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!

A good point

i live with a teacher and he has opinions on what impact lockdown has had on children he teaches, as well as other factors like underfunding of schools, parenting, cost of living etc. but he isn’t arrogant enough to rule out any one cause just because he publicly asked a bunch of children if something had negatively affected them and they all said no

@orangeleavesinautumn how did your dcs get on during lockdown? All my three were absolutely fine but I’m able to understand many were not . Also tbh I didn’t stop going to shops with them or get them to distance or wear masks (unless around older ppl)
I’m also a teacher , I’ve worked in different countries , what countries have you worked in where dcs live in effectively lockdown ? I’m in Ireland the rules of the pandemic lasted much , much longer here and were quite frankly bonkers tbh, two of my dcs missed almost a year and half of school or actually maybe more. It didn’t have any effect on them
whatsoever tbh and we loved spending time in nature and I certainly did not stick to 5km limit in Ireland which was hugely controlling and against people’s civil rights.
Theres a huge knock-on effect of lockdowns which have effected kids- so many children in awful home situations going massively under the radar, even those in ok situations there was a lot of stress, I know a few adults who became very anxious and controlling (“normal” people who have children in their charge), the knock-on effects of loss of income , people not being diagnosed with illnesses as therefore if many of these effected people have children there was huge stress in the house. Can you not see that ? My sister works in paediatrics and saw a big increase of mental health issues with young people and no the parents weren’t all the types to be hamming it up . It’s very dismissive and honestly patronising to say what you say. Were your children ok op?

I suspect it depends mainly on the age of the children, but I personally believe it was totally horrific;
It wasn't only schools that closed, but also the various out of school activities, such as Brownies, Cubs, ballet lessons, junior football clubs, swimming lessons. Those are just an example, but there are loads more.
Then there are play dates - Banned; Also our local park was closed and locked. This may depend on the age of the child of course. An older child (teenager) may already spend a lot of time on social media, and could maybe work much more independently. However, younger children definitely need proper teaching time. Of course I would guess that most parents would try to help and teach as much as they could (all the time, while working from home?). But it is also the social time that is most important.
Many families live in small flats, and with parks closed, were stuck at home most of the day (I even saw some primary aged DC, having to wait in the socially distanced car park, where everyone was queueing to get into the supermarket. In otherwords, shopping was considered a single person activity, and children not expected to go as well).
This may have been better for children if they had siblings to interact with, but what about only children?
Then of course, there were the usual 'rights of passage' events, that children would have missed, such as final day of term or school, school prom, discos, family weddings, graduations, school trips, outings, (remember all museums art galleries, gyms, swimming baths were all closed).
The rule of 6 did not allow for two average sized families to meet up (ie 2 parents with 2 children).
So for some families, where there are siblings, a large garden, and maybe parents who were furloughed rather than working from home, then some parents could have provided an inspirational time for them, but for the majority, this would not be the case.

Totally agree. The restrictions that were suddenly forced upon them, the almost total lack of state schooling ( in my area of Scotland anyway), the lack of a coherent plan for their further development - totally wrong.

Op, it’s shocking that children in some other countries are denied education, and the basic human rights that ours are, but we are not aiming at lowest common denominator in nurturing our future adults.

They were denied the opportunity to play and interact with other children. No amount of parental love and availability makes up for that and it is something children in under developed countries do get to do in spades. The lack of social and emotional development and impact on mental health (even of very young children) is significant.

I'm not reading all of your post; as the parent of a child who suffered mental health issues as a result of covid I find it upsetting and dismissive. My dd is clever, fairly privileged, stable family background etc and has a similar group of friends. From speaking to her school mental health support workers 50% of my dcs peers - all girls - suffered with some sort of mental health issue when everything went back to normal. Eating disorders, self harm, social anxiety, ocd, agoraphobia, all during GCSEs, have all be directly attributed to covid experiences. During lockdown they were fine, more than fine, but when everything went back to normal the problems started. Please don't tell me everything was fine because we live in the UK. Unless you have a child who suffered with mental health issues as a result of lockdown you have no idea, and certainly no right to be so dismissive. It wasn't about money, access to education, being in a comfortable home with a bg garden and a good Internet access, it was about access to people - friends, family - and the fear that giving your grandmother or vulnerable friend a hug could kill her.

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.

Agree with the OP that the impact was a lot less than in many other places.

