To be worried about staying sane stuck inside all winter with a 2 year old?

[Lardeedar]

Is anyone else struggling at home with a 1-3 year old that isn’t in nursery? My options before were park, playgroup, or friends/family visit at theirs but now The weather is turning I’m just having to keep her inside all day every day and we are both losing our minds!! The playgroups are all shut and now not allowed in anyone’s house.

You know the age where they won’t stick at anything for more than 2 minutes because all they want to do is explore new objects, places, people?! She literally cries when she sees that we’re coming home.

There’s a few outdoor play sessions Thank Goodness but mostly they are shutting everything down. I’m genuinely worried about her development and my mental health being cooped up with her crying continually asking for Hours and hours of tv. Anyone else?

@ZigZaggyZoo

First thing mine now says every morning is "what we doing today then?" Umm, pretty much the same we've done since March kidda! As PP says, we've got warm clothes so we will be heading out come rain, snow, frost or sunshine. It will be hard though.

Basically this!

I invested in a rain mac for me, a padded waterproof all in one for my 2.5 year old, new wellies for him, and some waterproof trousers to be carried everywhere just in case there's a puddle to be jumped in.

And whether the country has been in lockdown for 7 months or not is immaterial.
The toddler groups I used to go to closed 7 months ago and haven’t reopened. I lost my job months ago due to Covid meaning that when nursery reopened I had to withdraw my toddler as I could no longer afford it. I live in Leicester which means we haven’t been able to visit friends or family in their homes for 7 months. We have done every single outdoor and affordable activity in our area multiple times over.
It’s hard. You might find it easy, but I (and others) don’t.

Look on the bright used you will be creating nice outdoorsy, fit kids. When my 2 were that age I couldn't afford all the fun things that everyone is missing, I was single and knew no one locally and didn't drive so we did walk everywhere and make the most of the outdoors as it was free. I now have 2 dc whose lives haven't changed that much and are more than happy outside in all weathers so haven't spent lockdown on their screens like most of their peers

QueenofLean

you are the one who is miserable, I am good 🤷

Some people like to be miserable and complain about everything, it's up to you.

whether the country has been in lockdown for 7 months or not is immaterial. It's not. What most of us have done when out of lockdown is making the most of it! As it is likely we will go back in it (if we not already are), it makes life more pleasant if you make the most of the freedom when you have it.

I don't find it "easy", but it's nowhere near as bad as people moan. It's different. Some prefer staying indoors, I would go crazy if I didn't take my kids out every single day. So far, I have been allowed to so I make the most of it, and it's unlikely any lockdown would actually ban us from going outside.

It's just easier to find things to do than complain about things you can't.

Sometimes it's fine to do things to distract YOU (like walking around a museum, pretty sure there's at least a free one in Leicester ) and having a kid tagging along. They'll find enough entertainment along the way.

2 years old have little legs, it would take me half a day to go to the supermarket and back with one of mine at that age! I have decent walkers, but we wouldn't have walked for miles at that age.

@PumpkinetChocolat your posts are coming across as smug and highly unempathetic. Just because you’re apparently fine, do you not have it in you to be kind and sympathetic to a mum who is really struggling? Great that you’re happy with endless cold and lonely outside activities-is it so much of a stretch to imagine that some people might be finding it really hard and to extend a little kindness and understanding? Suggesting someone just starts up their own playgroup as a solution is frankly silly - the whole reason the normal ones aren’t running is that while they may legally be ‘allowed’ the red tape, lack of venues etc makes them totally unviable. I agree that we should do what we can and try and make the best of it but sometimes we just need a moan and to share how shit we’re finding it, without being smugly told we’re being too negative.

PumpkinChocolat do you actually want a map of where I live? I'll actually PM you if you think you can do a better job than I can of finding a group or club to go to. The National Trust places don't count by the way, we go to them all the time and only the trails have been open. I'm in N.I and everything, including schools, have just closed again for 2-4 weeks, so tentative moves to reopen some of the groups have just been stopoed in their tracks - and I helped run a tots group, before March,so I'd know fairly quickly if there was talk of reopening.

