to think that the effect on children's mental health is exaggerated?

[SmudgeButt]

Look I have no doubt that lots of kids are missing their friends, school, grandparents. And all of these things will effect their development and mental health. But is it really that bad a situation compared to other things in the past?? Or is it just that we talk about it a whole nauseatingly more?

I'm thinking that the current situation isn't a patch on the effect of living in a country that's at war - thinking back to WW2 and the effect of being suddenly shipped off to strangers in the countryside or even to a different country. Thinking of those children in Europe who suddenly had to fend for themselves in Jewish ghettos or concentration camps.

People that survived (yes a lot didn't as they were murdered) no doubt had lifetime impacts but so many of their children say "dad was always cheerful, never talked about what happened".

AIBU to think that in a few years kids of today will say "wow, that was weird and I'm glad it's over, now let's get one with life" ?

@LindaEllen

I swear to god, if I see one more person comparing this situation to WW2, I might actually have a nervous breakdown.

Think of it another way.

Those children who were evacuated and lived through WW2 were LUCKY. Why? Because if they were born a few hundred years ago they'd have been expected to fight, from very, very young.

Does that make the suffering of WW2 children any less? No.

In turn, does that make the suffering of our children any less now? Also no.

It's ridiculously stupid to compare them to something they have no experience of. Their entire worlds have changed, turned upside down, of course it's going to have an effect. Telling them someone else had it worse in the past is pathetic and cruel.

What you are missing is that some people are pointing out that people whining and whinging and stamping their feet for what they believe they are entitled to is both selfish and pointless.

Parents passing their own stress and uncertainty onto their children is cruel and can be damaging to their children. It is wrong. At the same time, saying they can't help it, its not their fault, is just playing the victim and refusal to take responsibility for their own lives and the wellbeing of their kids.

Drawing an analogy, be that a good one or a bad one, is perfectly valid whether you agree with it or not, and if reading such things is 'triggering' for people, that is simply pathetic.

What ever happened to backbones? When did they become so floppy? But then I suppose those who are doing just fine, who's kids are getting on with it, who's parents know the kids'll be fine without a year of two's education, and who are all just going out for walks, playing boardgames, whatever, are too busy getting on with life and not posting on MN fretting about life.

It is what it is. Not many of us thought we'd get more time with our families handed to us on a plate. Why not enjoy it?

@Iheartmysmart

I lived abroad as a child due to my dad’s job. One of the countries we were in experienced a civil war. We lived away from the base and several times had to be collected and taken to safety when the fighting got close to our village.

I was eventually evacuated home with my mum and siblings but my dad had to stay. We weren’t allowed to return home to collect anything or say goodbye to anyone.

Back in the UK we lived in a room at a relatives for nearly a year before my dad came home. I can honestly say this has had a significant impact on the type of adult I am now. And I’m finding lockdown bloody hard and do actually have some minor experience of war to compare it to.

Exact same here. Except it was refugee hostels and transit camps on the way beck to the UK, and then an empty house on a barracks with nothing but a change of clothes.

You’re talking absolute rubbish and YABVU

have reduced the labour pool

Good god.

Yeah, YABVU. My DS isn't really suffering as he's still attending school and I still have a job but other children are struggling.

When your normally laid back resilient 16yr old admits to a serious suicide attempt ( fortunately one of his friends texted him before he could continue) despite being in a stable, comfortable and privileged environment then you really worry about the rest.
Luckily, he broke down and talked and talked. He now seeks me out to talk about his problems. I don’t think he was really ready ( developmentally) to but fortunately he did.
My heart goes out to the parents of the 16yr old who hung himself in a local children’s playground over Christmas, only five miles from where we live. It sends shivers down my spine that it could have been us.
I thought I had a tough resilient son who was coping. Turns out I haven’t.
DS has written down his feelings and how it became so bad, I would love to share it but he would be upset if I did. It is beautifully written and I hope that he will share it in the future.

Please don’t assume that your teenager is fine.

Angrymum22 💐

Just to acknowledge your situation. You're not alone.

