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!

The issue is though, as we discovered, there wasn't really a way to deal with it. It just needed to run its course and wait for vaccines to (hopefully) work. Each time we came out of lockdown cases rose, deaths rose and people freaked out.
If we'd have gone pretty much back to normal in June/July 2020 and stayed that way with no further restrictions the backlash would have been huge! You only had to look on here and the praise australia and new zealand got for having hard core lock downs that went on for months! Everyone would have been screaming about the death numbers and how many children were made orphans and lost grandparents.
It's all well and good looking back and everyone saying what they SHOULD have done. But in the grips of it most people thought very differently.

I think a lot of parents probably rationally knew it was no safer (because whatever measures you take, 30 kids in one room are going to spread an airborne virus) but felt it had to stop somewhere. So while it may not have felt worth the risk of sending kids back in late June or July, when the academic year was winding down anyway, it felt like a risk worth taking in September. I’m sure there’s a name for this phenomenon - it’s why if you’re ill on a Friday you’re far more likely to take the day off than you are if you’re ill on a Monday!

But completely agree that locking down earlier would never have affected case-fatality rates and may well have had no effect on case rates in June (someone must have modelled the latter though?).

There would have been staggeringly few orphans though. Grandparents perhaps. But parents of children were not, in most cases, at any significant risk.
At the end of the day it's up to the government and scientists to weight up risk/cost, not the general public. And IMO they massively let us down.

At the start though it's worth remembering - we were mis-sold a lockdown as a couple of weeks to flatten the curve and kick it down the road. The initial dialogue was about the lockdown being to essentially buy time - give the NHS time to pivot and prepare (which actually, it did pretty impressively - it's just struggled to reverse direction and remember what it was originally doing like someone who's gone into the kitchen to fetch something and has no idea what the hell they've gone in there for)... but then somewhere along the line we got sucked into this idea that if we just did a few more weeks... the virus would go away.... if we just added in a few more restrictions... we could get the numbers down a little bit further.

Once we'd locked down and the self-appointed arbiters of crisp eating on a bench had got their taste of power and route to bully the shit out of everyone else for the next couple of years - no one was ever going to have the courage to say, right, that's it, we're as ready as we ever be and we're going to have to ride the curve now.

Yeah could be that. It's an interesting way of looking at it. People maybe trying to park the issue for a bit.

I cannot count the number of fit black men in their early 50s I admitted, in multi organ failure, in April 2020. About 50% died. I also lost 10% of my dialysis unit patients, many of whom had children in their teens.

It just isn’t correct to say “there wouldn’t have been many orphans”. I can think of several off the top of my head, and that was with restrictions.

What a narrow minded view …

yes some children thoroughly enjoyed it but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have struggles adapting back into the world .

the huge increase in mh needs you think is co incidental.

i was a c/ minder during lockdowns young children couldn’t socialise go to groups parks - we did some online classes but missed out on a lot .
we visited one child for there birthday but stood behind a wall at the end of there front garden - this is not how preschoolers learn to integrate .

my own Ds who has Asd/adhd did struggle massively- he missed out on so much - didn’t go on school trips through the whole school , didn’t do work experience, the third lockdown he went into school as a vulnerable child as he wasn’t coping .

children with adhd are generally 2.7 years behind in emotional maturity - been isolated will not of helped any of his maturity.

what you fail to realise is it wasn’t a few weeks break there was constant uncertainty- indeed the third lockdown was announced at 8pm kids went to school one day and not the next.

This is a time in history that will be discussed in history lessons in years to come because it affected many people including children - I still occasionally see in my job people who are struggling to leave the house. They are generally older people but these people are still struggling to visit relatives - grandchildren .

whether they were traumatised by it is not the same question as were they impacted

I pulled my kids out a few days before schools closed. Not for fear of the virus to be fair - but because DD2 in particular was not coping well with the atmosphere of terror and restrictions being put in place around her school. She's autistic, but her needs for consistency and change to be managed got thrown out of the window and she was not coping well with that - it was clear what was coming by that point, so I took her out a few days earlier to buy us a smoother transition into the shit that was to come.

Oh I agree there would have been very few orphans. But back in 2020 that was one of the things people kept posting about. Everyone on here seemed to know someone who had died leaving young children. Same as everyone knew a healthy 19 year old marathon runner who had died.
The media terrified everyone into thinking they were going to die. I think it was too extreme. And I don't think the endless lockdowns were needed either. But the fact is if they'd chosen not to lock down in later waves, the backlash from the public would still have been mental. Even though the government are shit, they couldn't win this. Whatever way they went they'd have been critised.
If we'd not had the second lockdown and deaths were high, people would be on here now saying about how many lives could have been saved if they had.

