Kids still feeling the effects of lockdowns…

[sloanedanger]

I just got caught reading a really interesting thread on Twitter started by a teacher:

“Is anyone else thinking we are starting to see the impact of 2 years of disruption and time at home, due to COVID 19, in schools? Extreme behaviours? Some pupils very emotional and struggling to regulate? Low attendance compared to normal? Winter bugs hitting hard?”

A lot of the comments say Y3 is the worst, others saying Years 7 and 8.

My DS is in Year 2 and often struggles with emotions and self regulation at school. It’s made me think, perhaps there’s a reason why linked to the pandemic. Lockdown was hard, DP and I were home with very young DC, trying to work, poor mental health, emotions high. Very little patience.

People in Glasgow had the longest restrictions in Europe. They weren't allowed visitors from 1st September 2000 through to End of May 2001.

Softplay was closed for all of that to. In fact I don't think they opened at all from March 2000 to June 21.

My youngest has really felt it. He's basically missed out on 1 or more years of development. I think of him as being younger. He's nowhere near where the others were at his stage.

But thankfully MH wise all mine have been spared.

DC at uni partied away in halls despite the rules.

I was really against lockdown and we did only what we had to (laws rather than guidance).

I think it was a massive policy failure in the long term.

Without dismissing or minimising the very real genuine concerns and lived experiences on here i do think for many children it's pretty hard to attribute these issues solely to lockdowns. Lots of children would have emotional/ behavioural/ academic issues without covid. My DC are yr 3 and yr 7 and they are fine as are most of their friends. The ones who have struggled in my experience have parents who have also struggled and the anxiety or isolation issues have rubbed off on them. Again, this is just my observations of those around me, I understand others have different experiences.

The other issue now, in schools, is the amount of time it's taking to get a referral to CAMHS or to get an ECP - which are needed if the child is to get extra funding/ the one-to-one they so need (and the rest of their class so needs them to have.) Where we live, there's a two year wait in some cases - so yes, there are classes that are really hard to teach because there literally aren't enough staff in the room.

Don’t be unkind. If your family coped wonderful, but respect that you were privileged. You must understand that others had very different experiences. Single parents desperately trying to WFH and homeschool children. Families living in flats. Children with additional health needs.. overnight families lost all of their support networks.

I agree with this. I loved lockdown, as I was working from home instead of having to commute, saved loads of money, could work from Germany where my parents live and my daughter was still able to do her hobby (horse riding) and had structured online lessons (private school). We even had a nice holiday in 2021 in a waterpark in Germany that was open as long as you had a negative Covid test.

Individual children of course would have struggled but this thread is full of professionals saying that whole cohorts are far out of line with the norm. It's no surprise that those cohorts are the ones that missed out on crucial school years.

If you had a nice time in lockdown that's lovely, but to read some of the stories on this thread and then post about it doesn't exactly mark you out as a generous person.

At this stage no one can claim ignorance of the very difficult circumstances many families endured. Enjoyable working from home, quality online education, holidays, improved financial positions, continuing hobbies are all very far from the norm of that time (and I say that as someone who was privileged and didn't suffer too badly despite the new baby and a bereavement).

Just read through the whole thread and it was such a sad read. I'm so sorry so many of your children have been affected by the pandemic and lockdowns.

I personally struggled a little as DS was born summer 2020. We waited years for him after infertility and suddenly no one could come visit or help or meet him (I live in the EU). We missed out on a lot but I seem to be feeling much better about it today now that I have seen family again and we are out and about going to nursery / tumble tots / meeting up with others again. But I realise I have some leftover anxiety when he's ill and I know we're now at home again all week with nothing to do. It reminds me a bit of those early days when I had a screaming colicky baby and my only escape were baby classes which were all cancelled.

DS is, however, fortunately unaffected by it all. He's advanced in his speech, loves going outside and has taken well to nursery. He was very nervous around other children at first but I think that's just his personality, he's a sensitive softie. So I do feel lucky there that DS doesn't seem to have been affected at all.

I would say any kids of school age would have been affected TBH, my DS1 was 14 at the time and personally for him it was fine, DS2 was Y7 when it happened so his last full year was Y6 and then with the exception of a few covid isolations did most of Y9. That is missing out on an extremely vital socialisation and apparently current Y10 year groups in many schools are struggling socially and displaying behaviours expected of Y8s when it comes to disagreements and general 'playground' behaviour. Luckily mine DCs aren't too affected by it all from what I can tell but I totally understand why many will be and for different reasons dependant on age.