All this "put on a puddle suit and enjoy the great outdoors" that people go on about as if they've reinvented the wheel. I've been a parent for 13 years, I'm used to taking 20 children with disabilities into the great outdoors as part of my job, I've been camping with 40 plus as part of my voluntary role, and I climb mountains for fun. I love being outside with my kids. It's my preference. I don't love having every other option stripped away to the potential detriment of my toddler's social skills. I have studied language development. Children 0-3 need exposure to different situations and scenarios in order to help with language acquisition amongst other things. Read up on what happens if they are denied these opportunities. If I wanted to live like Ma bloody Ingalls I'd be in the chuckwagon right now.

The next smug idiot with 16 year olds capable of ordering their own takeaway, who comes and tells parents of toddlers to buck up and buy wellies, I hope you get trapped in a giant puddlesuit.

@QueenofLean as someone with a small child living in Leicester, you have my greatest sympathy. I don’t think anyone not in your situation has the right to tell you you’re complaining too much!

@ReallySpicyCurry

I have studied language development. Children 0-3 need exposure to different situations and scenarios in order to help with language acquisition amongst other things. Read up on what happens if they are denied these opportunities.

I’m an outdoors person, all day every day, hate being inside.!! My kids are the same. However, my sons preschool have suggested speech therapy S he’s behind with his pronunciation of lots of sounds.

Having read what you’ve written I wonder If that’s the case for him? If so, I feel quite guilty.

GeorginaTheGiant

I do lack sympathy for people who complain about the weather in this country, too hot to take the kids out in the summer, too cold and wet in the winter

Suggesting someone just starts up their own playgroup as a solution is frankly silly why? When such group exist, they are obviously allowed. If no one bothers started a group, nothing gets done. No sympathy from me either.

People are very keen on wanting everything done and for free, but never ready to get involved. How do you think the rest of us managed? Moaning on MN doesn't help.

Posters make it sound like they just found out that they actually have to entertain their own child! Shock horror! That's just life, and being a parent.

There's plenty that (most) people can or could do, we have NOT been in lockdown for 7 months, plenty of opportunities for children. If they chose not to and complain about it, no, I have no sympathy. It's lazy parenting at best.

It IS hard work to decide where best to move and live with children when you plan from babyhood to secondary, but that's what most of us have done. Again, that's being a parent.

Ahh @PumpkinetChocolat thanks for making it really clear-that you’re just a total knob. You seem to think you’re such a fabulous parent-perhaps you might want to reflect about whether your own character and behaviour models kindness, understanding and other similar qualities to your children. Because if you’re the same in real life as you’re coming across here then I doubt they’re learning much from you on that front. Fuck off back to your smug puddle jumping, while back in the real world, some of us will try and support each other.

Oh and not attempting to set up a new toddler group at a point when all the existing ones have closed (for good reason) isn’t being lazy or wanting other people to do everything for you. It’s being an intelligent adult who can observe that if the established Playgroups have all stopped running, then starting a new one isn’t going to be a realistic option. So thanks for your smug nastiness, but I’ll choose to ignore it from here.

@OverTheRainbow88 some of the friends I studied with who went on to specialise, be speech therapists and the like, they've been mentioning/posting things on Facebook for quite some time about how they're expecting to see a lot more children being referred before long, as a result of lockdown. There's so many factors at play when it comes to speech acquisition, but for example, part of it is the ability to watch lips move, observe facial expressions, have chances to observe reciprocal speech interaction - screens can never replace that and a child won't learn language from a screen. It's this really complex process which relies largely on a multitude and a variety of human interactions. While it's probably fine if you've only one baby and you've spent all lockdown chatting and singing to that baby, realistically who has been able to do that? Nobody who is WFH with other kids anyway. Then you take away the groups, the shopping trips, the visits to family, the school run, and you replace that with one walk a day then back home, like the start of lockdown. My toddler didn't enter a shop for months - everyone was scared, we limited shopping trips, DH and I stayed at home with the DC while the other went. Even now, the grannies who used to stop and chat with DD aren't coming over to chuck her chin any more- they're scared- more interactions/language opportunities gone. Then you factor in confidence - a child who has been encouraged to "give the man in the shop the money and say thank you" is going to gain confidence in actually using speech. So it's not something you could pin on one thing - the shops, the groups, the lack of visits to granny - it's the cumulative effect of everything going at once, over a long chunk of vital time in their development.

