to think uk children in general did not have a bad experience during the pandemic

[orangeleavesinautumn]

Just read yet another post when inappropriate behaviour in a teen is put down to delayed trauma from covid times.

Having worked as a teacher in many countries, I can tell you that the conditions we called "lock down" are normal life for many of the world's children, and our children are incredibly privileged compared to most.

They didn't really suffer, they just had a slightly less ultra-privileged life for a short time. They were not more isolated and deprived than "normal" they were less isolated and deprived than normal, in a world wide sense - they were just more isolated and deprived than we have come to expect in our wealthy world.

Some may have been afraid, or bereaved, but most were not, and many enjoyed themselves enormously, more children I know preferred lock down to normal school, than preferred normal school to lockdown - and I have asked literally hundreds of children!

Can we stop telling them they are disadvantaged and traumatised now please!

Was it really covid rates that stopped us opening all schools in June 2020? They were way down by then. Not sure what impact locking down a bit earlier would've had.

I can tell you that the conditions we called "lock down" are normal life for many of the world's children

Where are all these countries were being forced to remain in your home, it being illegal to come within 2m of anyone outside of your household and only being allowed out for 30mins exercising a day is a normal existence??

@LlynTegid If Mr Johnson had acted promptly in March 2020, then children could have had less lost schooling face to face, as I think some could have resumed in June or maybe early July 2020.

Not all UK schools are even in term time in July. England isn’t the whole of the UK.

Covid rates were low then, but IIRC case-fatality rates were really high (and we didn’t know enough about the effects it could have on children). And look what happened when the schools did go back in September - cases soared straight away (and with them, hospitalisations and deaths, albeit on a delay).

YABVU, what about the gap between poor and rich children in GCSE results? What about their mental health?

But cases were always going to increase when kids went back to school, and we knew there'd be a deadlier second wave once restrictions were loosened anyway. Chris Whitty told the government that in March 2020, they knew before locking down. So at a time when rates were very low, the government made the choice to push the inevitable back until autumn, closer to the start of winter flu season. With that in mind, it's still not clear what difference an earlier lockdown would've made to schooling in June 2020. I didn't think anyone was arguing that case fatality rates would've been lowered by going earlier, were they?

I’ve lived in Russia, several places in Tanzania and Malawi, and have travelled extensively in China. If anything, he children there have more freedom than over here - yes they have chores, and may be deemed to be adults at much younger ages (14-16). But at primary age they are also playing out with their friends in the village, and have freedom to travel long distances by themselves which many UK children would be envious of.

Tanzanian children certainly are not kept locked in the house and unable to play with other children, or travel about. The ones in the communities I lived in were up feeding the animals or getting water, then walking to school with all their friends. No restrictions on movement or social contact whatsoever. Obviously there is far less material wealth, but that isn’t what we’re discussing.

Yip swingparks were closed all over Scotland from March to June 2020.

Softplay didn't reopen until Spring 21.

No household visits from March 20 to May 21 with the exception of about 6 weeks in summer 20.

Let's not forget the solitary confinement, for 14 days for just being near a positive case, even if you've both been masked up with windows open.

But according to the Op that's normal in some parts of the world. Bullshit!

What a crock!

I supported lockdown.

Yet my dd who was in y 10 during the second lockdown was absolutely traumatised by it. Didn’t want to go back to school after it.

She still has such horrible anxiety that l took her to a private pyschiatrist. She said that she has been overwhelmed by how many kids had mental health issues triggered by the lockdowns. There’s been a massive explosion in teen and child mental health issues since then and little support for them.

This is the thing. At the time the vast majority of people (on here anyway) supported a lockdown. People were demanding it weeks before it happened. People were pulling their children out of school early.
So they got what they wanted. But now the vast majority of people are complaining it was a bad thing and it's ruined a whole generation of young people.

Our children were forced to sacrifice a lot in order to protect older generations and meanwhile, adults were breaking the rules and politicians having cheese and wine parties/affairs. The least people could do is show children a bit of respect after that and not diminish their experiences, and actual research which shows direct correlations between covid and negative impacts on children.

Absolutely spot on.

Yes, because the government and media had successfully terrified people into believing it was going to kill them and their children.

That's why its important we learn from Lockdown instead of pretending it had no effect. It was seen as necessary back then. No one knew what effect it would have. Now we know, and it can inform decision making in future pandemic situations.

