Aibu to think that a lot of kids are extremely anxious after lockdown?

[MrsHookey]

I've got one child who seems extremely anxious since lockdown. Anecdotally it seems like a few kids I know are like this. Is this a wider thing? Are mumsnetters finding their children have become anxious since March 2020?

Slowing it down isn’t great if you use anything that impacts on dc education

Which doesn’t leave much to work with

We didn't homeschool either. We both had FT jobs, public sector so couldn't be furloughed and I was working on covid. DH going in to work and me wfh.

We did containment and crowd control. And TV. Loads of people I know were in the same boat.

Fine for the little one- although way too much tv. Awful for the older-7- who has asd and needs loads of routine. They have bounced back but I have a couple of teen relatives who have clinical anxiety diagnoses as a result and one is now in a hospital school.

@MarshaBradyo

We don't want children or staff to get COVID because their absence impacts on learning.

If staff go off sick, we can organise cover work, but it is not the same as being taught by a subject specialist who knows the class. It also indirectly impacts on the education of other children: if a teacher is covering a class, it takes away the time they spend preparing lessons or marking work for their own classes.

Having staff off sick unsettles the children. This can lead to behaviour problems which impact on learning - not just for that child but for their class (and if they are a secondary school pupil, this could affect several teaching groups through the day). It also contributes to anxiety.

If too many staff are off sick, we cannot supervise the students. We have to close the school or year groups. This decision has to be made on a daily basis as it depends on how many people are available to work. Short-notice closures are disruptive and unsettling for parents and pupils, and it is harder to plan for learning from home at such short notice.

Sine it will pass soon. It has where I am in London, we peaked a few weeks ago in this area and now dropping. Fwiw it went through the school with no extra closures. Both dc got it and took that time off.

We were at about 75% children having had it a few weeks ago so will be higher now. Disruption will slow markedly.

This could have dragged out, but if any measures were used that lowered education (isolation etc) it would have had negative impact.

The conversation has moved on slightly, but when your SEN child and their sibling managed pretty much fuck all in terms of home learning in 4.5 months and you send a detailed email to school to plead for a place citing all the toll of the first lockdown and they ignore you and condemn both children to another two months of lost learning, it's pretty difficult to not feel like your children have been deemed unworthy.

I hope that June/ July 2020 remains the only time in my life when the sound of children playing (I could hear them on the school fields from my house) makes me feel so bitter, resentful and angry because I could hear them being allowed something so basic and fundemental that my children were denied.

There was no one I knew well enough to ask that had either the time or the inclination to meet. We tried meeting one pair of friends but they were so obsessed with social distancing to the extreme that it was a pointless, depressing exercise. People were still very keen on adding their own rules. My autistic child did not need superfluous rules and I did my best to play down the situation to help him adjust back healthily to normality.

In the September the Rule of Six made it illegal for 2 families of 4 to go to the park together (yet for a while it was legal to meet 5 friends in the pub!). While my friends were mellowing by this point, being across a county border and going through tiers at a different rate complicated things. When the local councilors and police service are getting their knickers in a twist over STAY LOCAL, getting on the motorway to meet up was probably exceeding the bounds of locality by most definitions.

My children have still been unable to see their grannies. One is in another country and at the point that we travelled over to see family, she was in a temporary carehome place and they could not see her; DH was permitted 2 half hour slots. It's been over 2 years since they saw her and I honestly don't know if they will ever see her again as she's now so frail (exacerbated by loss of essential routine healthcare for over a year). Covid or not, it would be unwise to see her in the winter respiritory illness season, especially now the fragments of her immune system are unused to society. The other has a catalogue of health issues that havr been poorly managed by the NHS predating all the Covid complications and has no energy or desire to see energetic children. She's not on the doorstep and can't travel to me, and it's not a pop-in distance to foist ourselves on her.

Seeing people requires mutual co-operation and agreement.

I've done my best to keep chipping on and doing my best to limit the damage to my children (and have done pretty well) but there is a lot that's beyond my ability to manipulate.

Powerful post BogRoll. One of mine has SEN too.

TBH I'm glad ⅓ of DS's class tested positive around half term, because that's ⅓ that won't be going off ill for 10 days again in a hurry. Plus the others that have trickled off ill prior to that.

There's been plenty of times we've had numbers like that off with vomiting bugs. It's not that extraordinary.

Yes powerful post BogRoll

I hope that June/ July 2020 remains the only time in my life when the sound of children playing (I could hear them on the school fields from my house) makes me feel so bitter, resentful and angry because I could hear them being allowed something so basic and fundemental that my children were denied.

I remember walking to nursery each day - which thankfully was open whereas the state school version was only for KW again - and seeing dc practically skip to school together.

Something so simple and essential and denied. Felt otherworldly and like a film.

Someone will probably be along to gaslight you for it soon enough, mind.

Brilliant post, Bogroll.

@BogRollBOGOF It's very hard when other people won't meet up with you. I have a few friends like that, who also liked to add more complicated rules into the mix, which just made it all so stressful.

