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!

Of course. I absolutely realise how lucky I was. Although, I worked all through lockdown (from home), I’m a lone parent and have a PDA ASC DD so it wasn’t all one long holiday. I was terrified of the virus, I remember washing every item from the supermarket, quarantining post and I pulled my kids out of school before lockdown was announced as I was aghast at the lax approach from the gov’t. I also watched the daily briefings and death toll announcements with dread and horror just like most of the world. But that doesn’t change the fact that I loved lockdown - principally because for the first time ever, there was no pressure to get DD to school and all the crap associated with school refusing. I didn’t bother with home schooling, instead letting them experience it as a unique time in history. But mainly, I felt like it would be a turning point in history and despite the awfulness, it gave me hope for humanity, proof that we can do what it takes to solve the huge issues facing the world. The sense of solidarity, us being in it together, the spontaneous surge of volunteering and mutual aid (which I also got involved with). Of course it didn’t last, but it was nice to cling to at the time. I’m not sure why a brief summary of my overall experience as positive means I’m insensitive or not appreciative of the vastly different experiences of other people.

I didn't feel any sense of solidarity during lockdown. It's a rose tinted view of looking at it. I'd never felt so alone in my life.

God this thread had made me cry. I was heavily pregnant with two under four. My husband had to keep working. I wasn't sleeping and felt too tired to exercise. I missed my family terribly and my baby didn't meet my parents until she was nearly two months old. I drove 30 miles to deliver them milk just so they could meet her and I was devastated my other two couldn't come.

But the weather was amazing, we had fun in the sun and an Easter treasure hunt in the woods. My husband used to take the children to the supermarket just so I could I get some sort of break. That was so frowned upon but I'm pleased we did it so they could get out.

Looking back... one the bizarrest things was how suddenly some people declared that 7 (or even younger) was old enough to be left at home alone while you went to the supermarket. (Actual suggestion I got... leave my 7&8yos playing on the village green for the two hours it would take to drive to the supermarket, queue and shop and drive home... so the neighbours could supervise them out the window!)

Its rather reassuring to see the threads worrying about a teenager (no SEN) being alone for a few hours or should a 10yo walk the 5 minutes to school alone.

Nor were we all in it together.

Lockdown for some people meant being trapped in unsafe or unsuitable housing. Stuck in with abusers who now had much greater opportunity to harm them. Overcrowded in temporary accommodation. Stuck in mouldy damp flats breathing in spores in the freezing cold of January and February 2021 because stay the fuck at home. We certainly weren't all in that together and solidarity for people in these positions was rather thin on the ground too.

But I know there are people who did think this, and they didn't come up with the idea by themselves. It's not like the media or political mainstream were telling them otherwise at the time either. Much better for the general narrative to gloss over this sort of inconvenient point.

Whenever a striking group say we worked through pandemic it shows to me the divergence in experience.

There were groups denied work at that time, denied livelihood, socialisation and education. So the flip side cost was massive. There was an example of this in pp with a dh whose industry was shut for a long time and the mh impact of that. The idea that the cost was taken by those who kept working isn’t correct.

The cost and damage to the shut industries and decrease in socialisation was huge. Too much imo

I'm glad I don't have a TV licence! I never experienced any of that. I just loved that there was no traffic going to and from work and the empty streets, we went out for long walks every weekend and hardly saw anyone at first.

For me, a better way of looking at it is there were different costs.

Personally I'd have gladly done my job outside the home if it meant my DC could've got access to schooling, and I hated trying to manage homeschooling and working simultaneously. There are other people who did work outside the home who were afraid, overworked, burned out and would've gladly gone on furlough and weathered the 20% drop. Still others were furloughed and struggled with the loss of wages, routine etc whilst being paid to sit at home. So much depends on personal circumstances.

True. I would’ve taken the risk of Covid for dc not denied school.

My pp should have said those working were not taking the only cost. They too will have their own stories which may have been difficult.

I think part of the problem was the messaging had to suppress costs of lockdown and not working and highlight risks of covid to get us to comply.

So we come out of pandemic with the incorrect assessment that only those working through it suffered or bore the cost. so the I worked through it gets established but so should I was denied access through it as an understandable source of harm (to some not all)

I think, in your son’s case, he was ‘evacuated’ or at the very least it’s not an unreasonable assumption on his part. If he’s learning of ww2 and that kids from London were sent off to all corners of the country (and in particular places like Devon and Cornwall), it’s not so dissimilar. Children who were evacuated in ww2 would not have seen much of the devastation of war beforehand, would have been sent away from an invisible/unspecified (to them) threat. And whilst most evacuees went to strangers, many did go to family members. The timescale thing is fairly normal developmentally but otherwise he has a similar experience.

I do remember at the time saying that the kids were like evacuees in their own little way and the heightened anxiety and national stress would have an impact. Not sure what mine remember as we were living in a building site. We developed a routine. They went back to school/nursery in the June (lucky to be in the right year group), so really was a bit like having 2 summer hols for them.

I was very lucky. My (now deceased) husband had multiple medical conditions, including asthma, and I worked in a hospital pharmacy. I retired on Jan 3rd 2020, so I didn't have to worry about bringing Covid home to him. He shielded until the autumn, and I could look after him instead of having to leave him alone at home.

I used to give blood and during lockdown I opted to do so not at the nearest point but in our local city so I had a valid reason for being out - and my route from home to the city passed DS’s house so he was able to stand in the front garden and we had a brief conversation. It was wonderful! DH of course had to come with me in case I had a funny turn and couldn’t drive home!!

I only remember lockdown 1 with any fondness because hindsight tells me it was ok in the end for us as a family. At the time I was sick with worry about the virus and the effects of lockdown mentally and financially for us. (Of course I was desperately worried about others and society as a whole).

the second lockdown (Jan-March 2021) nearly broke me. I don’t think I could do that again.