I don’t think you’ve actually thought this through OP (being generous).

is the UK a lucky country in many, many ways? Absolutely. Is that an invisible shield against trauma? No, it isn’t. Trauma happens on a scale and is relative to the individuals personal experience. It’s not so much about the experience as the consequence. I should think (hope) that as a teacher you understand that.

whatever kind of society a child lives in , upheavals to the operation and function of that society affect children deeply. From the youngest to the eldest, our society suspended all the opportunities we expect our children to partake in and learn how to function within our boundaries. It wasn’t a permanent change and now children are expected to slot back into our expectations after missing crucial lessons on how to do that.

That’s lost now and making that up to an age group who simply aren’t mature enough to rationalise the shift themselves requires support, guidance and patience. Telling them they’re privileged means fuck all to your average school aged child because experience is relative and they don’t have the life experience to draw on to understand the realities of that statement. In many, many ways that’s a good thing and is a symptom of a very good life but it’s really distasteful to paint a whole cohort as precious and dramatic because the society we’ve created as their primary experience of existence doesn’t impart the ability to truly empathise with those in worse situations and then use that as a yardstick to measure their resilience.

My DD loved the lockdowns, she was 6, we shielded her from the news and explained what was happening in an age appropriate way, she loved us being at home (incl her grandma), baking and going for walks. We were able to help her with her learning

But, she’s a NT, resilient kid, who’s had a healthy and stable childhood, nice house, etc. She’s bright and wasn’t impacted by her lack of schooling and she was young at the time.

Many, many children don’t have these privileges, for many, school is their safe and reliable place, ther home life is not happy nor safe, for whatever reason. Parents had to go out and be frontline NHS workers, with all of the stress that causes (my friend was separated from her child as child is CEV and friend was a frontline worker, that was very traumatic for the child and mother).

I can begin to imagine the impact on teens. Another friend’s son’s GCSEs were impacted, he struggled without social interaction with peers and became anxious and depressed

I could go on and on…

Very true op. But we do love to moan. And we love to blame shift (see thread yesterday about French children sitting nicely at the table in restaurants, plenty of posters stating all kinds of nonsense when it just comes down to parenting).

In Spain kids didn't leave their houses for weeks, as many more live in apartments to the U.K. that meant not going outside. In france they had a distance cap how far you could go ... but in many countries there is never extra curricular activities, it's too dangerous to play out and the kids study all evening with poor light as their ticket out of poverty - this is always not due to covid! These poor kids (in both sense of the word) seem to have less issues then our privileged ones

It's all relative though every single person experienced lock down differently.
I imagine as a child if you had a parent who worked in a hospital you didn't have an easy ride.
We came through unharmed from covid but mentally I think we will be seeing the results of that for years to come.

Oh yes yes....isolation, no proper education, no socialising and watching their dad being put in an ambulance hardly breathing. No suffering at all.
Maybe don't generalise as everyones experience was individual.

It seems staggeringly naive to believe such a huge disruption to everyday life along with all the uncertainty in the initial lockdown about how bad covid might be and the uncertainty following it on when restrictions would end won’t have had a fairly significant impact on lots of people’s mental health. I guess as a child if you are relatively introverted, if you live in a decent sized home with some accessible outdoor space, if your family have the money to fund whatever is needed to make schooling remotely work, if you had a SAHP or a furloughed parent who actually got 80% of their usual income and could manage fine on that so they were not stressing out about finances & they were a generally engaged parent, you maybe had a sibling or two of a broadly similar age with similar interests and you were shielded from the don’t kill your granny messaging and they didn’t lose close relatives without being able to see them then it’s reasonable to expect you’d do ok. The more of those that aren’t true the less likely you’d be ok and then you have the kids who have actively abusive or wholly negligent parents, who are young carers, who are SEN etc that have even more to contend with.

I am fully aware we were a lot luckier than other people. Our family and close friends were all ok. No one ended up in hospital with covid or anything else. We have a large house with a small garden, a good income, a friendly neighbourhood where people helped each other out (eg getting food for each other, passing on various toys, games, jigsaws etc to give kids and adults new stuff to do, grandparents who bubbled with us to help in second lockdown, kids close in age with similar interests. We have no SEN needs to contend with and the kids were both at a primary school that was very child focused and did their best to have the kids in and having normal school experiences in so far as was possible. I still think it’s had an impact on them spending weeks on end basically stuck in the house/garden while both their parents were stressed out juggling full time work, full time childcare and trying to keep them getting through the material sent home from school. Whether you loved or hated lockdowns it’s still an adjustment transitioning back to more normal life and some people (& children) will find that harder than others

Also saying how swaths of a society like you mentioned in countries like China live like this a lot and are absolutely fine ; how can you make this statement , how do you know? I agree asking a whole class how did they get on is so general , my dcs often will say what the teacher wants them
to say. Do you have dcs? One huge thing I’ve learned being a parent and a teacher is how many dcs are completely different in the classroom vs the home. I cringed so much when I saw posts from teachers saying “now you know what a hard job it is teaching ..” I can easily manage a class of 30 teenagers but I know I’ll find my three teenagers challenging. Do you get what I mean ? You don’t really see the real people in your classroom most of the time.