But I was definitely lucky with the few I did meet up with, who kept me and my children sane.

@MarshaBradyo I know you've just said that cases have peaked and we're mostly past all this. But when you see Austria today and other European countries starting to enforce restrictions, does it concern you at all that UK lockdowns might not be a thing of the past?

[quote blue12345]@BogRollBOGOF It's very hard when other people won't meet up with you. I have a few friends like that, who also liked to add more complicated rules into the mix, which just made it all so stressful.

But I was definitely lucky with the few I did meet up with, who kept me and my children sane.

@MarshaBradyo I know you've just said that cases have peaked and we're mostly past all this. But when you see Austria today and other European countries starting to enforce restrictions, does it concern you at all that UK lockdowns might not be a thing of the past? [/quote]
Blue I’m hanging on to Chris Whitty’s strategy of high summer peak and higher immunity pre winter.

I think he’s made some decisions against the rest and been correct so I’m hoping so

Plus we’ve been steady for ages without many measures so I think it is possible.

Also with pretty much all children having had it transmission in schools won’t be like before when fewer than half did. It wouldn’t make sense to close them

@MarshaBradyo Thanks Marsha.

Fingers crossed you're right.

I know I hope so too

Thanks Marsha - we were badly affected before the first lockdown, but since then (fingers crossed) things have been much better - pupils encouraged to stay at home if unwell, do regular LFTs, and wear masks if wanted, and where numbers have started to rise in particular year groups, additional measures have been put in place. This has meant fewer pupils have been affected overall, with much less absence, which in turn has meant we've had extra capacity to support and catch up those affected.

It seems like there is more and more pressure towards restrictions where numbers are going higher. Not so much in the UK but in other places. But because more people are vaccinated, it almost seems like people are becoming a little hysterical, what they thought was going to solve the problem, it is pretty clear now, won't. Not in the way they had hoped. People will still get covid and the very vulnerable and elderly may still sometimes have bad effects.

So the response now seems to be to blame the unvaccinated and restrict them more and more. Right up to making them stay home. Even when it means there aren't enough essential workers. This is just not nearly the whole explanation though, it's also because the vaccine is not the kind of vaccine that eliminates disease in the vast majority of cases, like measles.

I think it comes back to this issue of anxiety. You cannot have governments trying to make people so fearful and then expect they will just stop. Living in fear in a restricted fashion for months affects your brain, and it can't just be turned off. So, anxiety, depression, OCD.

People try to manage these feelings by placing all blame on a select group of people, it helps them feel more in control.

I think you're right, @LobsterNapkin.

We are generally extraordinary lucky in this country in living lives largely unaffected by war, large-scale natural disasters, etc, with most of us having easy access to power, food, medical care, clean water, shelter. We are aware from the news that this is not the case around the world, but our lived experience over the last 40 years in particular has been very different.

The pandemic has shown us that we too can be affected. Of course this is likely to have an impact on everyone. Our sense of security has been lessened or taken away.

South east commuter town here

No one really talks about covid anymore
We are all working, socialising, going on holiday, children at school, matches, tournaments etc
Life is…. Normal. Good! I’m about to shower to meet a friend for lunch. Inside. We are unlikely to even mention covid.

Is this unusual???

Because it seems like so many posters are still right in the thick of it

I know a few who are very anxious and my own observation is that they are the ones with anxious parents. I don’t mean that as a criticism, it makes sense. As a dc if your mum or dad is anxious you’ll pick up on that.

It's also genetics. People who suffer with anxiety/depression (or any other disorder) may just have it in their genes.

@Oftenithinkaboutit

South east commuter town here

No one really talks about covid anymore
We are all working, socialising, going on holiday, children at school, matches, tournaments etc
Life is…. Normal. Good! I’m about to shower to meet a friend for lunch. Inside. We are unlikely to even mention covid.

Is this unusual???

I don't think it's unusual. Our school is currently closed due to high numbers, but it's the first mention of COVID this academic year. Life here is very normal, for us that hasn't been totally good and we are trying to resist the bits of 'normal life' lockdown made us realise we didn't like.

@JunoMcDuff

Goodness if my children’s school was shut due to covid… I think it would be more of an issue

But we’re in Kent. Town. I have t heard of a single school being closed.

As of last week the school has even re introduced after match “tea”s ie mixing between schools. Heralded as a big step forward!

@User135644

I know a few who are very anxious and my own observation is that they are the ones with anxious parents. I don’t mean that as a criticism, it makes sense. As a dc if your mum or dad is anxious you’ll pick up on that.

It's also genetics. People who suffer with anxiety/depression (or any other disorder) may just have it in their genes.

And we're much better at recognising anxiety and other mental health issues in children these days - I was an incredibly anxious child, clinically speaking, but it's only with hindsight that I recognise that, no one at the time acknowledged anything beyond me needing to "just get on with it". Thankfully as an adult I've been able to seek support and no longer suffer with anxiety.