Whatever happened to backbones?!?! Did someone actually just post that?!
I sincerely hope anyone who is a parent doesn’t EVER have to suddenly walk a mile in my shoes.
I have a backbone. I am as hard as nails; have had to be. Done some very tough jobs and early in my career, saw some awful things. Same with my DH. We are very resilient and personally are managing the lockdown well.
Unfortunately, due to some kids severely bullying my DC in the past 18 months, she’s been destroyed and isolated, so lockdown, in virtual as well as physical isolation, has broken her.
Let’s hope that never happens to your kids if you are one of those “grow a backbone” types. Let’s hope your poor kids never have problem , in case their secret perception of you is that you’re a hard hearted arse of a parent, who just won’t support them. My DC did have a backbone; it got broken by a group of kids whose parents did a shit job of parenting.
Oh how I wish a board game and a walk would sort out our mess now. Some parents are so smug.

This thread highlights well why mental health is still a taboo subject. It's really sad actually.

Some people really lack empathy. They cannot imagine why others are struggling because they are not. Words/phrases such as lack of backbone/stiff upper lip/ resilience all get trotted out but all these do is teach people not to talk about their worries. Doesn't mean they don't exist, and suppressing them can do more damage in the long run.

People have said we should enjoy the extra family time. Without actually realising that for many that extra time just doesn't exist. Many are working out the home and actually are spending less time together. Many are at home, doing their job and now finding that they are expected to work their full hours as well as educate their children and struggle with that. Many are at home with family but are incredibly stressed as they are really worried about money, and how they will actually put food on the table.

Telling kids (or adults for that matter) it is all fine without actually taking the time to listen and acknowledge their feelings and worries is very damaging. Telling them to just deal with positive feelings and ignore the negative is damaging. Whatever happened to it's ok not to be ok? Because it really is.

I havent read the whole thread but I think that there will have been many unspoken and undiagnosed MH issues after the war.
There was a generation of children should be seen and not heard, and all sorts of phrases that basically covered MH issues but people didnt speak about them ("she suffers with her nerves" "they're very highly strung" "a little bit eccentric" could all be covers for someone dealing with trauma)
I think we are more aware of MH now, and I dont think the full scale of how its affected people will be known for a long time.There will be a lot of knock on effects from covid, way after lockdowns have finished and all of them will have some impact so impossible to say how many, or how badly children will be affected

Yawn !
Yes op you are correct . Only WW2 matters, nevermind it is totally different to what we are going through now .
Please go back to hanging your union jack bunting and listening to Vera Lynn while we all exaggerate how our children are feeling.

With reference to the War, my husband's grandfather was in WWII. He never talked about what he saw. What he saw was horrific. He was one of the first on the scene at Bergen-Belsen. He was very repressed, his children didn't know him, and the psychological damage done to his children, through no fault of his own, was immense. That passed on to their kids. Three generations.

My father was of fighting age in WWII. It was sheer (mis, by his terms, the twit) chance that he didn't go away, the war got cancelled just as he was due to ship out. But it still had a huge impact on his life experience, how he developed, and he was also hugely repressed, and bitter. That impacted on our lives immensely. As much as anything, you couldn't be upset, or worried, or sad, without it coming back to - think what it was like for those children in the war. . .

The one hi-jacking incident in NZ that I can remember, was a woman who was a refugee, terribly traumatised by her childhood experiences in her home country.

Stiff upper lip, pack up your troubles, put a smile on your dial. . . these can be well meant killers.

I'm currently home with a nine year old who since lockdown has started to hit himself around the head repeatedly and tell me he wants to die because this is never going to end. I think you could say his mental health has been damaged

It’s impacted both my teens’ mental health, so no, not exaggerated. Look at figures of calls to Childline etc.
Not taking away from what happened in WW2 - my parents were young tweens when war broke out and it def had an effect on them esp my mum - but times were different in those days and you could still go to school snd see your friends so the two experiences are very different.
Yes, the Holocaust was horrific, but why would that mean teens’ mental health now couldn’t be affected by lockdown?
Your analogy makes no sense.

@GreenSlide

I take it you don't have children OP. It is always the people who don't have children who declare kids will be fine, close the schools, close the parks, lock them up, they're super spreaders. And then think they should have the right to swan around golf courses and shopping centres and pack into bars and restaurants while the kids are stuck at home.

Hmmm - well to Greenslide and @rawalpindithelabrador and the rest I appear to have offended by asking a question. I suppose I should apologise for being so insensitive. This will probably be interpreted as me being passive aggressive again or something...

