Will this psychologically affect children who lived through it?

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As the PM was speaking last night, my two children kept looking over at us and my heart was breaking for them that they are living through this. As a child, it must be so frightening and hard to understand. Do you think that living through this will somehow affect children? What are you doing to help you kids through this emotionally and ensure that they don't become overwhelmed or frightened?
Do you think that there will be long term implications? (Will they always want to have a fully stocked panty as adults 'just in case' etc? - lighthearted but just one example I could think of). Will it make them germ phobic?

What are your thoughts?

Yes, I heard that orphaned Afghani children are setting up direct debits to help with the trauma of their counterparts in Western Europe not having to go to school and spending a few weeks playing on their PlayStation and streaming Netflix.

FunkyKingston good one.

My teenagers think they are invincible. My dd has had her GCSEs scrapped and was upset for maybe 2 days. Dh and I are working from home and still have our jobs for now so we are very lucky in that respect.

I doubt this will even be a blip in dcs lives. I was trying to encourage them to use this free time to write diaries about this momentous time in history but they were not impressed. Netflix and video calls with friends were more interesting.

As a child I would have been delighted if school was cancelled for a few weeks/ months. They have so much more to keep them occupied, 21st century life was made for staying at home. My eldest has been video chatting to friends, they can study online. This wasn't possible 25years ago.
We're not being forced to live in a bunker, just stay at home.

It's certainly affecting adults. There have been a few related suicides already. Children are more resilient than we give them credit for though.

I think the kids will be fine...it's not like the Blitz.

If parents stay calm and matter of fact, then no.
If the parents are hysterical, then yes.
Obviously there is an in-between range for calm and hysterical.

Young children don't need the full information, IMO. Just a "There is a nasty virus going around. We have to stay in for a while so we don't catch it". They don't need to know about people dying etc. I wouldn't let a primary school age DC watch the news at the moment, but obviously that is up to individual parents. I was scarred by Dunblane at the age of 8- terrified to go to school. There are some things it is better for young children not to know about unless absolutely necessary.

And it"s always a damn good idea to have a stocked pantry anyway...very sensible.

I’m assuming this will last longer than a month. I suspect our children will grow up worrying about always having a stocked pantry and maybe even be wary of social contact. I know my world perspective has changed dramatically. I don’t know that I can ever go back to being comfortable with just going and getting what I need when I need it
I'm not sure this is a bad thing, though. I realised just how much I don't need. Apart from milk and bread and vegetables, I've not been shopping for 2 weeks and still have food, even if it's just cheese sandwiches.

I guess it depends on the circumstance of the parents and the child.

I can imagine there must be a lot of stress in some households now. Financial and emotional.

I worry about the impact of school closure - DS is playing online with his friends but the structure of school is important.

However, we have food on the table and a warm house. Others aren't as lucky.

The children who will be worst affected by this will be the ones whose home life is already difficult - abuse/neglect/conflict.

For others I don't think it needs to necessarily be negative. No-one in our household is frightened and we're generally finding it an interesting experience and enjoying being together. I've got three teens and they're all very happy at the moment - they don't often meet friends outside school (we live rurally) and they're used to connecting with friends online rather than face to face. DD has been bullied at school and she's enjoying the chance to be away from it all so for her it's better being at home.

Our children will learn from us how to respond to adversity. Children are remarkably resilient when the people who are their world remain constant and reliable even when the world is in chaos. I honestly believe that most will be well protected by their parents striving to maintain normality even if they're falling apart inside. It's what parents are good at.

My 4 year old doesn't really understand. Shes just enjoying spending time with mum and dad (both working from home). Trying to keep things as normal as possible for 11 year old. We only set him school work in the morning. He is getting unlimited tea and bacon sandwiches every day so he is loving it! He is still connected to his friends on a group wassap chat. We have kept him up to date with the government announcements (minus figures and death tolls etc) but left it open to questioning and assured him that its the best thing for us as we are safe indoors. We have told him in years to come we can look back on this and have come out the other side. I have told him how pollution has reduced through this. How people have come together to help each other. His uncle works for a very specialist welding company who are staying open to produce ventilators for the UK. We are staying positive together and he is happy as far as I can tell.

It will have an impact, like any big life event, but that doesn't mean there will be a whole generation too scared to step outside. I have parts of my childhood which I still feel slightly sad when I think about, but it doesn't affect my life.

I do worry a bit about my 8yo. She's not worried about coronavirus, as far as I can tell, but is feeling lonely. Her and her friends are struggling to keep up conversation over video call as they're normally much more into physical games than chatting. I hope this doesn't lead to them being less close when they can see eachother again.

I grew up with the threat of the Bomb hanging over me, waiting for a 4 minute warning.