I think YABU you’re saying that some children worldwide have a different standard of education / living and social life to children in the UK and therefore British children weren’t traumatised by having to lead that life for a couple of years.
Could you not counteract your own argument then by saying it would be more traumatising as a UK child to have your complete education and social life changed?
Surely by your comparison the children you’re comparing UK children to had an easier time with lockdown as it was closer to their ‘norm’ and therefore not as traumatic?
I think you’re trying to compare apples to oranges and you can’t.
I think COVID was traumatic for everyone everywhere especially at the start.
No one could escape the daily death count, daily briefings and general scare mongering and yes I would say any person / child in any country would be affected by that as it was constant and everyone was locked down.
Added to that the rates of domestic abuse and child abuse increased during lockdown and the people experiencing this were literally locked down at home Id say there was a lot for children to be traumatised about and now they’re facing their trauma as children who have missed out on two years of social development with their friends.
Added to that there were also children who were already traumatised, struggling with anxiety and mental health difficulties before lockdown who didn’t have access to face to face support during that period who are trying to manage that now as well as it being generally isolating and terrifying for most people.

Have you got your own kids OP, or do you just teach other people's and hand them back to their full time carers after a few hours of the day?

How could you possibly know?

We don't actually get to decide what impacts others. Situations affects different people differently. Can I suggest you educate yourself on trauma before you proclaim because others have it worse British children can't be traumatised.

Also you asked students where you are? Let me guess nice middle class area with lots of supportive parents?

My own children were not hugely affected as they had a lovely supportive home. Some of the students in the secondary school I worked in after covid spoke of not knowing if they would get food or trying to do their school work via a small telephone screen.

They were hugely affected.

Different demographic to what my children are. Yet they were affected too.

Again we don't get to decide what others find traumatic.

I'm still astonished that long-term isolation and desocialisation of children, for the first time in human history, was not considered a vastly dangerous and unethical experiment

This.

Right. Because teenagers are so good at admitting that they are struggling/finding things difficult to an unsympathetic teacher in front of an entire class of their peers.

Everyone will have a different take on this.

I had one child who didn't get to take the GCSEs she'd worked so hard for, another who didn't finish year 6 or start year 7

All 3 kids reacted differently and have all been affected in some way.

I'm a teacher. Some of my students were stuck 24/,7 in abusive homes trying to do their school work on a shared laptop (if they had one at all) and leek up with children who had much better advantages being frightened all day long.

How? As we saw, no amount of lockdowns actually stopped it. Every time we came out of a lockdown it came back. No country in the world actually fixed the problem. Even Australia and China (who many posters said we should be following with their even stricter/longer lockdowns). Even if we'd have locked down sooner, we may have come out sooner, but we'd still have been back in again sooner! No early lockdown would have sorted out Delta or whatever the second lockdown was. Every country saw the same thing play out. Yes some had less deaths as they had more restrictions. But none got away with shorter lockdowns with no restrictions.

Considering my DD is still having mental health issues from lockdown, I find it worrying that she may end up with a teacher with views such as yours. Maybe they’ll tell her how good she had it and how bad other countries had it.

but in many countries there is never extra curricular activities, it's too dangerous to play out and the kids study all evening with poor light as their ticket out of poverty - this is always not due to covid! These poor kids (in both sense of the word) seem to have less issues then our privileged ones

the obvious factor to me there is consistency. Poverty and danger are threats faced by children in many countries, it’s bloody awful and I think that’s almost universally recognised.

However, consistency in maintaining a child’s view of the world and their ability to navigate it contributes massively to resilience. If you took the child you describe out of that country for 18 months and then sent them back how do you think their resilience to navigate their society would fare?

At the time I thought it was horrific and I was sad for the children as they were missing out on so much. But now I look back and it wasn't so bad and there were actually some positives. I hear people use lockdown baby quite a lot as reasons for this, that and the other. I had one child who had her 1st 2 years of school disrupted and 1 genuine lockdown baby as she was born at the very start of covid and they are both absolutely fine, in fact thriving.