My son thinks that children were evacuated during the pandemic

[Jourdain11]

Today my DS7 was learning about World War 2 in 'topic' and they covered evacuees. Apparently he stuck his hand up, "Oh, so they were sent away from London to the country to keep them safe? Just like we were in the lockdown?"

The teacher said that, no, children were not evacuated during lockdown. And he was quite incredulous that neither his teacher, nor any of his classmates, could remember this mass evacuation.

I have explained that he was not evacuated - he stayed with his grandparents for around a month (not in the country). But he is sure in his own mind that he was in fact evacuated for the duration. "Maybe for about a year."

I suppose he was only 4 at the time. But it got me to thinking that a lot of youngish children must have some fairly weird memories of Lockdown Britain!

I remember having to carry a letter round in my bag that our employers gave us to say we cannot work from home in case I got stopped by police and asked why I was out!

Some people did stay away from their normal family home during the pandemic restrictions (please don't fall for the Boris Johnson lies by calling it a lockdown), in a similar way to those away from families in World War 2.

Children do have strange memories of the unusual, so the phrasing of the OPs DS is not a surprise, neither is the thought that his situation was one everybody may have gone through.

As for memories, things such as quiet streets, not having to use the 'button' to get a red light at a crossing, not having my Oyster card with me when I left the house because I would only be going for a walk to shop, all things probably only ever happened in 2020.

I was stuck at home with 3 kids day after day, my partner (now ex) was still working, not as a key worker but in another area that was allowed to continue (gardener type job). He would deliberately stay out the house until after the kids were in bed every single day. Because I wasn’t a single parent I wasn’t able to ‘bubble’ so I was stuck at home with the kids all day, every day home schooling while trying to finish my degree and keep a toddler entertained.

Sometimes I would take the kids out for our allowed exercise in the day and then go out for an ‘illegal’ run late at night after the kids were in bed just to get out of the house on my own. I remember a man in my street popping up out of his garden to tell me he’d already seen me go for a walk that day while I was running past. I also let my kids sit and eat a packet of crisps on a rock while we out for a walk and posted a pic on Facebook and someone commented that picnics weren’t allowed and I was breaking the rules!

I also remember locking my kids in the car while I stood in supermarket queues. I quite looked forward to it because it was the only time I really got a break from them.

I can't remember what the Spring/Summer of 2020 was like, I will forever remember the lockdown though....it was when mum died and we had to have a "state sanctioned" funeral. Having rules about how one should grieve is not something that will ever be forgotten for a great many of us who were subjected to that. At least things were slightly more relaxed during the November lockdown when dad died.

No worries. I couldn't be arsed to check. I remember it felt like eons waiting for Boris to crack. Whole nations has shut down, we'd all been sent home from work and the kids were still in school. Batshit when you think about it.

I was working as a Relocation agent when Covid arrived.
When lockdown first started I was asked to go to an assignment where the clients were The US Military. A high ranking officer and his wife had been evacuated on an army plane back to America on one of the last flights and I needed to oversee the packing etc of their flat. I had a permission letter from my employer and I drove to the city concerned which was odd for a start as the roads were completely empty. When I arrived a had to collect the keys by someone placing them on the ground 200m away and spraying them with anti bac and then picking them up.
When I got into the house the residents had just packed an overnight bag and grabbed their dog and left, it was a bit “Marie Celeste”. - apparently they got 1 hours notice to go and they had lived there for a couple of years.
The packers arrived and we went through a bizarre pantomime of us staying 200m away at all times as I took them through what was needed. The lady of the house rang me and was very insistent that the packers include some very old and dirty tools from the garden shed, which was just bizarre as she had handbags alone worth into 6 figures collectively.
The whole thing was surreal and I hadn’t wanted to do it but they kept offering me more money until I agreed

Homeschooling a 5yo alongside minding a 9 month old while witnessing DH disintegrate as our formerly thriving business was decimated due to our industry being shut down with no government support was devastating.

For two years we were not allowed to operate. Having to reassure our employees who were happily furloughed but simultaneously terrified the business would fold, meanwhile as directors there was zero furlough pay for us and absolutely NO income for our family. For month after month, not a penny coming into our household. Utterly terrifying. We were forced to diversify to scrape a living outside of our specialism which is easier said than done amid pandemic restrictions with two small children.

Add on the layer of extended family suffering and wider trauma being experienced by society as a whole, and empathy for those who had it worse than us and I can safely say no. I will never, ever forget it.

