Friend and children still in complete lockdown

[madbirdlady22]

I am getting quite worried about a friend of mine, and wondered if there is something I can or should be doing do to help her.

Since mid March she has been in lockdown with her dh and children, and along the same lines as everyone else stayed in. Back then she would not even take the children for a walk, they stayed at home 247 with shopping delivered. I asked her why not go for a walk, but she said there was no need as they have a garden.

Now we are in mid July, and the children have still not been out. They decided against going back to school in June, and they have not been out anywhere at all since March. I am feeling quite worried now, not just for her, but for the children as well (they are ages 7 and 4) she has not seen any friends or been out of the house at all since the lockdown began.

I suggested the park, she said it was too busy, I mentioned going to the gardens nearby for a picnic with her dc, and she said they couldn't get a ticket, but I know it is possible to get tickets easily. She lives an hour and a half away, so I can't just pop in and check on her, and I feel I should respect her wishes.

She is now saying she doesn't think the children will go back to school in September after all. I am getting very worried about her.

I think/thought her MH is fine, her dh has PTSD at the moment. I am feeling concerned, she has no family nearby and no other support from what I can gather.

They spend all day every day in the house or in the garden.
They are not shielding, are not vulnerable at all and they are all perfectly healthy.

Should I say something? Are other people also doing this? Should I just leave them to it? She has been a friend for 35 years plus and we grew up together.

Lockdown has been great for my mental health I hadn't realised how exhausting being social and making small talk at work was. My sisters have said the same. We aren't completely lockdown currently but we are being very selective about when and who we see and are making judgements on how we feel each day as to whether we go out. I'm happy to meet a friend on a random hill in the middle of nowhere but I'm not walking around the village for example. I'm pregnant so able to get food deliveries but my opinion wouldn't be different if I wasn't pregnant.

My mental health suffered as a child and teenager because of the expectation that I had to leave the house and do things. It's just not in my personality to be that person. I'm very introverted and find it frustrating that the ideas of what is normal and good for mental wellbeing are dictated by extroverts.

I am worried about covid but I'm not worried about dying from it. We have no idea what the long term consequences of covid are. So many autoimmune conditions can be triggered by nasty viruses and infections. Getting ill is also bad for my mental health so I want to avoid that. Covid for me might mean a week in bed feeling awful but that could lead to a 6 month depressive episode. For this reason I'm careful not to get ill, I am careful about washing my hands after being on public transport, I press lift buttons with my elbow or back of my hand, I always get a flu jab. I also stay home from work as much as possible if I am ill too as I don't know who I'm going to come into contact with that has a more compromised immune system than me. My uncle had leukaemia when I was growing up and my dad has a autoimmune condition that means simple infections but him at risk of stroke and heart attacks. You never know what extra vulnerabilities a person or their family has.

@madbirdlady22

I believe she is very afraid and this comes through in all of her messages, so I find it hard to imagine the children have not picked up on it carpet Certainly most British children are raised with other children and have no experience of being alone before now.

Do I think it is harmful to her children? Yes potentially I do.

My question to you is why don't you think it is harmful to take a child away from everyone and everything he/she knows? It must feel like a lifetime to them given their age.

I never said that I don't think it's harmful to take children away from "everyone and everything he/she knows". But that's not what's happened here at all. The children are with their own family in their own home.

If the children are being abused then obviously taking them away from the abusive situation would be a very good thing. I think you need to decide whether you think that the children are being harmed and act accordingly.

If the official lockdown was still in place would you have the same concerns? Or are you concerned because they're not doing what the majority are doing now?

Oh, and it isn't because I see it as unsafe (though we are in an area with a higher than average infection rate) but because we are genuinely enjoying it!

I am obviously going to ask you how you will vet your children's friends and how will you know 'where they have been'. Will you ask them before you agree to meet up?

We live in a village where everyone knows who has been where! I already know which ones have had people in their houses / friends to stay / whose parents work in the hospital and who has been to school 😂

But if I didn’t know I’d ask!

the youngest was previously very anxious and isn't any more

But he will have to engage with the 'outside' at some point, his anxiety may have gone because he isn't having to engage with things like school etc which cause it; but that's not sustainable. His anxiety will likely be worse when things are back to normal, because the root of it or copying mechanisms haven't been done, it's just the stressors removed.

