To ask teachers and parents if Covid still has an impact on kids four years on

[Backtoit123]

Just that really. Four years on don’t still notice a major effect on children from the pandemic. I’ve heard teenagers say they feel a few years younger due to their ‘pandemic age’ but my DC are grown up and I don’t work in teaching so it’s hard to know. Do you recognise a major difference in kids now compared to kids of the same age before Covid? AIBU to ask if the pandemic still has left a legacy on children’s development?
YABU- no it doesn’t
YANBU- yes it does

I really think that the age of the children at the time makes a difference. Mine were young enough to still want to hang out with us but old enough to understand what was going on. I think teenagers had it the hardest to be honest.

We could turn the language regarding Covid around. Instead of talking about its negative impact- mental health, missed socialisation time, missed education. We could have turned it into a real positive- this is why education is so important, this is why it is important to be kind to everyone, this is why it is important to have aspiration, this is why we need collective responsibility and community. Instead, we use it as an excuse for every societal issue.

Honestly - not really. How can a teen say they don't feel their ‘real’ age, they don't know any different! A 14 year old doesn’t know what it’s like to be 14 until they are. I do know that teens can be very manipulative however- they are constantly being bombarded with social media telling everyone that their mental health is suffering, but it really isn’t, apart from the fact that some of them don’t want to go back to school because they found being at home all day too enjoyable.
I’d like to know if those that say children are still feeling the impact can explain exactly how.

I have a 5 year old ds who is unaffected because we continued to socialise him right through covid. But the kids his age who 'followed all the rules' will no doubt be impacted as toddlers need socialisation for healthy brain development and you really can't get that time back.

When ds was in reception over half the class needed speech and language intervention when pre-covid it was only just a few kids/ fewer than ten each year. That massive increase is no coincidence.

That's very naive. Whether one thinks lockdown was justified or not, the experience of it damaged a lot of things that can't be positive thought away. Acknowledging this isn't excuses, it's simply noticing what's happening around us.

How does turning it around help those children who have been impacted though? It's not an excuse it's a very reasonable explanation for the difficulties so many children have.

I honestly don’t think it has majorly impacted my own children. They were lucky to have online school and a teacher parent who wasn’t employed and could work with them. A happy home and no major difficulties. They even enjoyed lockdown.

The children I teach are year 3 and so lost some reception time and a bit of year 1 but were largely in school compared with everyone else as they were brought back sooner. Anyway, they seem behind where children would have been pre covid but maybe it’s the expectations of teachers and parents: I notice the expectations for behaviour and academic achievement are lower than they were.

This is so so sad. Your daughter, and so many others, deserved better. Their childhood was robbed unnecessarily.
To date I am scathing over anyone precious about their health for this very reason. I hope she enjoys her adolescence.

That's really interesting, I had the exact opposite conversation with my reception kids teacher who said this year seems to be a bit more of a return to normal in terms of socialisation and self care abilities. The biggest issue they have is speech and eating.

I work in a university - it's unwinding a little in that they aren't as immature as the past couple of years, but agree with other posts there is so little resilience. So many exceptional circumstances applications for things that are just, well, life as well as a very real increase in the numbers with mental health difficulties.

My DC are 5 and 3, the 3yo was a lockdown baby and I think her cohort are fine - it was hard on the parents but they were too young to miss the socialisation at that age. Eldest turned 2 right as the first lockdown hit and I do think her cohort will suffer - she's fine as her nursery reopened after 3 months and stayed open, but so many children must have missed out hugely on those early socialisation skills and that's not easy to catch up on.

I also think that. I was in a county with much, much harsher restrictions than the Uk and speaking to teacher friends and family they say kids have resumed life reasonably well. I really find it odd that people are still using this as some reason to anything now. We are years on from this now.

Some of the kids who are 4 or 5ish are a bit socially and emotionally behind in my experience. A really high number are presenting with neuro atypical behaviour compared to older years.

Interesting, I have heard that for babies who were learning to talk during the pandemic, it was a bit of a disaster speech wise. Parents in the home stressed and glued to work screens weren’t good speech models then when they were out in the world again all the adults wore masks. I'm sure I read that its been shown actually watching someone else's mouth forming words is a huge part of learning to speak.

My youngest dd was only 18months during first lockdown and she missed out on so much the older two did at her age - sleepovers and visits with grandparents, swimming pools, playdates, soft play, visiting the beach and castles. Even just going to the supermarket. Staying at home for as long as she did is not how a small child is supposed to live.

