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’m not saying language alone fixes the issues because many of the issues began way before Covid. It may be a contributing factor but it is not the only reason we are seeing a mental health crisis, poor attendance and behaviour in schools, poor socialisation or delayed development.

There is too much emphasis on Covid. We are seeing it as a before and after when it is far more complex than that. I do think the language we use with our young people frames their mindset. If they hear from a young age Covid caused this, they fell behind in Covid, Covid has made them hate school, Covid has caused anxiety then it isn’t helping anyone.

Research needs to be done into the correlation between lockdowns and changes in online behaviour from children. In the absence of being allowed to play with other children and interact in person, children learned to communicate online.
Some had more supervision and monitoring than others around what they were able to access and continue to access now.

YANBU. I've working in primary schools since 2020 and you can see a huge difference in children, particularly those who missed their time in Nursery as a result of it. Their attention spans are noticeably shorter and I think socially they're less mature than they would have otherwise been.

Massively still impacted. Not all children by any means but the current 8-10 year old have some large gaps - especially in English. Spelling is atrocious! There are also high levels of anxiety and this is true of the parents too.

I wonder if that bubble has passed now. Current Y10s were in primary at the start of COVID and Y7 in second lockdown so this year's Y9s taking their options should be ok. Unless it is about MH and not managing a more demanding workload, rather than missed lessons.

I do think the kids who were in KS3 took a much harder hit than we recognised at the time. Old enough to manage at home without that much supervision but isolated at home for the massive explosion in emotional and social development that happens in Y8/9.

I wonder how children in Spain have been impacted as they had more draconian measures to start with, with children not even being allowed outside

Massive effect still now. In all the years.

My eldest was born in late 2021. I think he's too young for the lack of socialisation to have affected him - by the time he was 6 months old, most groups around me were back up and running.

However, being pregnant during the pandemic caused me an enormous deal of stress and poor mental health during pregnancy and for about 6 months postpartum. I am totally convinced that the poor mental health I suffered during pregnancy and the first portion of my baby's life has impacted him. He's a very anxious soul, he's just fearful of the whole world.

We are expecting this years 11 and next year 11s to sit less triple science across a number of schools in my area. Them it should be better.

I think people underestimate what school was like when it was open but self isolation rules were in place when they think about the impact.

It also doesn't help there is a teacher shortage for some subjects which just carries the issue on.

When it comes to younger children, currently aged 4-6, I'm confused as to why teachers keep blaming covid for things. My DC had no idea what was going on and nursery was only closed for 3 months. As far as my child was concerned it was business as usual. I would think that older children would be more impacted.

Yes all of mine socially behind where they should be for their age and their peers are the same. I just think of them all as a year younger than they are.

Academically it has depended on exact age.

One of mine was in y7/ y8 during covid too. I think this age was hit very hard. Just starting to get to grips with secondary school when it all shut down. Start all over again in y8 for the same to happen again after a term. So they essentially started secondary for the third time again in year 9. Now they’re taking GCSE’s having missed out on much of their first two years because they were bottom of the priority list as teachers were focusing on the more pressing needs of the older years (though they ended up not even taking exams). Mine definitely has a level of anxiety that I don’t think would be there without the covid years.

Your child was only out of circulation for 3 months, Fluffyc1ouds. That's not everyone's experience.

I'm a school governor and the teachers are seeing the impact right down to Reception - the youngest of those children would have been 6 months old when lockdown began. Primarily, it's showing itself as anxiety and delayed or unclear speech. The year following that seem to be less impacted, they think.

My DD is Y11. Was Y7 at the beginning of pandemic.

She's struggling socially and desperately trying to cling to childhood because she feels she missed so much. She didn't do the trips and activities Y7 and Y8 traditionally do to encourage their independence. Guides, dance class etc stopped too, their social skills, team playing, fitness was taken away.

But she's doing OK academically.

One effect that irritates me is that she is very musical. Enjoys playing instruments. Her school didn't allow any instrument playing from the start of the pandemic right through to when she finished Y9. As a consequence, she hasn't done GCSE music. Exactly the same with food tech - she didn't do a single practical lesson at KS3. Both subjects she loved and would have done well at GCSE.

She can enjoy both as hobbies at home. But if they're important enough to be on the compulsory curriculum, they should have been taught.

I’m struggling to counteract the damage. Every time I think I’ve made progress, something else comes up. It had a huge impact on their motivation, social lives, social development, interests in non-online things, expectations of themselves around doing schoolwork, so much damage. I feel upset when I think of how things could have turned out differently.