@Beezknees "You could live that way if you wanted, that's the difference. If you really wanted to be isolated in that way, do a job where you can fully work from home, home ed your kids, do all your shopping online, don't visit anyone or have visitors."
DH has continued to work from home (he was out of the house for at least 12 hours a day pre-lockdown) My DC are older- two are out of education now, but it was lovely having them all at hime 24/7. I shopped in the supermarket during lockdown (we didn't need a much sought after delivery slot) I very, very rarely have visitors and don't often visit others. As advised by a psychologist DD stopped all school work, and we all acknowledged it couldn't be for ever, but it was a weight lifted. I no longer go to any work social events and haven't gone back to helping in committees etc. A lit if participating in society is more stressful that enjoyable for me. But my family need to grow and learn, and I need to facilitate that practically and financially. I often wonder why people who rave about an amazing holiday don't just go and live on a beach, and it's much the same with living like it was in lockdown. I can't magically make the roads empty again so I can cycle to work in sunshine, breathing fresh air and have a very easy time at work when I get there (because there was very little to do) like I could three years ago, or insist my DC never leave the house so I don't wake up in the night worrying if they're safe. Lockdown one wasn't a state that could continue. Lockdown in 2021 was a weird, grim time but January and February tend to be weird and grim anyway.

Yes many memories. Driving to and from seeing my other half and the roads were empty. There was no pollution in the air, it permanently smelt like flowers.

I think one of the best quotes I heard about lockdown was 'We're all in the same storm in different boats'. When I consider how different it would have been had it struck 6 years earlier and we would have been in a 2-bed flat with a 2 year old and a 5year old just in the process of learning reading and numeracy; it would have been absolutely punishing.

But as it was we had older kids and had moved to a 4-bed house - a totally different experience and appreciably much easier than for most people I'd say. Also DH and I both had jobs that could be done easily from home. And neither of our kids were in a crucial education period, unlike my niece who was supposed to sit GCSEs and didn't get to.

I shopped in the supermarket during lockdown (we didn't need a much sought after delivery slot)
I think there must have been people taking delivery slots who didn't need them. It was weeks before my elderly grandmother who doesn't drive was able to get a slot while I saw delivery vans turning up in my street to working age adults who weren't getting deliveries before.

Some of that was probably people who were fine shopping in person beforehand but couldn't or didn't want to deal with all the extra shit going on in supermarkets at the time. That did create an extra barrier to access for some people. But I think there were also people who were afraid of getting covid at a shop.

Personally I'd have gladly done my job outside the home if it meant my DC could've got access to schooling

I WOH for most of lockdown and my DD's school wouldn't let her have a keyworker place as my DH was working FT from home. Several of my colleagues were in the same position. The expectation was that DH home-school DD, whilst also looking after a 2 year old with SEND, whilst working from 8am-5.30pm and his work were not willing to be flexible at all with hours. We had to squeeze homeschooling into evenings and weekends. At least on the days I was WFH we could look after the kids and work in shifts. Of course there were many people who had it much, much worse than us.

I think it was shit for the vast majority, just shit in different ways.

I think many would have been legitimate but others just selfishness. There's a difference between just feeling anxious about going in a supermarket and being genuinely at very high risk as an 85+ year old elderly person.

Yes, your last sentence about sums it up.

@tornadoinsideoutfig I think deciding what was legitimate is difficult in a climate where it was government policy to try and frighten people who were at lower risk of covid into changing their behaviours. That was a stated aim by late March 2020, and it clearly had some impact.

@BashirWithTheGoodBeard I don't understand why the government did that? It doesn't help protect the genuinely vulnerable if they can't be properly prioritised. Supermarkets were not quick enough to put limits on what you could buy either, the shelves were stripped bare, there was nothing left after work. No one seemed to care about others at all.

It's a good question @tornadoinsideoutfig

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/882722/25-options-for-increasing-adherence-to-social-distancing-measures-22032020.pdf

More info in the link above, see the bottom of page 1 for discussion about people who weren't threatened enough yet.

I realised partway through that it wasn't just different boats, even the same family could have different classes within their boat.

DH came and WFH from the mid-March into what turned into 15m before he had enough and snuck back to the office. He still had some form of continuity going on. I'm a SAHM because of DS's additional needs, but add structure to my life through volunteering, and that was stolen from me for an entire year. We managed 6 weeks of one socially distanced youth group outdoors in the autumn. I couldn't go and volunteer in other ways that clashed with keeping children quiet while they lived in their dad's office. There are lots of different types of difficult and I found the lack of social contact brutal, yet felt constantly stiffled by the house always being occupied. Family and friends all became very insular. No "bubbles". People were too scared or too busy to meet when there were windows avaliable, and I didn't know people willing to disregard ridiculous, illogical rules.

Rules and informal restrictions fell harshly on children. There was absolutely no need to prohibit children from playing in playgrounds until the pubs opened. A two-tier society of children allowed to access school and other children and those banned from seeing others beyond their household was created. By the time 7yo DS set foot in school, he couldn't remember the children in his class any more, and had to start afresh with friendships, held back and tormented by the "online" learning for a further two months undoing his progress in the autumn. It was only really 2022 when he began to heal socially. He doesn't remember much of 2020 because there were few distinguishing features. There were highly restrictive legal restrictions for the entireity of him being 7. Plus the informal restrictions like swimming pools not reinstating family swims until social distancing ended in July 2021 tended to hit families rather than adults.

I can easily understand why a young child staying with relatives for a few weeks in 2020 would remember it as children being evacuated. (@Jourdain11 I remember you well, I'm glad things are improved, and I wish you and your family all the best xx)