One impact is less pupils are expected to enter for triple science for a few years as it builds on what is covered in key stage 3 and this has been impacted by covid provision. No just the big when schoools were closed, but the bit after when they were open but everyone kept having to isolate and the younger years got more cover to concentrate on exam years.

I find it odd that anyone thinks 'years on' is relevant when we consider what a huge portion of a child's life that is. It's not like we've done anything effective to try and fix the issues, either.

My DD is in year 4, so missed chunks of reception and year 1 due to the lockdowns. I have heard that this cohort is among the worst affected as they missed a lot of the foundational work of key stage 1. My own DD has bounced back academically, although her maths is perhaps a bit behind where it should be. However she still suffers from anxiety which I’m convinced was exacerbated by having everything taken away from her overnight due to the lockdowns. It is slowly improving but it’s been a long road.

DS is year 5 and they have caught up with the work they missed. A lot of it is linked to how parents came out of lockdown ie still cautious so didn't allow socialising vs like us who had already had it so went out ASAP allowed friends round etc. It's also school based ours went for full time online lessons from after the supposed 2 week lockdown so they didn't miss much.

Lockdown shouldn't have happened and I think the older teens no this so it's having a mental effect

I agree as a parent as my 4&5 year old have been fine.
However this is why OP was asking teachers as the dynamic of teaching a large group is completely different to parenting.

Eldest DS (5) is thriving and went back to nursery after lockdown and had a good chunk there before school.
His teacher told me this year (we network) that her class this year are so different socially and resilience and behaviour wise to DS’s class and mainly because so many in his class didn’t go to nursery after lockdown.

So from what I’ve noticed and discussed it seems to be socially and emotionally for the younger ones and the older ones it’s academically as a well as mental health.

It is bloody complicated, but the underlying reason is because our utterly shit PM didn't take appropriate measures and then had to over react.

If we hadn't had mixed messaging about things like masks and transmission, we could have got by without school closures.

Also the Tories wanted to open pubs more than schools

@Rycbar I'd agree with this based on my experience having my youngest in Reception this year. It's been quite eye opening.

It's effected my kids very differently.

DD, neurotypical, aged 4 in 2020. She had a pretty frustrating lockdown. Spent a lot of it following me around whining and asking to play. Behaviour took a bit of a dip. She was the one I felt most guilty about at the time as I could see her needs were not quite being met. I signed up for the triple P course shortly afterwards. By the time a place came up, things had resolved by themselves and it all felt a bit irrelevant.
4 years on, It seems to have had no long term effect at all.

DS aged 7 in 2020, got his ASD diagnosis just after lockdown. Lockdown was his dream come true. Absolutely blossomed with home learning and never went back to school. We're now looking at getting him into a specialist unit for secondary after 4 years of home education.
He was more profoundly effected by lockdown but largely in a positive way.

I can well understand that behavioural problems and school refusal have become social issues. Because we navigated around those rocks as a family. I remember it feeling tough but manageable.
I imagine if we were already struggling it wouldn't have come out so positively.

Sorry this should say as a parent of young children as I think it’s different the older they were going through lockdown.

Y10 and Y11s seem to be quite badly hit behaviour/mental health wise.

Parents attitudes to attendance have really hit attendance rates in a bad way.

It wasn’t covid that was the problem, it was draconian lockdowns

My own child is the youngest in Y1 and they were too young in March 2020 to even realise life had changed. Nurseries also reopened in June 2020. They missed about 3 months of nursery but weren't even 2 so the time they missed was time many children aren't even in nursery if their parents don't work.

Agree with this for very young children. There was no way they could have even been aware of what was going on. However I do believe that seeing people in masks was quite spooky, and some may have absorbed the negative vibes from older adults or siblings in the same home.

DD was only 1 when it started and sailed through most of it. However we decided to delay nursery for a while and she started with 3 which was not great. You could clearly tell she missed out on a socialisation period (despite us having reasonably regular contact and play dates with neighbours and cousins). She really acted out, was unhappy and struggled finding friends.

We changed nurseries, she got a bit older and things improved dramatically. Thinking back to the pandemic feels almost a bit like a fever dream. Things that you can't fathom happened but where absolutely real. Even though it was immensely difficult dealing with a toddler during that time, I'm grateful that it was an age the after-effects have faded without any permanent mark in her memory.

I can't begin to imagine how it was for older children/teens who were fully able to understand what was going on but without the psychological skills to process it. I was hypochondriac as a kid and something like the pandemic would have broken me.