Schools were closed so much because
primary age never wore maks in uk. ( other countries did and had kids in more during the pandemic)

Current y3 missed jan-mar 21 so over 1/6 of reception
And mar -jun+ nursery

Y4 mar-jun? Missed Reception 2020
And jan-mar 8w y1

Y2 missed no school but some nursery possibly

Certainly my dc also missed several more weeks of whole class isolations.
Plus dc2 reception class missed 30+ min per day thw whole year -- this works out as weeks less altogether

In terms of younger year groups

the nhs was frankly quite crap (locally) 8years ago and dc i know of werent getting s&l etc it was all wait and see. Kids still in 2015 started school with severe issue related to asd one repeated reception then moved to a special school. The other repeated got a diagnosis in maybe y2 and has moved to special school for secondary.

Children struggling in reception 2016 got bounced bacl from diagnosis and now with the waot lists have been waiting 2yrs after peads referral.

Our school in 2020 reception said they had issues with speech - all the kids i knew were completely fine ( but there was a huge increase in bilingual kids at this school that year from 1/60 say to maybe 8 or 9. )
The recovery curriculum didnt help as delayed the start of usual work.

By sept 2020 people were taking kids to park meet ups and kids were playing together.

Some kids are more passive than others which impacts language aquisition.
My dc1 asd/adhd referral was so 'naughty' into absolutely everything her language was pretty amazing by 18m. And always clear. She demanded constant interaction.
A boy born that same week spoke several month later would sit in front of tv placidly.
But also his parents put him to bed very early - before his dad got home so missing all that interaction. Basically loads of factors including infections etc.

Blaming s&l issues in 4yo on covid may mean fewer interventions are made to stop following years getting even worse.

Yabu, there is no difference in my kids to precovid. Dsd13 ds1 5 and ds2 2. Ds1 had no disruption to nursery, had a speech issue which was due to hearing and has been corrected. Plays great with others, doing very well in reception. Dsd13 also doing very well in secondary, happy to go and doesn't get in trouble. School has never been optional. Plays on anxiety like a lot of her peers, I.e uses it to get out of things she doesn't wanna do. We made sure she did school work during lockdown, not full 9-3 buy still kept the routine going so once schools opened it wasn't a huge change. I think that's a huge issue, people claim kids saw lockdown as school being optional but that's completely down to shitty parenting during that time and not the lockdowns and schools themselves.

I think it's impossible for it not to have had an effect on children. They effectively lost a year of education. I don't think on an individual level my child's social skills suffered, but he would certainly be further ahead with maths and english if he hadn't missed that period of schooling, and being forced to home school certainly raised both our stress levels and made us miserable at the time. He also missed seeing his friends terribly.

Given the total lack of interest and significant funding needed to make up this lost time, these kids are all going to be behind in at least one area, whether it's socially or academically. The ongoing reduction in funding just exacerbates these issues.

@MrsMiddleMother not always shitty parenting though. We were lucky in respect of homeschooling as we had a teenager who loved remote learning and attended every lesson and did all the work required, and needed no supervision.

Parents who suddenly had to WFH and supervise homeschooling younger children who would need supervision/help had a much harder time of it than we did as parents.

If we had discouraged DS to do his school work, when he was keen to do it, then we would have been shitty parents. Parents trying to juggle work and schooling younger children not so.

A consequence of the lockdown was that some children who would normally do well at school and have supportive parents helping with reading etc, suddenly fell behind if those parents were the one juggling everything at home, so the gap between attainment in cohorts grew but also children who wouldn't normally have been at the lower end of the scale ended up there.

DD2 is in Y4 and to be quite honest her class are a bunch of weirdos with no social skills. They cannot get on with each other in a group at all. The other 3 classes are the same by all accounts. Academically it is hard to know.

DD1 is Y6 and she's absolutely fine, they were old enough to have learned some social skills but young enough to bounce back afterwards.

@Tarantella6 DS was in a class like that in Primary school and that was well before the pandemic!

I have 3 DCs: 7, 5 & 1 (post covid baby).

I don't think that there has been an impact on my family. I am self employed and worked from home anyway. If anything, home schooling and 1-1 learning helped the eldest.

Cousins who are the same age are also fine.

However it has been hard on a teenage acquantaince. She suffers from social anxiety and self-harming. Her mother blames covid but who knows really.

I had a pretty normal teenage girl. She hated the isolation and the homeschooling. She became anxious as she was left alone with her thoughts and a screen during the day. It affected her eating and mental health, and she has never been the same since.

I feel so angry at how long schools were shut for. We are a pretty robust family and lived life as ‘normally’ as we could whilst keeping to the rules, but the effect of schools being shut left its mark.

Yes. My son was in reception when lockdown happened, he's year 4 now and him and the majority of his peers are so much more immature and behind compared to how kids normally are in year 4

My year 3 DD seems fine academically but her and her peers seems behind socially to me. They seem unable to negotiate what they are going to play without there being an argument or tears or both. There is no ability to compromise.

My year 8 DD is now on the waiting list for an ASD assessment. We had suspicions before lockdown although that time really changed how she felt about school and how she interacted with her peers. She changed schools during that time (3 tier system so lower to middle) so its really impossible to separate the school change, lockdown and the ASD on how she is but my feeling is that it has had an effect.