I also know which ones are sensible and which ones are unlikely to distance socially.

ineedaholidaynow no. We live in a fairly built up area. Our garden is a very decent size so felt no need to go for walks, walking down streets and streets of houses doesn't appeal. The kids get loads of exercise in the garden and DH and I do HIIT, so from a health perspective we are fine, DH and I have both lost weight in lockdown and the kids are maintaining their (healthy) centiles (had to weigh and measure as DC2 is on the cusp of outgrowing the car seat).

max do you think your children will struggle in September when it is time to return to school? Do you worry that their old friendships will have died off? Or their friends having seen each other will have developed a deeper bond? What about their levels of fitness and wellbeing if they are not even walking outside the house?

Genuinely interested, because my motivations for going out are:

Obvious joy in my children's faces when they see their friends
Hours of play time that was easily measured by how happy and chatty they were for days after seeing their friends
Fitness and physical activity are vital to children's good health
Running, cycling and exercise are not a choice, but essential to good health
Mental health benefits of exercise is proven
Playing in the the sea/building and playing sand angels on the beach/woodland walks/picnics in the fields/ swimming and playing in the lakes have brought them so much happiness.
Laughing with friends has been a real tonic to the stress and worry of covid
Sharing a glass of wine with family and friends has been the highlight to the end of lockdown.
Seeing their grandparents was a relief to all of us, as they are getting older.

At no point were they are risk, it was all outside, so for me the benefits greatly outweigh the risk.

We’re meeting up in the garden of a family member next month. She has messaged ‘just to let you know I might have to go into work, obviously if I do I’ll let you know as that changes the risk’

I think that’s a sensible conversation to have!

I also see which children are out in big groups etc and going to busy places.

@NudgeUnit It seems small but it makes a huge difference.
A lot of the comments I have made on here might seem harsh but they come from experience. I stayed inside for days on end. I think I can relate to what is being described in the OPs friend. I got used to staying in and didn't miss outside world. I didn't need to go out. I enjoyed the isolation. But because I didn't go out, my only source of news was the TV or people through screens. I wasn't seeing the real world. I wasn't particularly scared or anxious, just comfortable and settled but it was unhealthy.
It was a walk to the end of the road that got me back into gear.
It may be that OPs friend is perfectly happy at home but if she gets stuck in a rut like I did it will just get harder and harder to break. I wasn't unhappy at home like everyone here said, I was comfortable, but that didn't make it right. People should go out and exercise and see new things.

In enjoying it, I'm not very sociable but for my children I try and get out but in careful. I go to my parents and in laws, I've taken kids to playground and my dd has been to her friends house twice. I wasnt 100% happy about it but I'm worried a second wave will come before she goes back to school and she wouldn't have seen any kids for months. My son isnt very sociable so hasn't met with friends.
If her kids are happy at home they may have got into a routine of not going out and that can be hard to break and quite scary. If my friend kept asking to meet up it would annoy me but I can also see why you are worried. I think you need to be straight with her, give her a call tell her you're concerned and see how she reacts. Shes probably suffering from anxiety about going out now that it has been so long and finds it easier to just stay at home.

Standardy but there is nothing wrong with removing the stressors for a while! Especially when there is no need for them to be there currently. In September when they return to school there may well be a return of the anxiety, but we can deal with that when it comes. I'm not going to deliberately place the kids in situations that stress them just because at some point they will have to be in them. I'm letting them enjoy the reprieve.

(This thread sort of reminds me of my own situation - I have a friend holed up in Texas posting anti-Trump content seemingly on every quarter hour, sometimes more. That and COVID horror stories. I hate Trump too (and I know things are bad in Texas now) - but she seems to have gone down a rabbit hole where I am seriously wondering if someone needs to take her devices off of her for a while. I am hoping she's just on a lot of boring conference calls and not caught in a loop of winding herself up.)

Sorry for the commercial break.

max I think you are choosing to give your children a break from the perhaps the anxiety they were already experiencing. My friend's children do not have mh issues and therefore do not need a reprieve from anything.

@PotholeParadise I wish!
We have been for walks. Taught my DD to ride her bike etc. She is having great fun.

And to the poster who questioned my MH... please don't worry yourself, I am all good!

Sorry, OP, when I said 'she's not wrong' it was a figure of speech, not to tell you off for thinking she's wrong about it, which I appreciate is not what you said.

I do think there are some rights and wrongs with Covid though!

I suspect what we'll face is a pandemic of agoraphobia!

You don't need to be on MN long to recognise the sheer scale of the 'anxiety/panic attacks/can't stop crying' out there, those who wouldn't, in normal times, go out after dark, drive an unknown route, answer the phone to an unknown number, let alone answer an unexpected door-bell!

Corona has provided the perfect excuse to disengage from the factors, like 'outside' - that trigger these.

I can perfectly understand why people like this have adapted to completely to not going out, ever.

I guess that as long as they get deliveries, Skype the grandparents, home school; they can carry on indefinitely, given that the world will never be 'safe' again, especially if you feel you can't 'trust' anyone.