But I never said that children should be locked up. I never suggested that I agreed with closing parks - personally I find the idea ridiculous and counterintuitive. Same as it's ridiculous that I might be swanning about a golf course or packing me and mine off to a crowded restaurant.

I have friends that are teachers who have suffered from Covid, from missing their students, who are upset about those students that are not coping and are also struggling on what's the best way to do their best for their students. And we've got to admit that socially distancing, not mixing houses etc is in opposition to having 30 kids from 30 homes mixing together in a classroom.

Because it was a week when there was a lot in the news about WW2 and Holocaust survivors that made me wonder if there was any comparison. I quite get that my battles or those of my parents and grandparents are not your battles and what you and yours might suffer is not what I am dealing with. I do think that some other posters are right in that the news is (as usual) whipping up a panic in some people.

I do hope that we come through this happy, healthy and soon. And again, truly, thank you for the insight provided.

One of the hard things is the open-endedness. We don't know when this is going to end. We can't tell our kids when this is going to end. It's the uncertainty.

I can very much imagine how much worse life in this country can get. I can imagine what it would be like to hit 40% unemployment. I can imagine failed health care systems, extreme poverty that is real, not a tag line or woke words, real visceral danger outside my door, and a real threat of home invasion or car jacking with weapons. I can imagine where I live with no rule of law. I have seen it in other countries, walked the streets, felt the fear, and lived with the planning of how we get to safety if we need to.

This virus is never going away. We have never succeeded in eliminating or containing a virus. All we can do is medicate ourselves and hope our children build up an immunity to pass along to their kids. In my opinion, we will be social distancing for years. Like many countries around the world, we will probably move to a culture where we wear masks out of courtesy and respect for other people's health always. Our children will learn to become more resilient, more resourceful and more self reliant. Some won't. We have institutions who can deal with those. But future generations will not be as carefree, and not take the freedoms we grew up with for granted.

I think society will will open up again, but there is a long road ahead IMO, and we were told this a year ago, when every single news agency kept banging on the same drum and using the phrase, 'The new normal'. They told us what was going to happen.

Every week we are told this is going to last for years to come, and those messages are interspersed with reassurances that we're doing the best we can and it'll all e over soon. This is the only way to keep the fragile folks calm and obliging. They'll get through this for the most part so long as you keep up the soothing words. They'll just not have as easy a time as the ones who have accepted it and are moving on their their lives.

And yes, everyone has their own particular circumstances, and their own issues to deal with. But it can be so much worse, so I'd urge people to take stock of that they have and be thankful for what they have, and don't expect hang your happiness solely upon someone coming along and changing things for you.

Well, you can either tell your young child that it's the end of the world, we are doomed, DOOMED and "they" (whoever they are) have stolen our freedom and their childhood and go into daily meltdowns

or you can try to be factual about it, we work from home, they are homeschooled, and some things are different for now, and what can we do to make the best of a shit situation?

It's funny how mental health was never mentioned when someone else was going through a rough patch.

It's the hypocrisis and the hysteria because some people are touched directly that is tiring.

My teenagers have had a few wobbles, but are generally ok. My 18 year old son decided to take a year away from college because he struggled with the uncertainty. He's working for my father in a grounds man type of job and has discovered a love of gardening. My 14 year old enjoys being away from the pressurised environment of school where she is seen as odd. But then they have both been through abandonment, a mother who struggled and then died and so have had extensive counselling so maybe are better equipped to cope than some other children.

I have noticed, particularly among my daughters friendship groups, that the girls reaction to the lockdown and pandemic are very much informed by their parents....the ones who see it as the end of the world, who think that their children will have no future tend to have their views reflected in the thoughts of their children. One friend told my daughter over zoom that she wasn't going to bother doing ant school work because her dad told her that selfish old people had taken away her future so why bother? It's ridiculous and extremely unhealthy.

I don't think people are saying that children are unaffected by this, but there are a group of parents who seem to think that only they and their children are affected. They are wrong and it is that group who people get pissed off with and point out that actually it's not great for the rest of us either - my single, childless friend has barely seen anyone in nearly a year because she moved to a new area just before this hit, started a new job so hasn't had a chance to meet new people or even her work colleagues. Another friend is in a long distance relationship and has only seen her partner a handful of times in a year.