I was a supporter of the first one when we did not know what we were dealing with.
But that doesn't mean all of it was logical or sensible. Far to many inconsistencies that it just became a big social experiment at the cost of businesses and people's MH.

Second that.

Yeh there was loads of support, actually further than that posters demanding it and going postal on those who said hang on there might be damage to dc

It's one thing to support a short lockdown while we work out what we're dealing with.
Years of restrictions is entirely different.

Tbf some of us adults were breaking rules because of the welfare of our children, but otherwise completely agree. The OP is a troll, but people having the discussion aren't.

No, I was just saying that presumably the decision not to open schools was not due to the case rates at the time but due to the case-fatality rate (which was, of course, no lower in the autumn, when as you say seasonal viruses were starting up). But I suspect a lot of parents felt (not necessarily rationally) that things were safer in the autumn than they were in June?

I wonder whether the decision was partly to give schools time over the summer holidays with no children in to work out safety protocols and so on - all that tape that had to be put down to mark one-way systems and 2 metre distances, different arrangements for lunch had to be worked out, how to make equipment safe in practical subjects (I remember disinfecting our safety goggles after every lesson in science)…

It might not be the same people, of course, have you tracked usernames or something? Also people can change their minds as time goes on. What people were thinking in March 2020 may have been different to what they were thinking a couple of months or years later.

Mmm, I don't think that can be presumed, tbh.

Agree though there were definitely parents who didn't want to send their kids back in June. Lots seemed to have the idea that September was going to be safer, which struck me as odd at the time.

This.

It's deeply worrying that a teacher has no critical thinking skills.

I think lockdown was better than mass deaths and the collapse of the health service (which, certainly in my hospital, was very close by end of April - we literally ran out of ventilators, CVVH fluid, had increased our ICU bed capacity fivefold).

That doesn’t mean lockdown was a desirable thing, just the least worst of two very bad options.

I see the effects of Long Covid include a total lack of empathy, compassion and the development of being a completely psychopathic uncaring douchebag now.

DD2 became fucking terrified of anything floating in the air (she still partially is now). She lost most of her language for a good while, and academically she's still not fully back in terms of parity with her peers with where she was back then. From probably the most "optimal" home background going in terms of a skill set to be able to support her - but she was badly affected... some kids are. The response to that on here was a bunch of fucking bitches telling parents of kids who were really legitimately struggling to "learn some resilience."

Rise in eating disorders - documented
Massive decline in levels of school readiness reported by teachers who work with the cohort - documented
Decline in mental health among kids - documented
Incredibly increase in the percentage of children arriving at school with speech and language needs - documented (and SALT services cannot bloody cope - not to mention there's a massive recruitment problem with that profession as well)

If I could be bothered I'd pull out the exact statistics and references from my dissertation - but the OP just wants to bash kids and push the lockdown minimisation agenda and won't bother listening. But I heard time and time again that, even among the kids who had an "easy" run of it - that there was still a "distrust" for want of a better phrase, that their daily lives and normal were now going to stay the same and that the plans they had for things like camps, residential, parties etc could be made with some relative degree of confidence that they would go ahead.

Not to mention the long term impact in terms of access to early help services which should have been there to support families before hitting crisis points - but where the services were suspended and on firefighting mode for so long that crisis WAS reached needing much more indepth support and intervention, and the fact that waiting lists are still absolutely completely and totally fucking out of control now. Or the fact that transitions for individuals with SEND between paeds and adult services happened in such a chaotic manner that things are now going to shit rapidly for them because of Covid firefighting and service disruption. I've also worked with autistic kids who were fascinated by WW2 military history - for whom the months at home with an internet connection, parents trying to juggle home learning and their own jobs and less supervision than would be ideal as a result, meant that they had months at home on the Internet to google up "Nazis" - you can imagine where internet algorithms can potentially lead that to.

As a society we have a moral obligation to do what we can to mitigate the long term impact that this all had on the kids who put a huge percentage of their lives (because when you're 7 a year off and on is a huge chunk of the time you've been on the planet - less so when you're 47) on hold to keep others safe - and that begins by identifying what damage WAS caused so we can begin to unpick it - and not by minimising it, dismissing them as snowflakes and giving them even MORE shit.

I think what lockdowns have taught us, SHOULD teach us are two huge lessons:

1. you cannot, however much you bang a saucepan on your front doorstep on an evening, put society on pause without their being consequences.
2. politicians take the piss and don't follow the rules they put in place.