To say that every child and young person…

[KnowButNeedU2TellMeAsItIs]

That got through the pandemic, followed the rules, stayed indoors for long periods of time, endured isolation, online learning, ping pongs in and out of school, slow vaccination roll-out…

Should get a medal.

Our kids are amazing and gone through so much but not one bit of recognition.

I think, with the help of this thread, I’ve put my finger on why I don’t like the idea of a medal or other ambiguous recognition of lockdown for children.

We issue medals or ‘honours’ when there’s nothing left for anyone else to add. Someone has achieved something brilliant or done something extraordinary outside expectations of them and their peers.

Issuing medals and recognitions with thanks implies we’re done and there’s nothing else to be provided. I’m not done, this is a part of our lives for the foreseeable and still evolving for lots of people all who have needs that can and should be provided for.

Wow, I can't believe this thread is for real.

It's not a legal requirement when joining mumsnet that you must unconditionally support any and all policies or ideas that prioritise children and parents over all else. Mumsnet isn't a religion.

I just believe that the best way for society to recover from a pandemic which affected everyone in different ways, is for funding to be directed to those who need the help. Those who'd like their child/mum/gran/next door neighbour etc. to be given a medal are free to buy one out of their own money. I do not support money that could go to help the most vulnerable (including but not exclusively children) going towards purchasing medals which help nobody.

I'm kind of assuming that it's a figurative medal rather than an actual, physical medal!!

This! What would be useful is properly investing in mental health support, or educational support for those who have fallen far behind.

What has no use at all is constantly reiterating to classrooms of children that "You've had such a tough time". This helps no one. It doesn't help those who have been badly affected and it doesn't help those who have been (understandably) bored and lonely while locked down but have readjusted well enough.

I personally don't want a symbol. Not another wishy washy,pointless,performative ,pretend we care.

What I want is adequate support,help,intervention,prevention and services , all across the board for all children, particularly the children damaged by the pandemic.

I don't want symbols, I want action, and funding, and for children to fucking be a priority and not just data.

What would that look like though?

Isn’t there also the danger of telling children that are actually relatively unscathed by the pandemic, that actually no, you’ve been through something much bigger than you thought you had and casting the whole thing in a new light and damaging them retrospectively?

I can point to the pandemic almost exclusively for some things that my daughter struggles with now (she’s a sensitive soul at the best of times), I’m not sure that rewriting history and our ‘this is just how it is at the moment and that’s disappointing but it’ll get better’ approach to lockdowns/restrictions wouldn’t do more harm than good. She’s made great progress, does she really need to be knocked back that her view of how we told her everything would be ok (and it was) was wrong and actually she’s some sort of victim?

They’ll draw their own conclusions with the benefit of retrospect and documented history, I don’t think we need to interfere with their current perceptions by and large.

I’ve read this thread back again aghast at how many on here have dismissed our children's experiences.

Maybe I could have expressed it better than a medal but it does not takeaway,
no matter what a crap idea an actual medal
might be, the ease that so many on this thread have dismissed, negated and diminished what our children did. I do not
share this sentiment at all. Our kids have been amazing. And this thread has made me so sad.

Theres a thread on Twitter today from Frankie Boyle just now who has expressed it so much better than me. And that is that the bandwidth of conversations through the pandemic has not included children.

’In a reversal of natural order of things, during the pandemic, we asked our children to sacrifice friendship, education and fresh air to protect the old. Where is the recognition? Where is the payback?’

And he goes on to talk about just ‘how invisible / ignored the unprecedented experience our children have had is…’

And that’s US lot here on mumsnet of all places, rendering our children’s experiences invisible, ignored and diminished.

This country is fucked. We are truly fucked.

FFS! Get a grip.

There are thousands of children across the country who have been denied education, mental health services and friendship due to the appalling attitude our LAs have to meeting their special educational needs. This is their whole childhoods. Lockdown actually brough relief for some in the form of access to online education when education was previously being withheld and the chance to attend school with smaller groups in more closely supervised environments that meant they could cope.

I've seen and heard recognition of the effect the pandemic has had on children all over MN and other media throughout the lockdowns and since. We are all aware that it has been shit for some children. It has been shit for the majority of the population. It has been worse for some of the elderly who are still scared to leave their homes.

The average child in this country is a lot less fucked than most in terms of what they have been through and what they can expect from life.

Since this thread started, purely out of interest, I have asked several hundred children if they would be pleased or displeased to hear lockdown was returning tomorrow.

approx 80% voted pleased, many saying it was the best time of their lives - the main reason being getting up later, more time at home, more family time, less disruption to learning compared to being in classrooms, more relaxed lifestyle, less pressure overall etc

I know lockdown learning suited many children, but I did think it would be around a third who preferred it, not this overwhelming majority

Christ, I heard nothing but “what about the children????” during the pandemic. It was the chief focus of so, so many people and groups. MN as you’d expect was awash with UsForThem publicity. I really feel sometimes like I live on a different planet to some!