I'm absolutely no expert, this is just what I have picked up from my friends and what I have touched on in past studies - so if someone who is an expert comes along and tells me it's nonsense then I'll happily go along with them. But I do know a lot of people who work with small children in a fairly wide range of roles, and they're all worried about the next lot coming up. Obviously not all children are going to be impacted and not all in the same way, and it's not necessarily irreversible, but they're expecting to see a noticeable difference.

Pumpkin Chocolat if you'd ever got off your backside to start a group, which I highly doubt (I've started/helped out at about half a dozen over the past decade, you're welcome) you'd know that starting an indoor club (in, ooh let's see, a church hall, a community centre, the usual places) is practically impossible right now due to the current covid procedures plus accompanying risk assessments and insurance issues. And of course there's ever changing restrictions on who can meet outside or in gardens. If you can work out a way around this, then please do share your knowledge and I'll be down at the church hall with the custard creams and an old quality street tin for the subs... Oh wait... Taking change from people... Now why might that be another issue?

@ReallySpicyCurry

Thank you for that, makes a lot of sense. Bloody covid!!!!!!!!

“The next smug idiot with 16 year olds capable of ordering their own takeaway, who comes and tells parents of toddlers to buck up and buy wellies, I hope you get trapped in a giant puddlesuit.”

@ReallySpicyCurry - this made me smile, thank you!!

My local Facebook is full of established groups looking for alternative venues and petitions asking for community centres to open... So no chance of setting up a new group!

Funnily enough the few venues that are open don't have any vacancies...

@ReallySpicyCurry I'm also in NI you've been speaking a lot of sense on this thread, thanks for that sanity.

Part of me is fed up of wee old ladies telling me (from a safe social distance) that I have my hands full when they see me out walking the same streets near my house every day with 5 DC in tow. Honestly I could walk those streets in my sleep.

I can fill the days, the long long days, but I can feel myself unravel a bit each day too.

No end in sight at all, and when something reopens then the fact they have quickly shut again unnerves me. Two of my DC are old enough to understand this and it unnerves them too. Thankfully the youngest 3 are pre-school age and don't know anything different.

All the puddlesuits in the world won't comfort me.

ReallySpicyCurry
Pumpkin Chocolat if you'd ever got off your backside to start a group, which I highly doubt

doubt whatever you want, I have actually...

GeorginaTheGiant
no need to be so prickly when you disagree with someone, I prefer to teach my children to be resilient, resourceful and ultimately happy. If you are ready to throw the towel and are overwhelmed because you can't go to a playgroup for a few weeks, you are in for a rough ride 😂

I could say "poor you", you find that supportive, I don't.

@PumpkinetChocolat

It's not a few weeks, our playgroups have been closed since March and most have said they won't open until next spring at the earliest, so it will be over a year. They cannot open due to various risk assessment type issues, so I also could not open one although I'd be very happy to if it were a viable option. I volunteered for one of our local ones pre March so understand what it entails.

We can't afford nursery or preschool until 2 year old DC's 15 hours start next year. We can do one of the local franchise paid for classes but it does not facilitate any social interaction between children as they are required to be at least 2m apart at all times and must stand on their individual spots for the duration of the class and not move around the room at all. Other mums we'd previously seen at least weekly for play dates are no longer interested or able to, and it's not technically allowed anyway because of social distancing. We thankfully can see tier 2 family outside still, although they aren't quite as puddle happy as us so although you'll be pleased to know that we pop on our puddle jumping gear daily quite often relatives don't fancy joining us so I guess we see them once a month or so. Our local library is shut and we're not allowed children at local garden centre, although we can now go to the supermarket!