The initial dialogue was about the lockdown being to essentially buy time - give the NHS time to pivot and prepare (which actually, it did pretty impressively - it's just struggled to reverse direction and remember what it was originally doing like someone who's gone into the kitchen to fetch something and has no idea what the hell they've gone in there for)... but then somewhere along the line we got sucked into this idea that if we just did a few more weeks... the virus would go away.... if we just added in a few more restrictions... we could get the numbers down a little bit further.

Yeah, there was definitely that shift. Obviously people will have different views on whether it was right to prioritise getting the numbers down (clearly the people who thought we could make it go away are just wrong). But it shouldn't be a surprise that some people changed their views when the narrative changed.

Not everyone was demanding this but the voices got quashed in the barrage

Also loads demanding lockdown knowing they had keyworker places.

Basically other dc stay home

Load of bollocks

Incidentally FB has just reminded me - it's the anniversary today of the day they took the padlocks off the playgrounds around here. I can still remember the absolute joy as the rumour spread and more and more kids showed up onto the park that day.

It’s simply not true that “not that many parents of children died”.

As I said, risk vs cost.
Of course in a pandemic there would be loss of life. We tried to prevent it and have been left with a mental health crisis, a failing health service and economic disaster. And it's still unclear how many lives were even saved. Was it really worth it?

Some children would have been at home in domestic violence situations all day everyday, some parents may have lost jobs and were struggling to feed children, some children has no access to laptops or wifi to be able to online school. Some children may have been grieving lost loved ones. Try not to be so small minded

Funny op I was saying to a friend, I wonder how covid will be recorded in history books. As a family we came out unscathed as key worker our lives carried on much as normal with going to work and school, we didnt know anyone who died or was seriously ill. For us covid wasn't really a huge issue but there will be the other end of spectrum where families lost loved ones or left with debilitating conditions

By September there were clearer guidelines around isolations/testing. There was a layer of management that didn’t exist/wasn’t accessible to the general public early on in the pandemic.

My kids had a fantastic time in lockdown, as did most of their peers. However I appreciate they are young (lower primary at the time) and we are fortunate that we have a nice house and good garden.

I certainly don't think because my kids had a wonderful time that all kids did. But ones I know of certainly did (of all ages) but I attribute that to the fact that the majority of people I know well enough to discuss it with are in a similar socio-economic place as us.

It’s an unmeasurable question though isn’t it? Proof of what didn’t happen is impossible.

I don’t think the intention was ever a blanket ‘save lives’ policy and have said before that if Covid killed (when it’s going to) quickly then it wouldn’t have been half as much of a problem or for so long. But it didn’t/doesn’t. It requires weeks of intensive medical support in a small but significant percentage of the population.

The point was always that the increased pressure on health systems and resources was the danger. We did see the result of ignoring that in some countries - Brazil and India are the ones that spring to my mind. Ultimately if you’re faced with that the options are to cross your fingers or adjust your behaviour. Which is all well and good to leave up to the individual to decide except in the case of a contagion those decisions do directly impact others choices.

Not everyone was demanding this but the voices got quashed in the barrage

@StefanosHill well that’s part and parcel of living in a society isn’t it?

Ha what an excuse. Not really. It is part of living at a time when a Covid fear campaign is in full swing though.

Without that people wouldn’t have done it so I’d do away with the campaign.

What a horrible post!

My DS was in yr 1 when Covid hit, and they were just beginning to pick up in some ADHD indicators.

Because of COVID it’s taken until yr 4 to get any kind of diagnosis and still no EHCP in sight. Also didn’t get the support he should have got over the Covid heads because he wasn’t in school - and not considered vulnerable until well into the 2021 lockdown because it was early stages of identifying the Adhd.

He was stuck at home with me (single parent) working full time in a high pressure, public sector job which couldn’t be furloughed but wasn’t counted as “key”.

He’s very bright but has been stuck well behind his peers as a result and is only now beginning to make up ground. All of this would not have happened if he’d been in school.

But the public and the government all knew full well when flu season starts. The government also knew that a deadlier second wave was unavoidable, though I don't know to what extent the public had copped on to that.

And yes I did my very best to fit in as much homeschooling as humanly possible but homeschooling doesn’t really work for some children!

I don’t dispute that fear was a tool utilised by the government during Covid but I have to presume that you either don’t know or have forgotten the earliest days of Covid when the creation of that fear was a very societal led phenomenon. This was soon backed up by real life experience, again not led by government or even media.

There was never going to be a scenario where ‘without that’ existed I’m afraid.