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.

@MarshaBradyo

This is what @Walkaround wrote specifically:

It is unhealthy and self-pitying to waste anger on re-inventing history and claiming to have been far more clear sighted at the time than any of the people who were stuck in the position of having to make the decisions. It is not wrong to want to discuss the harms done and try to process them in ways that don’t actually just go round in circles and repeat the same angry, negative emotions.

Pay particular attention to the second sentence of the paragraph. What she is saying it's absolutely fine to to reflect and share lockdown experiences and what you feel are harms done, but wasting time and energy expressing anger at decision-makers and saying you wouldn't have taken such actions - with the benefit of hindsight - isn't helpful.

Who are they to determine what is helpful for others? Do other boards get interrupted by posters saying your wrong to think back

Plus many did say it at the time not just now, that was the main point. If people want to express that so what?

Monitoring and silencing again is pointless

@MarshaBradyo

Monitoring and silencing again is pointless

You keep saying this. The only people I see being silenced on this thread are NobleGiraffe and Walkaround. Everyone else is fine and has been for the entirety of the pandemic. No one ever silenced you. People with more controversial opinions, such as advocating for the elderly or disabled, or for masks (OMG!) - now they were silenced.

In any case, for this thread, feel free to share. No-one is stopping you.

Yep because calling people self pitying does that doesn’t it.you didn’t answer whether you would like it…

I have posted what I want and see similar tactics which I’ve called out, mostly I’ve appreciated other people sharing without negative responses from majority.

There’s definitely a reluctance to accept that direct and indirect harm has been done as a result of choices made. Stating that isn’t saying that all the choices were wrong - I think some were - but it isn’t an attack on anybody.

I remember what it was like on here between spring 2020 and probably spring 2021. Anyone concerned about their child’s development got their head bitten off; they were told quite brusquely a number of lines that were just endlessly repeated about children not socialising until they were 3, about puddlesuits, about there being no toddler groups in the 1960s and kids were fine (no, they weren’t.) It’s really frustrating as Sure Start - which was in its heyday when MN was born if you like - is regularly lamented and what a wonderful thing it was but anyone missing their regular toddler class was told it wasn’t necessary anyway!

I don’t think all of the problems caused are irreversible but children missed a year of ‘normality’ and of course it will have affected them, with the disadvantaged most affected.

Well, I remember pretty much everyone getting their head bitten off regardless of the opinions expressed, throughout the pandemic. We had those who thought our borders could and should be sealed, those who thought only the elderly and undefined “vulnerable” should isolate, those who thought the vulnerable were being murdered by being sent into care homes without being tested for covid instead of being kept in hospital, those who wanted schools to stay open but accused other people who wanted schools to stay open of wanting to close them or behaving in ways that would force them to close anyway, those who said working parents were being thrown under a bus, those who said key workers were cannon fodder, those who said people working from home were the real victims, those who said those on furlough were lazy slackers. It went on and on, because funnily enough, not everyone agrees with everyone else, and a huge number of posters seem to take the stance that everything is black and white and you have to be on one side or “the other,” as though there is no ground in between.

And there is no way on earth that@MarshaBradyo was silenced in any way - I remember her opinions perfectly well from throughout the pandemic. It’s a bit rich for people with extremely strident opinions to claim they felt silenced, when they blatantly were not and actually stood out as particularly opinionated and determined to comment on multiple threads.

And I also remember very clearly a lot of people being extremely concerned about the impact of the pandemic and school closures and lockdowns on young people’s mental health and development.

I did post and got loads of flack and hounding and harassment. I had a poster trail me for about a year with it in particular.

Anyway it’s not about me. It’s about stories I want to hear and was appreciating until more of same happened. .

So feel free to ignore me and let others post without any idea they are self pitying or being unhealthy. It’s unhelpful and untrue.

I think a lot of posters were put off posting and I will stick my head out and say I think MN is worse now, far worse, than pre-pandemic. I don’t think it was all fields before but I think during the lockdowns it really was not a supportive place.

People do feel silenced when there’s a lecturing, hectoring tone. Even if the words make sense, if the message is ‘you stupid twat’ they are unlikely to engage.

Absolutely, you having a view and refusing to change it is fine, but other people doing the same thing is wrong.

