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!

Also the pandemic response was extraordinary. The campaign used was too.

That’s not typical every day.

You both have a point. The pandemic policy response and campaigning were both extraordinary, but they were also each rooted in what had happened in the run up and late stage capitalism.

But that's the norm for those children. It's really not as simple as this. Generally speaking a traumatic event is something that's happened that's negative, drastic and out of the norm. In comparison to their everyday lives, and the lives they've gone back to, COVID wasn't a walk in the park and you are quite naive to say it was. Comparing it to 3rd world countries is making you look silly.

We haven’t used behaviour techniques any where near what was employed during Covid at any time.

Mass behaviour change on that level was new, for our lifetime anyway

It'll be recognised and studied

No you’re right - this thread isn’t the place for it!

I suppose my point is that it’s easy to get caught up in the criticism of the Covid response, there’s plenty of it, but hindsight can give us unrealistic perceptions of history and expectations of what we might do in a similar scenario in the future.

I believe that a lot of direct consequences of covid were unavoidable. I think a lot of human psychological responses and their timescales were also unavoidable. I also think we had one of the worst, incompetent cabinets we could have had to lead through it and the mess they have left behind has confused issues further alongside an immoral and digitally unregulated media control.

That's true.

21/22 was disrupted enough that exam boards didn’t run exams as normal in 2022 - they went ahead but some topics were removed and grade boundaries were lowered. I remember when Omicron was new there was a fair amount of speculation that schools might be closed at least briefly after the Christmas holidays (we just had a lot of absence in January/February ‘22 instead).

I can't work out how long op has had to bond and build relationships with the children she teaches if in the last 3.5 years (less the 49 weeks of holidays and training days won't count strikes) or so she's managed to work with 30 to 40 classes.

@Saschka sorry, I missed your comment on academic years. Yes you’re right, but in terms of actual length of time the lockdowns/social restrictions were in force it wasn’t two years (24 months). My dd missed her last term of preschool and started reception in 2020. By the end of reception we were looking forward to, and had, a relatively normal summer.

Im Finding more And more that things kids do is put down to covid.. Well the last 18m /2 years they've 'behaved.

One of dds school friends is massively overweight. 7st age 5. The mum says its down to lockdown! Wtaf

This post has really puzzled me. Only a very small proportion of UK kids have a nanny - most households are not that affluent. I'm not familiar with the killing the nanny phase - is that the toddler equivalent of the football violence that is so prevalent in the UK?

I don’t know if you are being deliberately obtuse, but “nanny” is another word for “grandmother” in the UK. Along with Nan, Gran, Granny, Grandma.

@Zimunya Nanny means grandmother in some parts if the UK, not a paid childcarer

@Zimunya what are you talking about? Football violence? Strange and goady post.

I wouldn’t say things got back to normal until restrictions around testing and isolating lifted. My (primary aged) kids were still being sent home from school with a sudden cough or temperature and not allowed back without a negative PCR back in December ‘21 (I feel like we spent most of that autumn at test centres…).

My children (now teens) weren’t particularly affected, apart from being a bit bored - no change there! We, for the most part, enjoyed the family time - but I totally accept that we were very lucky to all be at home and have no health issues. We did miss seeing our family that live far away, but we coped. Mental health and how people cope with any given situation varies so much from person to person. I certainly wouldn’t use covid as an excuse for bad behaviour. Parents need to take responsibility for that.

@Saschka and @PuttingDownRoots - well, every day is a school day. I genuinely didn't know that, and I thank you both for your explanations.

Google could have help you , option 2.

Mine were 2 and 3, turned 4 a week after the first lockdown. In terms of education no they didn't miss out on much. I worked part time so kept up with some numbers, letters, nursery rhymes and reading on my days off. The impact it had on them was they had massive amounts of screen time whether that was their dad's phone or TV as I worked 2 weekdays and he worked full time, I also worked at the weekend but he was able to fully supervise then. He was able to work from home and give them meals, keep an eye but they had very little interaction and that has impacted them negatively. On my days off it was very hard to drag them away from screens to do fun stuff. It takes time to undo that and it wasn't helped by successive lockdowns. They would have otherwise been at private nursery and preschool. It did affect their confidence in mixing with other kids and learning social skills.

It isn't a race to the bottom.

They had also lost their grandad prior and not seeing their gran upset them a lot. They also very much missed my parents and siblings. My eldest turned 4 and then 5 in lockdowns. She missed spending her day with friends and family. She was little and couldn't understand the bigger picture and found that upsetting.

“Google could have help you” - do you mean “helped”? But, hey, we all make mistakes.

do you want your pin of I corrected someone on their English after I mixed an English word with football violence?

ps English not my mother language so yeah I make loads of mistakes in English

I honestly have no idea what your post means. But, for the avoidance of doubt, all I was doing was pointing out that I made a mistake, and so did you. People make mistakes. That’s life.

You'd hope at least that the pandemic experience will make the current generation of UK children more resilient than the parents.

There’s a reason social science isn’t conducted like that!