Exactly.

The people furious about lockdown and bitter that their children didn't qualify for keyworker places because they were able to stay at home need to do some serious reflection.

Mind you I do think that the UK was so free and easy with the definition of "keyworker" meaning that in some places the balance tipped too far to a (big) minority homeschooling while a (small) majority were in school. That does create division.

Where I am only those with both parents keyworkers unable to work from home were allowed to go to school, which also meant the teachers weren't supervising classes and did set proper work from early on (and for secondary school taught on line, though in our old fashioned, rural area primary did actively require parents to teach work sent out, which UK parents wouldn't have accepted and which did exacerbate the social divide).

There is so much to write about how lockdowns affected my children, their mental health and their education, but I can't put it into words yet as I'm still too angry. I just remember the constant in-out-in with close contact isolations being just as hard as the actual school closures. Online learning when you're locked in your house for being near someone who might be ill, while the rest of your friends are carrying on as normal is not how to encourage a love of learning in my teenagers.

The posters at the school bus stops telling them not to kill granny and "could you look him in the eye" were pure fear porn. Society considering you as germ vectors will have an effect - children were never blamed for the War, so comparison between lockdown and the blitz is unfair.

I am baffled by the small amount of people on this thread who still, despite being faced with actual evidence of personal experience, say that it was a "good thing" to keep people inside.

For me one of the biggest impacts was the fact that lockdown happened.
most of us went into 2020 with a certain expectation of what the year would hold. Be it exams/leavers prom/holidays etc all stuff they were looking forward to. And in the blink of an eye it was taken away. That is huge having to understand at a young age that one minute life is going along a certain path the next life is completely changed. You can’t see friends or family for 3 months and then you have to choose which friends you do see in what numbers.

then for months not really being able to look forward to stuff. Yes things opened but you had to pre book and hope that no one you had been in contact with tested positive. We had to cancel a break away over May half term 2021 because DD spent 3 minutes saying hello to a friend in another class who came down with Covid that she hadn’t seen for awhile.

we did friends fest with some friends July 2021 and it was only just before we went we knew we could all go.

then the impact of receiving the email to say the class is shutdown spend 10 days indoors. DS class went down twice and once himself. A whole month spent indoors

and not being able to hug as well my parents are massively involved in my children life. 3 months of once or twice a week visits on the driveway

So what do you think might have happened in the period since 2020 that’s made the rates of each of those issues you describe skyrocket? Glad your kids are fine. Mine is too. Many are not.

The people furious about lockdown and bitter that their children didn't qualify for keyworker places because they were able to stay at home need to do some serious reflection

No.

And you evidently have an understanding yourself of exactly why the keyworker policy in the January lockdown was such a clusterfuck, the rest of your post articulates that well, so why pretend that this is about people who were working at home as against those working outside? You surely can't think no wfh parents had DC who were allowed into school? I've a bridge to flog you if so.

Well jolly good for your DD who had Grandparents available to interact with her and presumably she was also interacting with other adults and children at the stables. Wonderful to have a hobby which wasn't cancelled.

Children didn't have GPs on hand, we were actively discouraged from visiting. Or asking them for childcare help. Parents were burning the candle at both ends and in the middle.
Homeschooling while entertaining younger children and trying to work. Children who weren't even allowed to play with the children next-door at one point. 3 year olds saying we aren't allowed to play 'because of the virus'

It doesn't take a genius to realise that children must have suffered from lack of interaction with other people. It was a completely unnatural way for children to live.

I think it has also coincided with technology overuse. Mine are teens. I didn't have a mobile until the oldest was 3 (then just a Nokia) and no smart phone until they were 9. Now toddlers have endless access, parents at soft play etc on their phones rather than engaging. Lockdown for some of my kids friends meant unlimited screen use, this continues now. My kids screen use is far higher than it was and we are quite strict. The impact of this means the teens don't want to physically go out but just are attached to an Xbox, the difference between this and my 26 year old DSS is amazing.
We have been lucky with lockdown 1 not being too horrific, and the age of mine meant when they were allowed out they could go on their own with friends and have adventures and before that lots of games and walks, I was only working 25 hours from home so had time to do stuff Lockdown 2 with endless screen school and dark and wet weather was shit and I was back full time.

This may be true but doesn't that just show that schools and playgrounds shouldn't have been closed?
And that limiting contact, especially outside, was not a good strategy?
Fine, limit yourself if you wanted to but not as an overall rule.
I remember two women getting fined because they met each other for a walk but had a coffee in their hands.
Just ridiculous.