I said this at the time, OP (and not just about young children). I got a torrent of abuse for it, and MN deleted the "triggering" posts (i.e. the posts that said that lockdown was going to cause more damage than Covid, and that child development was going to be severely affected). So people were definitely silenced. I also agree with a PP that MN is much nastier than it was pre-Covid. It was not terribly nice before, but it's worse now.

I think going forward, it would be useful for it to be more generally understood that any version of telling people they're doing it wrong when it comes to the discussion of lockdown harms is not liable to be well received.

Like telling posters that discussion of the current situation in schools and the lack of school funding and resources to deal with the issues caused by the pandemic isn't a suitable topic of conversation for this thread with the title "Kids still feeling the effects of lockdown" and should be posted elsewhere?

Well certainly if you want to make a case that it's relevant, you're liable to do better if you avoid telling people they should be addressing the matter in a particular way, as you have done multiple times on this thread. After all, there'd be nothing to prevent you from making that point without getting into the territory of telling people they're doing it wrong.

On a personal note, our children have seen vast improvements in their personal engagement with school and their friends. Dp's oldest daughter refused her 11 plus but is loving her local comp, settled, and striving ahead.
His youngest despite struggling with school academically has returned and is making great, great progress. I honestly think it's a familial problem with educational engagement, like malaise for some children.

@PerfectlyPreservedQuagaarWarrior

Absolutely, you having a view and refusing to change it is fine, but other people doing the same thing is wrong.

Posters sticking to long held views is fine and expected. What I don't do is hector other posters off threads and use absurd circular arguments to do so. (And get their posts deleted when called out on it.)

I just saw that deleted post and thought it was a different personal attack. I didn’t report just responded to one below. I don’t bother to engage if I’m going to report.

I can’t remember what it says now but someone else must have objected.

Well certainly if you want to make a case that it's relevant, you're liable to do better if you avoid telling people they should be addressing the matter in a particular way

I did (24/11) , and then got people telling me I shouldn't be on the thread.

The idea that I could somehow have posted on this thread about the issues in schools and school funding without having the usual crowd try to drive me off it is, quite frankly, laughable.

But I am hoping that at least some posters will be connecting the dots between the crisis in schools and the current struggles of young people even while others are loudly pretending it doesn't have a place in this discussion.

It’s not just about schools though, giraffe, which is why I think sometimes there is a ‘here we go again’ feeling when you turn up. I know that sounds a bit rotten but I’m not sure how else to put it.

I reported you for trying to restart arguments from one thread on another, yes. That's a breach of forum guidelines and I'll be doing it again if you repeat it.

If you want to revisit our discussion about how some job losses were caused by restrictions, some by covid and some by a combination of the two, which is the only thing I can think of having argued with you about previously, by all means return to the relevant thread. Note that this is the very opposite of hectoring you off it.

@PerfectlyPreservedQuagaarWarrior

I reported you for trying to restart arguments from one thread on another, yes. That's a breach of forum guidelines and I'll be doing it again if you repeat it.

Ooh. I wasn't restarting arguments from old threads, anyway. I was discussing your mode of argument - completely different. Sometimes it helps other people to know that a wall of aggressive words is primarily illusion.

You made specific reference to you and I having had previous discussions, which as we hadn't at that point spoken on this thread, could only refer to arguments elsewhere. This means what you've just written here is demonstrably false.

Ultimately, you're a hypocrite. You don't like it when people do what you do. When you or people you've decided you approve of continually restate the same point, that's fine, but when it isn't to your taste it becomes problematised. That is all your recent posts amount to.

I've read some of the backlashes to this post. However, I agree with it. Lots of posters are looking for links and causation correlations. What the lockdowns did prove was a substantial group of parents does not know how to engage with each other in a family setting. Another is a complete lack of resilience and basic life skills as individuals. Yet the real problem is home life and social media.

We're having the same outcry over inflation, cooking, and heating homes.
It's embarrassing.

It’s not about ‘not knowing how to engage with each other in a family setting’, for God’s sake. How patronising. You really believe the reason so many children struggled during lockdown is because their parents don’t know how to talk to them properly? I talked, played with, read to and educated my child during lockdown, but that didn’t stop her becoming anxious, moody, withdrawn and lonely, because despite my best efforts I couldn’t replace all the things that had been taken away from her.