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

GCSE results last year were lower than predicted and socially I feel my teens are behind as they missed out on so much socialising during the years they would normally gain independence.

I’m not sure. I think it’s had an effect of course. However I think it lets the government off the hook for earlier austerity measures, underfunding of SEND, stopping of surestart etc.

I'm not a teacher but I volunteer with young people in secondary schools. The biggest difference I see is in communication skills and the ability to hold a conversation and make eye contact. Its now very refreshing to meet a 14yr old who can speak with some confidence. I think some children probably thrived in an online learning environment and for others it was just wrong in every way because they need the interaction.

Given how little resilience adults have shown themselves to have, it's hardly a surprise. The amount of kicking off and drama when an employer says they want people to return to the office, it stands to reason the same will be the case for children being in school.

My daughter is about to sit her GCSE’s in spring and was in year 7 when covid hit. At the time she was 100% impacted from missing classes, and she developed a deep fear of online learning. So much so a week of online lessons a couple of months ago I had to lie and say she was sick as she stopped eating. She does have some anxiety though even prior to covid but I think social anxiety has been made worse. Academically though she’s flying now but a lot of that is from work she does herself, I’m literally trying to stop her studying so much rather than having to nag. I think covid will always have an impact on her.

My eldest who was in GCsE year when covid hit had his exams pulled just like that and seeing how hard DD is working now reminds me how hard he took it. He got all great grades but will always have people say it was because his grades were handed to him on a plate. Hopefully the fact he smashed his A levels with top grades proves that. My work colleagues and I also say we all feel like our life was on hold for a couple of years

Huge issues in 5 & 6 year olds, speech and language issues, social communication issues, many more coming to school in nappies, mental health issues observable in the parents too.

Of course. Not just from lockdown, but from the bits in between lockdowns.

Teachers were so worried about how kids would cope back in school, we were possibly "too kind" to them. They are now finding it hard to adjust back towards "normal" rules.

They were "bubbled" away from older kids, so they didn't have role models, and they couldn't visualise past their exact age.

With some breathing space away from school, everyone started questioning everything that used to just be taken for granted (like school uniform, hair styles etc). Not necessarily a bad thing, but it leads to uncertainty in the short term at least. And it leads to a feeling that the adults aren't fully in charge, which is unsettling.

Then of course many kids had significant turmoil at home. And now there's a lot of financial uncertainty for many families. Most people's lives have changed significantly since 2019.

I'm a community worker. There is a marked difference between those whose parents stuck to the rules re socialisation, and those who didn't. I wish I hadn't.

I'll agree to that! Those who said fuck it to the rules definitely had the right idea in the long run, it's just a pity that anyone doing so at the time was shouted down and accused of being a granny killer, hindsight is a wonderful thing and I suspect many of those with children who have struggled since lockdowns wish they'd ignored the rules too.

What do you mean emotional wrecks? Can you give a sort of example as to when you would expect a 4 year old to show resilience and they don’t? I’m not being facetious, just curious as I have a 4 year old and I don’t actually know that many kids so wondering if she would fall into this description.

DS1 is now y8, so y4&5 were wiped out/ heavily affected... plus school dragged it out into y6 so they lost out on events and residentials for a bonus year. In his favour, he'd got his SEN diagnoses in 2019 before waiting lists went beserk. He's very bright but has some specific difficulties but academically caught up. He grudgingly functions through school, but would love to get away with living through a screen if he could get away with it. He's been taught at the age of 9-10 that socialising is some extraneous option in life despite the fact that I broke the law to take him and his friend out to play. Clearly it's not an important aspect in life if it can be prohibited.
I got him back into his extra-curriculars as soon as was viable.