Sorry, I didn't mean to not acknowledge. I do see that it might seem this way (or comparable to wartime evacuation) to him, but I had no idea that he thought that all children had been "sent out of London". It's also interesting that children of that age must not reflect on it conversationally at all, otherwise he'd obviously know that his friends hadn't been evacuated.

He and DD2 were talking about it again this morning. He also doesn't remember home school, but she does. The maths was too easy, apparently, and everything else was Really Boring.

It was different in different parts of the UK. In Scotland we had longer and stricter restrictions. We only came out of them in what, February 2022? And if you lived in Central Scotland the ridiculous tier system Sturgeon implemented meant we lived under some sort of restriction for almost the whole two years. It's possible that it's not others misremembering, it's you not understanding. I remember in maybe December 2020 watching Instagram stories of Londoners out at gigs. I wasn't even allowed to see my mum. I honestly can't believe we complied but I was so scared of infecting her.

@Jourdain11 I remember one of your threads from when you received your diagnosis. I'm so so glad to hear you're doing well

This is actually kind of hilarious when you think of all the idiotic WW2 comparisons that lockdown moved some people to make.

My weirdest memory is being in my garden, in the glorious weather, the day after Boris Johnson was taken into intensive care and The World at One on Radio 4 playing 'Here Comes the Sun' for him 'in the hope it might reach him' (apparently it's his favourite song) and me and DH both crying. And we fucking hate Boris Johnson and would gladly see him in prison. But for those few days in April 2020 we, along with almost everyone else, was terrified he would die and were sat there in our garden crying to The Beatles. Such an odd time.

people still talk about it ending as a very recent thing and about it as being over a longer period of time than it actually was - when really, we had 16 months of restrictions where for about 6 of them we were locked down.

It was different in different parts of the UK

Yes and* different *industries too. Our business operates in one of the first industries to have been forced to shut down and absolute last to be allowed to restart. We were two whole years without trade. And the knock-on effects of that enforced shut down and resultant low consumer confidence are still affecting our business (and DH’s MH as a consequence) a year on.

Quite, and also you can't half tell when people live in areas that actually got a few months of normality in summer/autumn 2020. Not a privilege that was accorded to all of us. Some awareness of that when talking about people's memories of the pandemic would be nice.

That’s really hard I’m not surprised people are still affected by it. There was no recourse for decisions made.

I have birth on Saturday 21st March.
It was announced on Friday 20th that schools would be closing so we knew what was coming.
But I remember the horror I felt when lockdown was confirmed that Sunday night. I would be a first time mum with a newborn and (after his paternity leave ended) a husband who worked in the hospital for 12 hour shifts, with no support from my parents, sister or in-laws. It was a horrible surreal and numb feeling when I made that realisation.
Looking back I have no idea how we made it through lockdown with our sanity still in tact.

Been on that road recently, what a nightmare!

I remember my Gds of only 3, being all too aware that he must not run and pick up someone else’s ball in the park, to give back to them - ‘Cos of Conavirus’. I was very sad for him at the time, but it honestly doesn’t seem to have had any long term effects at all - he’s a boisterous and very sociable little boy.

But it's not surprising that he remembers being evacuated if he had to move to his grandparents and stay with them for a month, is it? Did you actually send him away to them, or was it an already planned holiday?

There wasn't an official evacuation, but I can see whay he would think that there was.

I now wonder what the point of lockdown was. I’m in a country that didn’t have lockdown, and I remember watching the news on how people in Britain couldn’t even sit down on a park bench or go to the park. Surreal. While I sent my kids to school and nursery as usual. Scary times though, it feels a bit like a bad dream now.

Did you? I never knew we couldn’t sit on benches? We went to parks every day.

I'm a TA. We closed our school a few days early, due to insufficient staff. I was declared as being vulnerable (asthma). I remember driving home, and going slower and slower as I got closer to home, as I didn't know when I'd be able to leave again.

The rules didn't specifically forbid it, in fact they had a big gap when it came to necessary rest during exercise, but there were people told by police they couldn't sit on benches. Some were taped too. I wonder how many people were functionally excluded from exercise and fresh air because of that piece of stupidity.

I don’t remember the rules but I do remember turning up to see outside seating taped over. Madness

I’m with pp lockdown wasn’t worth it

Yes, some seats were taped over and police in the park telling small groups to move along.

Priti fucking Patel didn't help either.

www.google.com/amp/s/metro.co.uk/2021/01/07/covid-priti-patel-warns-people-sat-on-park-benches-will-be-moved-on-13864907/amp/