse than usual. And for others, things didn't change all that much; they had key worker parents or were classed as vulnerable, (or their parents lied about being key workers as they didn't fancy homeschooling!) so they carried on attending school, although with fewer children.

under their “blended learning” proposals I would have had my kids in school 35% of the time. And the three of them - all in the same school - wouldn’t all have been in at the same time. There was an almighty kick back from parents and they did their u turn with Swinney gaslighting the population that they never really meant it, it was only and idea.

Playing with other children etc as you listed does not build resilience!

Why not?

School is for learning, playing is for socialising and building motor skills. That is not building resilience. Look up the meaning of the word.

School and play teaches kids resilience because they have to deal with the normal day to day set backs that happen in everyday life.

Exactly this. I know the meaning of resilience @silverrobot .

I remember ranting as a 7-year old how much I hated school, and being with other children. I would have loved lockdown.

But I would not have learned the resilience I did learn.

Oh, bollocks.

@TheignT I see what you mean about “if we paint lockdown as negative, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy”. There may be some truth to that, but what I am afraid of is the idea of lockdown becoming “normalised”. It was exceptional, and should remain so. In early 2020, the idea of lockdown was unthinkable: even the government thought it could never be done. When it was done, it set a massive precedent. But what worries me far more than lockdown itself is the way we were completely forbidden to talk about the downsides: the argument became totally one-sided. Anyone who tried to voice concerns was shut down with “don’t kill granny”, cancelled, banned from social media, shunned by their own friends; all debate was actively suppressed. You could watch BBC interviewers cutting off scientists who were about to mention a harm of lockdown. (What happened to Vernon Coleman, by the way, one of lockdown’s biggest critics? Did he disappear?)

And I feel that this is still happening now, albeit more subtly. No politician will admit that lockdown caused harm, or that it is partly responsible for the economic mess we are in now (yes, I know it’s not the only thing). They’re all in agreement about one thing: lockdown and the campaign of fear caused no harm at all, it was all “the pandemic”. While I am slightly relieved that the inquiry is discussing the harms of lockdown, I bet that politicians will not express a single word of regret when the inquiry reports: they will whisper “lessons will be learned”.

And I think it could still happen that if another “disaster” appears, maybe one stoked up by the press, which might be about something completely different (e.g, a city-sized iceberg falling off Antarctica) the public will start immediately clamouring for lockdown, having gained the completely false idea that lockdown can save them, as Johnson made out it could “twelve weeks of lockdown, we can send the virus packing”, all memories of the massive harms of lockdown completely forgotten. This is why I think we need to keep reminding ourselves and everybody else just how harmful lockdown was, before it becomes “forgotten”,

I'll give my kids school credit.
They were trying to juggle so kids who lived in the same house were in school at the same time.
But of course that's not easy nor is it easy to figure out who all lives in the same house, with the number of blended families and seperated parents etc.

But more and more people were going back to work too.

I suppose we all see different things. I see lockdown endlessly presented as catastrophic particularly for children who saw no one for two years which is rubbish. I live in a traditional buckets and spades seaside town, July and August 2020 were crazy. Obviously it is normally a busy time here but that year was a different level so no I don't buy the "two years"business. It wasn't a lockdown for two years, yes some restrictions for two years but no reason why children saw no one for two year unless they were immunocompromised and had to be protected. It was tough for families with no outside space as that clearly made it harder

When there was the sudden Christmas lockdown, well in most places it was limited contact, we met family at a motorway services to exchange presents. We were on the road about half an hour after Boris made his announcement. Our shared Christmas meal became McDs standing in the car park. We weren't alone. Was it what we planned? No but it was ok.

Did I miss seeing my kids/GC as often as usual? Yes I did but we met up when we could. We also went for walks on the beach, when take aways reopened we sat on a bench and had a pasty and a can of something. It wasn't the worst thing, imagine it happening before phones/TVs/internet.

I hate the "people died alone in hospital" story. One of my kids and one DIL were working on COVID wards, they held dying people in their arms so they could say their last goodbyes to family. I think it is disrespectful to brave HCPs to dismiss them as nothing. Same with care homes. One resident in the home where I worked died during lockdown, not from COVID. It was Christmas and the night before he died staff and residents gathered outside his room and sang carols. The night he died two staff members of staff who had worked with him for years stayed after their shift and sat with him right to the end. He didn't die alone, people who cared for him were with him.

As for it being normalised I think the opposite is true. I think if there is a much more deadly outbreak it will result in many more deaths as so many people say they won't follow the rules again

I think if there is a much more deadly outbreak it will result in many more deaths as so many people say they won't follow the rules again.
And that is precisely why the government shouldn't have overdone the fear campaign, and the absurd roolz. I wouldn't even have minded lockdown if the government had been more sensible with their communication, and expressed regret about lockdown, instead staged grovels about death figures. Now that we're seeing that things weren't as deadly as the government and the press were telling us (body bags in the street, we might have to kill your cats, etc.), people who made massive sacrifices for the greater good feel conned and cheated. And Partygate was the icing on the cake for making people disrespect government. With the relentless fearmongering, and proof by Partygate that they knew things were not as bad as they were telling us, the government well and truly cried wolf. They clearly weren't worried about their grannies (but that may be a moot point, as many politicians such as Johnson would sell their grannies for a step up on the political ladder).

And those who dared to enjoy any outdoor activities such as buckets and spades were torn apart on social media. "Look at all those selfish arseholes flocking to the beaches!" "You're killing farmers by walking on footpaths!" "Your car tyres are churning up the virus and spreading it everywhere!" (Mumsnet said this, so it must be true.) "You're only allowed out for an hour a day!" That was never true: Gove improvised it in an interview, and it quickly became gospel. Also scientists have admitted that "two metres" was practically made up on the spot.

I still believe that prolonged lockdowns and absurd rules, all served up with a massive campaign of fear caused much more harm than good, and probably killed more people than they saved; for example, those who did not seek treatment or diagnosis because they were "protecting the NHS, as Boris said". This is a hill I will die on.

Well if you want to die on a hill carry on.