This country is fucked. We are truly fucked.

What are you proactively and constructively doing in order to be less “fucked” in your local community OP?

I agree with this. Single adults had a rough time and are never thought about.
This is how I spent the pandemic as a senior NHS manager...

Every day at 5am I would get up and go into work. For the next 16 hours straight I'd work: fighting for PPE for my clinical staff, id have endless meetings about beds, capacity, staffing etc. Including liaising with ,y colleagues trying to set up lighthouse labs from nothing. I'd then spend time on the wards helping the clinical staff, holding the hands of people dying, helping to make the last phone calls to family. Day in, day out. Constant grief from everyone, the person the clinical staff had to relieve their pressure to, dealing with families who are grieving.

Then back home to nothing and no one. My beloved dogs with my dad, my then partner in another part of the country - demanding my time which I couldn't give and empathy which had run out on the wards.

A few hours sleep and back to the laptop whilst at home, checking the numbers of admissions and deaths. Back to the hospital for another day of meetings ams time on the wards.

Every day, no break. Leave cancelled, weekends interrupted. Just work and loneliness.

I'll never recover from 2020. It took from me my sanity, my well-being, my relationship and friendships.

I seriously doubt that any child, any teenager, went through what I and my colleagues did. Sorry, but they don't have a clue.

Thank you xx

@12Thorns

@thesurrealist I’m so sorry to read this. You’ll no doubt get comments that you’re an adult and so don’t compare to children but please ignore them. I relate very strongly to your post (not NHS but worked v low hours through pandemic, live alone, spending tons on therapy to try and recover from the damage done).

And I am sorry that this was your experience- why do you need to compare that to children? And can you not understand that many children also had similar experiences but now do not have a voice?

And what did that result in? If I recall childrens education and vaccination became politicised but children did not have a say at all. So what’s your point?

@KnowButNeedU2TellMeAsItIs the point is they didn’t.

sone children have sh*t lives, regardless of covid. Some were very Ill or bereaved by covid. But as a group, nothing bad happened to them! Many loved it. Some didn’t, but there is no reason why we shouldn’t have just expected them to cope with a short spell of mild incinvieniance in their basically immensely privileged lives

What’s your point? I don’t get why people thought this lockdown was such a major hardship on children.

flipping eck.

so e if the places I’ve taught it was so similar to normal life anyway that the children didn’t notice any difference.

but because our children are so fortunate, this little inconvieniance is majorly damaging???? It shouldn’t be

I would suggest all this imagined trauma being projected onto children is an issue with parenting rather than with the pandemic

Really? Privileged - all children? Expect them to cope?

and this is the actual point - they did get on with it and collectively we haven’t said thankyou. Literally, they were denied freedoms at an age that is so important and we just ‘expect them to cope’?

What kind of society does that?

This. Parents who usually indulge every whim of their offspring were unable to.

Yes. Immensely privileged. Free education. Free medical care. Parents in receipt of child benefit. Children without secure homes are not privileged, obviously, but they are a tiny minority in the Uk.

generally children have food, clothing, education, clean water, a bed, a roof, education, vaccinations, legal protection, leisure time, parks and playgrounds,

and even during lockdown a level of freedom undreamt of by most other children around the world.

the fact that you insist that lockdown was an excessive loss to them just shows you have very little understanding of the broader picture. As I said. I’ve taught in countries where normal childhood is so close to lockdown that the children were not aware that lockdown was anything different

if your children are in inadequate accomadation, then I am very sorry. But the us the only serious non- deliberate depravation suffered by Uk children, and the numbers are small, as a percentage

and this is the actual point - they did get on with it and collectively we haven’t said thankyou

because it’s as vacuously impotent as ‘be kind’ or ‘one like =one prayer to Jesus’. Older children and teens will see it for exactly what it is. Meaningless.

Literally, they were denied freedoms at an age that is so important and we just ‘expect them to cope’?

Yes, and by and large children weren’t expected to do anything adults weren’t doing themselves, in fact the majority put a lot of effort into ensuring their children were supported as possible and continue to do that.

That was the situation and it just had to be lived, there weren’t any alternatives available to the majority. That’s just life, sometimes we have to do hard, shit things; it just happened that we all had to do the same hard, shit thing at the same time.

What kind of society does that?

A realistic one? One that has gone from one crisis straight into more and is concentrating on surviving current problems rather than navel gazing?