I'm a keyworker and had to work with medically and socially vulnerable people, doing massively more than my contacted hours in extremely difficult circumstances and then come home and homeschool (actively teach) my youngest child. My husband was initially in the office (not a keyworker but initially his company didn't allow wfh) then later home on back to back calls.

My issue is that while vulnerable and disadvantaged families and children were disproportionately disadvantaged, a whole bunch of people who do not fall into that category are absolutely absolving themselves of any responsibility for not having kept talking to their small children, kept their school children in a routine of getting up on time, getting dressed, doing school work, going out for an hour's walk etc. and so many parents talked so much in front of their impressionable children and teens about how everything was so unfair and impossible and all somebody else's fault, that the negative impact has been vastly greater than necessary.

Without lockdowns and masks it's entirely probable more of the vulnerable people I was looking after during the pandemic would have died. Lockdown was intensely hard with 14 young adults with learning disabilities in a residential setting and my own teens and pre teen at home, but both groups were influenced by the attitude of the capable adults they looked up to to in their day to day life.

Interesting value judgement there about sacrificing themselves, in response to a post that was actually about elderly people who wanted to see their loved ones, ie having their own automomy and feelings that didn't align with yours. My grandad didn't think he was sacrificing himself by wanting to spend what might easily have been the end of his life (he's 91) with his loved ones.

There was such a lack of imagination too...why couldn't schools run a staggered service? Maybe kids going in for one morning/afternoon/day a week with a very small group of other kids. There's 30 in a class...so six pupils a day for example? They could have had a catch up...teachers could have monitored how they were getting on. It would have been a useful safeguarding tool and helped kids mental health. But no, nothing. I still don't understand why schools didn't reopen in summer term 2020. It felt very much like, ah well, may as well have the whole year off now.

Did a higher proportion of teachers die in Sweden where schools were kept open? (They didn’t)

Nobody can think that it was right that we could all go to the pub but children couldn’t go to school? Seriously. That men could play golf but kids couldn’t go to school. That we could all go to the garden centre but kids couldn’t go to school.
I’d love to see the scientific rationale for all the outdoor sports being banned.

Now my children didn’t seem to badly affected but I’m not so short sighted or lacking in basic human empathy that I don’t understand that everyone’s situation was completely different. And I feel so sad for the thousands and thousands of children that were affected and that’s why I spent hours on here arguing. How anybody can read the stories on here then blame the struggling parents for wanting free childcare. Wow. Shame on you. Says so much about you as a person. And it’s not good.

And those that say ‘well my kids were fine so what’s the problem? Or well we lived in Germany so what are you on about?’

You are making yourselves look very stupid..

The level of speech and language referrals I've had to do the last 2 years is ridiculous.
The twats on here clamouring for lockdown after lockdown after lockdown can go to hell as far as I'm concerned.
We should have funded shielding for the vulnerable (if they dont want to that's their business) and that's it.
Society has massively suffered and I don't think it was worth it or warranted.

@Comedycook I agree. And I have no idea why they didn’t do a staggered schedule. I had a Yr 5 who didn’t go to school from March - Sept (apart from one week).

Rates were low ish from May 2020 onwards until the autum yet the government thought it would be a good idea to keep all the schools/Unis shut and then send everyone back all at the same time in Sept just as we go in to flu season. Genius idea.

They finally woke up that summer was a good time to remove restrictions in 2021.

Don't forget the impact on the adults in schools.

We switched to online learning overnight. I learned how to use Google classroom and zoom and worked tirelessly making online lessons. I came into school to cover keyworked and vulnerable students in school. I drove the minibus around delivering school lunch food parcels to vulnerable families.

I also had to home school my own children and deal with the same traumas everyone else did.

Long term there's been no allowance for the fact teachers also worked through the pandemic, nobody clapped for us, in face we got roundly dismissed as being rubbish despite the fact we were given no notice for the many tier changes, lockdowns etc and had to just adapt at the drop of a hat.

We are now dealing with the fallout of kids who are behind socially and academically and yet expected to "catch them up" as if we can make up those years whilst still doing everything else in school "as normal".

And now we have a recruitment and retention crisis in schools. It's a Sisyphean task.

Yes, the refusal to reopen schools for the final half term of the 2019-20 school year was batshit. Made no sense at all.

It's so important to acknowledge that even in the context of a restrictions based, multiple lockdowns approach, there are still things that could've been done to mitigate the impact on children that weren't.