Yet none of our suffering compares to that of the friends and families of the 100K plus people who have died.

@ElliFAntspoo

I can very much imagine how much worse life in this country can get. I can imagine what it would be like to hit 40% unemployment. I can imagine failed health care systems, extreme poverty that is real, not a tag line or woke words, real visceral danger outside my door, and a real threat of home invasion or car jacking with weapons. I can imagine where I live with no rule of law. I have seen it in other countries, walked the streets, felt the fear, and lived with the planning of how we get to safety if we need to.

This virus is never going away. We have never succeeded in eliminating or containing a virus. All we can do is medicate ourselves and hope our children build up an immunity to pass along to their kids. In my opinion, we will be social distancing for years. Like many countries around the world, we will probably move to a culture where we wear masks out of courtesy and respect for other people's health always. Our children will learn to become more resilient, more resourceful and more self reliant. Some won't. We have institutions who can deal with those. But future generations will not be as carefree, and not take the freedoms we grew up with for granted.

I think society will will open up again, but there is a long road ahead IMO, and we were told this a year ago, when every single news agency kept banging on the same drum and using the phrase, 'The new normal'. They told us what was going to happen.

Every week we are told this is going to last for years to come, and those messages are interspersed with reassurances that we're doing the best we can and it'll all e over soon. This is the only way to keep the fragile folks calm and obliging. They'll get through this for the most part so long as you keep up the soothing words. They'll just not have as easy a time as the ones who have accepted it and are moving on their their lives.

And yes, everyone has their own particular circumstances, and their own issues to deal with. But it can be so much worse, so I'd urge people to take stock of that they have and be thankful for what they have, and don't expect hang your happiness solely upon someone coming along and changing things for you.

This post enraged me and I'm trying to pick apart why because on the surface it looks perfectly reasonable but underneath it is full of bigoted crap.

Yes this country could be an awful lot worse than it is now and I'm sure you have observed such countries. We don't have to accept that our country will become like those. As for 'tag-line woke words poverty', what a load of shit. You think we should not call poverty what it is? If you don't have food and you can't pay the rent or you're sleeping under a railway tunnel because there are no social housing options for you that's poverty. It's fucking insulting to say otherwise.

Yes, this virus is here to stay. Yes, our freedoms will be different from what they have been. I mean, maybe, I'm not taking your word for it. But what we are talking about are young people who are adjusting to a lack of any life independent of their parents and any interaction with other people while still developing. That is not a natural state for any human or one that has existed in any civilised society before. We don't have a blueprint for how to deal with that. It is not about getting other people to solve things for you but it IS about thinking up, offering and accepting help from other people.

When you say 'accepted it and moved on with their lives' what the fuck do you even mean? Accepted the situation you've created in this little imaginary scenario? Or moving on right now locked down in houses with no social interaction? Isolation is shown to be the quickest route to madness so it's hardly surprising mental health is affected. 'Get used to it' has never been an effective way of getting people to be less mentally ill. You are telling people who are worried about their children's mental state to frame themselves and tell them to stop it because it could be worse. Well, that doesn't work. You might think it's the right approach towards 'fragile folk' who need to be dealt with by 'institutions' but as the proportion of young people with mental health problems thanks to this half-living we're all doing grows that's no fucking use to you because IT DOESN'T WORK.

I'm 🤨 @SecretSPAD's post, which boils down to, 'MH issues in girls is down to their parents.'

Goodness.

What a load of shit.

Discussion of MH issues in children really is a dinner bell for the utter cunts, isn't it?

or you can try to be factual about it, we work from home, they are homeschooled, and some things are different for now, and what can we do to make the best of a shit situation?

Exactly this.

Why do they need a timeline? We don't know that this isn't going to be for years. If they need soothing words, just copy what the television is telling us. Tell them it'll all be over in a month, and they can go back to school and play with their friends, and maybe you'll be right, or maybe your kid will find out that you are lying to them and just copying what you tell them off the telly.

You know, there are parents on MN, on this thread, whose children have self-harmed, made suicide attempts, or even committed suicide.

What the actual fuck is wrong with you?

That was in response to SecretSPAD.