DS2 is now y6 and just recovering this year. He lost half of y2 and chunks of y3. He's also had health issues through y4 & 5 that hit his attendance. Despite his brother's diagnoses, it's been a slog to get my concerns about his literacy difficulties taken seriously. We finally managed to get a dyslexia diagnosis in y5 and some support plus paying for a tutor this year- in comparison his brother was recieving targeted support from y2- just the point that DS lost access to education. There was online learning in y3- he sobbed on my lap daily throughout it, unable to follow the work and taunted by half the class being visible on screen. The other half of the class could be heard in our back garden during their break/ lunchtime just to rub it in. Being younger, he hadn't got a secure cluster of friends whose parents I could approach to ask about a spot of illegal socialising. It was y4 before he really had a best friend. That's just brought back a memory of him sobbing that he wanted best friends like he saw on the Pokémon cartoon. He started y3 unable to remember the people in his class, and the winter lockdown re-opened the split between children allowed to socialise or not.

I notice that DS2's class moved onto online communicating sooner than DS1's class. DS2 has just got a phone aged 10 and is one of the last if not the last. That's immediately opened up cans of worms, and I'm glad he wasn't younger, but it does reach a point that not having one becomes socially harmful anyway.

If your child isn't directly affected, that's great, but they are indirectly affected by children in their cohort who have lost education, have poor social skills etc. The toll of all the impacts of the lockdowns and social restrictions is then aggravated by the state of public services and support, that were already creaking and now seem to be beyond recovery. DS2's school attendance was affected until he saw a paediatric consultant. "Coz Covid" masked his underlying learning difficulties. Lack of assessment made him look average with weak spelling and masked his true profile of strengths, difficulties and masking. Keeping parents out of the school for 2½ years made it bloody difficult to have productive conversations to move the situation forwards.

My children are lucky that they've had security, time, parents that push and have resources. Many don't have those advantages and the lasting toll of the restrictions is far harder to heal.

Of course. For me the biggest thing is not being able to give things a go. ‘I can’t do it’ being said before absolutely everything without even trying. Giving up as soon as something is a bit difficult. We had children throwing pencils and books across the room because we’d asked them to complete a writing task (with support of course) and their confidence was so low they would
lash out. I sat in the corridor one day last year with a child repeatedly shouting no at me because I’d asked them to try and zip their coat themselves. And I emphasise the word try. That’s all I ask from my children - they try and still find it hard of course I’d step in. Another thing was the constant bickering. Little children are learning to share but the amount of ‘this person won’t do this or give me this’ was on another level! Someone brushing past them in the cloakroom would end up with them on the floor like they’d been shot saying they’d been pushed.

Sorry, I’ve just seen this, ignore my last post. DD’s play skills are great but she can be a little overwhelming to other children I’ve noticed - she wants to be in charge, come up with the game and assign their roles 😳 she also seems to joke a lot with them and it lands flat, and then she gets confused as to why they don’t find her ‘jokes’ funny (just usual 4 year old toilet humour). Not sure if it’s a her thing or a them thing?

Covid, no.
But lockdowns, yes definitely.
Ruined the last years of DD's relationship with DGM whose dementia got exponentially worse as everyone was too fearful to visit.
Made 1st and 2nd years of secondary school really hard in terms of friendships, as well as academic work (not that I cared about that by the end of it all - I just wanted her to be OK)
ADHD spiralled out of control but masking got better and better because of fewer social interactions to use up her energy. So we didn't see the issues. Dealing with the consequences now.
I can't believe I could see what a disaster it was going to be, for DM and DD and all the others like them, but I still complied. Will never forgive myself for being so pathetic.

Gosh. No she wouldn’t throw anything in class, she would be too scared of being told off. Like I said in my PP I had noticed that a lot of her classmates seem quite passive, and ‘flat’ - I don’t know many children really but assumed they would usually be laughing/giggling/chatting, but her peers seem to be quite quiet and in a low mood a lot of the time. At her school disco hardly any of them danced, there were a lot of kids sat at the edges crying because of the loud music. I was worried they were more typical and DD was a bit ‘much’ but maybe this is the effect of the pandemic that’s being discussed on here.

We were lucky in many respects, I was a 'key worker' in a school so mine got to go in throughout, albeit in a very odd school environment. So they didn't get as much teaching or socialising etc, but at least kept in the routine of being out and about.