Toddlers may not remember this period and may be quite happy but I think parents are understandably worrying because this is a critical window of development for them which might affect the rest of their lives in a way it would not for an older person.

All this said, we're actually very fortunate as we do have some options available to us and I do find we manage to be busy most days and that one way or another my toddler does get social interaction with other children reasonably often (just hope she'll strike up an interaction at playgrounds etc and some of the time she does and the other child is interested and they play for a while). Today she played with another child in this way for an hour which was lovely but just luck really. We're quite happy and although it's not what I really want for her I think we're managing to keep her development going ok, but I can understand how for other parents it must be very concerning.

Ahhh I'm feeling down about this all today. The total relentless boredom that has been the past like 7 months seems to have finally hit me as DD had an epic meltdown because I couldn't get her booked on to the only activity I could feasibly access this morning. There used to be three groups in a Friday I would take her to one or more of those each Fri, all of those closed in March with no sign of restarting. We are in tier 3 so no playdates at others' houses allowed. There were 3 playgroups on a Monday which she would go to one or more of with her DF or DGM, again none of those have restarted and no sign of doing so. Soft plays are now all closed. We don't have a car so it's not possible for us to access the zoo or aquarium. Our local play cafe has closed permanently. The next nearest has got rid of the play area. The next nearest has now closed in line with the soft plays. We are lucky in that we have 5 parks in walking distance so obviously we go to one almost every day but after 7 months of nothing but parks we are are all bored and it rains constantly here over winter. Yes DD has her puddle suit and wellies but there's rain and there's the weeks and weeks of pouring rain and gale force winds that we will have where park is just not an option. We went to the museum once a couple of months ago which was a disaster as DD was scared of the aquarium after not having been for so long, all the interactive parts were closed and she kept throwing tantrums over not understanding the one-way systems. Our local library still hasn't reopened. The main library is now not an atmosphere conducive to taking a toddler to as they ask you not to touch things and to be in and out as quick as possible. Another museum used to have a toy section which I assume has been removed. The swimming pool is impossible to get booked at, every time I check there are no family swim slots as they only let two families go at once. Almost everything we used to do with her has not existed since March. It's grim.

/Endrant

Great indoor and outdoor ideas here, thank you!

I always used to go on the excellent Hoop app to find out about stay & plays, classes and all their stuff going on for toddlers. Checked today and found to my dismay that they’ve closed down because of the pandemic. Could anyone recommend another similar app or site? How does everyone find out what’s on in their area?

@StillCounting123 waves back - five small ones? This must have been incredibly tough for you. Christ. I wish you the biggest garden in the world, stuffed with Little Tyke toys, if you don't have it already. I know what you mean about walking the streets in your sleep, we also have A Route.

I took the DC to the garden centre on the back of this thread, it was empty and they had displays and it killed a few hours, so I think we'll do it again. Toddler was entranced by Christmas displays, teen was lured by a Malteser square.

We've also been doing Park Tours of the County. Drive to a park in a village we haven't been to yet. Play in it. Toddler likes this, teen is disgusted, but I've bought flasks and a massive tub of Knorr powdered chicken soup - 40 servings- and intend to have car picnics.

Also contemplating a PE set- hoops, cones, beanbags- which we could take to parks and beaches with us, or use indoors on really crap days.

I'm just thinking. Would anyone like to join a "trapped parents of toddlers" support thread? To share ideas and things? Or is there one already from back during lockdown?

It's going to be a loooong winter after all

Im currently pregnant and have a 3 year old and a 19 month old, and dp doesn't live with us so I'm winging it alone and going crazy haha. My 19 month old is wild and needs nackering out so we stick our wellies on and take a football down the fields in the mornings, we try and get some arts and crafts stuff done as thats what my daughter loves, or literally even making some dough and giving them pasta shells they sit there for hours playing with that whilst i get my stuff done, halloweens coming up so pumpkin carving or even making little halloween decorations and hanging them up, doesn't have to be anything amazing or expensive. It can get messy but it sure beats watching peppa fucking pig on repeat

@ReallySpicyCurry Love your Park Tour idea!

Would really like to join a trapped toddler parents thread.