Personally, I'm loving the quiet roads I drive to work, the thinly populated supermarkets (esp now the queues have almost gone) making shopping an easier experience (I've been wearing an N95 in there since March), meeting mates SD in the pub for a meal, the opportunity to go walking a lot more as DH and DC1 are WFH thus want to get out once a day. We're all hoping DC1 will be able to go into an office, soon, to get that experience. DC2 is regaining their driving lesson confidence on quieter roads, too, but is a bit socially isolated. Pray Y1 at uni is FT in September for them!

I guess, tho, I don't know many people who definitely had CV; and those I do are all, like me, HCPs who stood, ill-protected with poor PPE on the frontline of all this in March.

In direct reply to the OP- I can completely understand your concerns, watching someone you understood to be 'well-adjusted' reacting like this. I wouldn't 'drop by' as I don't think you'll be well received but I might phone the school. If there's 'nothing to worry about'; no harm done; but if there is, you've flagged it.

madbirdlady22 no I'm not worried. We have a class whatsapp groups and very few are meeting up, those who have, have said it is a nightmare getting them to social distance so don't intend to do it again. I'm good friends with DC1 bff and know they aren't meeting with others either and don't think they will over the summer either.

I said above that we have a very good sized garden, so there are no exercise benefits to be gained from walking out of the house. They are spending much more time outside now than they previously did - trampoline, football, tennis, running races. We've built a go cart and obstacle course.

As for beaches and lakes - we would have to travel and stay over (holiday essentially) to access those things generally which have only been allowed in the last week or so. We had a holiday booked for May but it was cancelled, we won't get another before September.

The children have been the happiest and most relaxed I have seen them in a really long time. To the point where we have considered alternative schooling.

Grandparents are still not happy for visitors - one has a significant underlying health condition and they are all day trips away from us, so not just a pop in the garden sort of situation. Plus due to distances, not seeing them for 3 months is not unusual and we'd seen them more frequently than usual at the start of the year.

DH and I have enjoyed wine by the fire pit in garden, just chatting and relaxing like we did when we first got together, it has really helped our relationship actually. Much more quality time together.

I work for the NHS in strategic planning, reasonably high up. So it isn't like COVID has been stress free for me. But outside of my job, there has been no stress to lockdown.

I live in a big city and things are not packed here. It is still very quiet.

My friend's children do not have mh issues and therefore do not need a reprieve from anything.

You really cannot say this with certainty. All you can say is that she's never told you about any physical or MH issues. That doesn't mean there aren't any.

@formerbabe

Assuming her children are not shielding, then the risk to their mental health is far higher than the risk of covid to them.

There are going to be tens of thousands of children coming out of this pandemic with agoraphobia and hypochondria. And that's without the social and behavioural issues that being kept away from other children and adults will cause.

I doubt you will find a single paediatrician or psychologist who would be okay with what the OP's friend is doing. And I'm shocked at how many respondents think it's okay and are doing the same themselves.

Today I have taken my four year old out to the aquarium and for an ice-cream. Two weeks ago I felt a bit nervous about doing so. It was very quiet/no need to touch anything. We sanitized our hands regularly and I wore a mask when near people. It all felt very safe. I think that until you start to get out and about a bit more, you will feel more anxious. Your friend might not be ready for meeting up with you. That is fine. But she needs to start by going out for a drive with the kids and going for a walk/picnic somewhere deserted. You need to tell her that you are worried and tell her that she needs to start taking the children out. Small steps will help increase her confidence.

I think YABU. If your friend is a usually right minded social individual leading a regular sociable life you need to respect the decisions she makes with her husband regarding her family's safety.
I haven't been out, not even for walks as the garden does me. DD is more than happy to stay in even though as a teen she is free to assess her own risk. We've zumba'd, zoomed, and probably socialized more than we ever would in normal times.
I've had to resist quite hard those family members that want to come round to see me. And lots might think that is wrong but I think fine that they want to risk it, but as they have been out and about I really don't want them at my home just yet. I'm happy to play the long game and watch others 'go over the top' to see how the infection rate plays out.
Maybe your friend doesn't want to risk seeing you given you are less risk averse?
I could be quite wrong but thought explaining my mindset might help you see that we are all navigating this journey on our own terms. I don't think it's right to impose one individual's idea of reasonable risk onto another's.

Id just send her an honest message saying you are getting worried about her. Might help her open up?

It is going to be a shock for some children going back to a full classroom in September if they have had no social interaction with anyone else apart from the people they live with. Even if it just walking past someone in the street or seeing other children in the distance in the park.