In my primary school, we were always having lessons interrupted due to bomb scares because of the Troubles (Catholic School).

I'm not sure what effect that had on me as an adult; I can't say anyone has said anything that leads me to think "ah, that would be due to the threats in my childhood".

I don't know about the threats this youngest generation faces. Don't forget they're looking at the destruction of the climate of the whole globe in their life-time. I think they're rightly very very angry about that as we could have done a lot about it years ago. Everybody's scared of/worried about the CV threat.

Hi. I must admit I had a complete meltdown the other day in front of my children 18,14 and 4) I had just come back from the supermarket and hadn’t washed my hands. I just couldn’t stop crying. My youngest went and got me her favourite toy and the older 2 looked shocked. I’m really trying but it’s tough. I guess we are all muddling through.

I think the majority will be thrilled and in the worst case scenario will just remember being thoroughly bored towards the end of this period.
A small minority will become germ-phobic, get health anxiety etc but it probably won’t be influenced solely by CV and could happen anyway regardless of exposure to knowing about the CV

Am currently isolated in my house from the rest of my family as I developed symptoms a few days ago. I have had a lot of health issues and my daughter (about to turn teen) is terrified. She can’t come near me and every time I FaceTime her I see the fear in her eyes.

For kids off school who don’t have people they need to worry about I think there could be real opportunities. My daughter is trying to fill her day so has taken up learning a new language... the freedom of no rigid lessons has spurred her in all sorts of ways creatively.

I think there’ll be good and bad. I can only hope more good than bad for them all.

just That'll do the kids a lot of good! Good leading by example there. Great show of resilience and positivity. Your kids will deal with it all so well.

nah, it's no big deal. unless they're small children, they'd have to have mental issues to be completely fucked over by quarantine. besides this whole situation isn't very scary or damaging, it's just what staying indoors or else you could get bronchitits?

My grandmother's life was defined by living through the depression... always knew how much everything cost, always saved, never threw anything away. Anyone who remembers ww2 as a fun time was extremely lucky, it left generations dealing with depression, PTSD, families dissolved.

My hope is that children will learn to value things that are taken for granted - liberty, the ability to exercise, how precious food is - a few random examples.

I also hope that there will remain more compassion for anyone who has to deal with isolation, illness, straitened times, because they now know what it feels like.

The are millions of people who spend their whole lives dealing with high risk conditions, living alone, not speaking to others for days at a time, struggling in any of a hundred different ways.

I'm very very cynical, but if I hope for anything it's for a little more insight, and a little more compassion.

They'll look to you. If you're sobbing because someone walked past you on a walk or you're spraying all the food with bleach, they'll be anxious.

This is where you earn your parenting stripes. You get up, put your smiley face on, and you be with them as much as you can. You set up activities, keep them away from Boris Johnson’s speeches and the news. Get them to FaceTime friends - my DD does an exercise class with hers, read, anything to keep them engaged. How they will remember it depends on you.

Unless they lose a family member or friend unexpectedly early in life I don't think that children from normally stable homes will be too affected.
Of course we don't know the future.
The fear of a return of the virus or another strain will hang over us for a number of years I would think.

The lack of schooling, if it continues, could be fairly dire in terms of ongoing impact. Other than that, though, overall I think the long term affects of this sort of temporary adversity can generally be quite positive. There are obvious caveats for the minority who will lose someone close to them or have other challenges - anxiety, either in the child or a parent being one of the obvious, widespread challenges.

My eldest turns 6 next month. He has ASD but is high functioning. For him this means he likes to see figures. I was catching him putting the news on repeatedly about a week ago and it turned out his school were showing them newsround every day he's managed to get slightly fixated on the numbers. He likes to see numbers going up which obviously with these numbers that's not what we want at all.

He was asking a lot of questions about the situation and I tried to answer them in an age appropriate manner which seemed to satisfy him.

He does know people are dying and he knows we are staying home to keep others well. His friend in his class at school is going through chemotherapy so they were told about being extra careful when at school anyway, before all this happened.

Since school closed we've managed to distract him enough that he isn't asking questions anymore. I think the schools closing is soon him good. He's more relaxed regarding covid19. He's struggled with the routine change but we've implemented a morning routine and then winging it in the afternoon and he seems happy with this.

His only concern is that he won't get a class picture with his teacher to add to his picture wall so now it won't be complete. There will be one missing.

I've told him once this is all finished, even if he's then in year 2, we will organise a picture of his class with their current teacher and fill the space. He's happy enough with that answer.

He spent all of yesterday afternoon on the trampoline in the garden in just his boxers

I'm not worried about the long term impact it will have on him because I think for him he will get more positives from this experience.

I know there will be some who struggle though.