Oh my word, yes.
MUCH more avoidant behaviour. Not going to lessons, walking away from staff, doing as they please and (the bit that scares me the most) no worry about consequences.
attendance has plummeted. Those who don’t want to come to school just don’t and by the time the EWOs get involved it’s too late to do anything and alternative provision costs and arm and a leg so kids are just staying at home in bed.
Massive lack of accountability from parents. Parents are angrier, kick off at schools far more readily.
definite decline in parent mental health, increase in financial problems, domestic violence, homelessness, food poverty.
I work in pastoral support in a secondary school and would say the vast majority of my workload is actually dealing with parents and family problems. It’s rare that I deal with anything that’s a solely school based issue anymore.

As a parent and GP I would say significantly. I have never seen so many issue since young people.
My younger DD was in yr 7 and they were mostly ignored while they concentrated on the exam years (which I get, I also have an older DD who was doing A levels).
But the younger ones missed so much of the socialisation and learning how to learn. They didnt learn usual resilience and coping skills.
My DD2 especially struggled thinking I would die every day I went to work. It has impacted her mental health hugely.
I actually don't think we had a choice but there is next to no consideration, understanding or support given to the covid children.

Yes. My 9 year old missed out on lots of foundational learning and he and his class are still behind in numeracy. His class are extremely disruptive and there seems to be all sorts of behavioural issues. He's fine from a behaviour perspective but not academic.

I work in child development so I kinda saw this coming.

My children were 10/14 at the time and my husband was a consultant working on a Covid ITU. At the beginning of the pandemic I took total responsibility for both children while he worked, including home educating my younger child because the material sent home from school was very poor. I was lucky in that my NHS job switched to ‘working from home.’

It was a hard time for us all, and I tried to shield both children from the worry that Dad may catch Covid and die, as he had pretty inadequate PPE initially. Nevertheless, they did worry, as you’d expect. I was asked to work on the hospital wards and I declined to do so, as having two parents on the front line would have been too much for my children. It was the right decision and I’d have given up my job rather than be forced into that.

The 14 year old is now at university and I really had to give her a crash course in life skills between 17-18. She still seems younger than her years (she’s like I’d expect a 16 year old to be). I’d have preferred she’d had a gap year but she was determined not to. The life skills have equipped her but her best friend was given no such crash course and has dropped out of university after a term, preferring to live at home.

My ten year old is now obviously fourteen. She’s had huge mental health issues and I’ve had to take a lot of extra care with her. She’s doing really well now after a great deal of effort on my part, but she’s still (I’d say) about 18 months behind emotionally.

Friends with adult children seem to think I have lots more freedom than I really do, they don’t understand that she’s quite emotionally reliant on me. I expect her to continue along a normal developmental trajectory now, so it might take me a bit longer to feel im getting my life back, but she’s stable, going to school, no longer self harming, and she’s got a great bunch of friends.

I have aged ten years in four years. The impact on parents is subtle and I think under- reported.

I feel so angry about the way it was so obvious from the very beginning that everything discussed here would happen, yet it was all brushed aside; and anybody who dared to speak up was instantly labelled a granny-murdering psychopath, including (and perhaps especially) on Mumsnet. Yet, here we are. I feel incandescent with rage about this every day. The only government I will consider voting for is one which admits that lockdowns caused massive damage; which will probably be none of them. Meanwhile, the inquiry (vomit) appears to be setting out to cement the narrative of "we should have locked down harder, faster, longer, and we will next time, because there will be a next time".

Covid itself hasn't left a lasting impact. The lockdowns absolutely have. We must never let that happen to our children again. Lockdowns were a choice not every government made.

@scalt
100% with you.

Distant memory for us I honestly don't think my kids have been impacted at all. Or me / DH. Lockdown was an inconvenience but I can't really understand all the drama about it.. not for adults and primary age kids at least.

I notice that a good portion of the younger secondary aged students I teach lack basic social skills. A big thing is them starting to talk to me and ask me questions when I am clearly talking to and looking at another person. They're not even going "Miss, miss, miss"; they just start speaking to me as though nobody else is there and I have to point out what they are doing.

My brain gets fried by the end of some lessons.

I have aged ten years in four years. The impact on parents is subtle and I think under- reported

Great point.