Did the benefits of lockdown outweigh the harm to children’s education?

[PoisedKhakiUser]

AIBU to ask whether the benefits of lockdown - saving lives and protecting health - outweighed the damage it did to children’s education and future life chances? I feel like kids lost out on so much during this time, and I wonder if the cost was too high.

Some children have benefitted from lockdown - my son has. It was a very welcome break from school, and being very young he really needed this time to mature a little and have a unstructured playtime. The work the school set took him an hour or so to do and he was free to play /read (and I am very certain that children start school way too early anyway). Among the eldest (GSCE years), the school was good and switched to online learning very quickly, so it did not affect their exam results and further chances for uni, etc. I do not see any negative consequences among their friends and year group.
But we were very privileged - we could work from home and could spend the time with our children (go for walks, play games) and help them when necessary.

So while for some children there probably were negative effects, it was not for all children.

I think you've hit the nail on the head! The current generation (alpha) are known as the "ipad kids". Maybe, along with the effects of covid, we are also starting to see the results of kids being brought up with constant advanced/instant tech such as phones and ipads from a very young age?

Sweden has excess death rates in school age children from the period where other countries were in lockdown. in that age group everywhere else death rates in children fell during lockdowns. They also have quite a problem with T1 diabetes in children but I suspect that might eventually be matched by the U.K.

Obviously things are different on an individual level to a population level.

Almost every child I know ( 13 plus years) has developed some kind of mental health condition over the lockdowns or just after. It will have been terrifying for the world to just close and all of their support systems removed overnight. For every child that had fun in the garden ( my youngest certainly enjoyed it) most started to really suffer the second time around. I am stunned that anyone can consider this to be a sacrifice worth making.

I work in mental health and the backlog has never ended. It just gets bigger.

The impact on their "education" has been neglible. The impact on their wellbeing exponential.

Though it didn't stop certain religions doing what they wanted to do. I had a blood test at the drop in clinic at the local hospital. Drove past one of their places of worship and there were hundreds of people hugging and kissing each other outside. Looked at the gov website for the number of cases in that area - it was extremely high compared to the neighbouring areas. This was end April 2020. This area continued to be high for at least another year.

Many people blamed these people for extending/additional lockdowns

Children might be low risk but it doesn’t mean that all the staff are who are needed to run a school. There are many people who were previously fit and healthy who now cannot work or can only work in a limited capacity as their health has been ruined by long Covid. They didn’t die but their lives are ruined anyway by it.

Ultimately, any decisions which were made about opening up services to children should also have weighed up potential harms to the adults who care for them in these settings. I remember going to work in a school during the second lockdown when schools were open to all and essentially being told to carry on as near normal as we can within the confines of our individual classrooms yet everywhere else people had to social distance and wear masks and most places were closed except supermarkets. The children I saw in school were very confused by these mixed messages.

The way the pandemic was handled in schools, the blame which is still put on teachers for children missing education and the contempt many people showed to them for government decisions to lockdown has caused many people to leave the education system and work elsewhere, myself included.

I hope that we all learn lessons from looking back at the past but what I urge you all to do is to speak out for the education system now. It is woefully underfunded and struggling to fill in the gaps left behind by other overstretched services which also struggled during the pandemic such as mental health and social work.

I think there is still a lot we don't know, particularly about the impact on mental health, and also on children with vulnerable home lives. I know that in a lot of areas child protection visits stopped happening, or children were just seen briefly through the window. Without eyes being on them at school we don't know what was going on at home.

I've read a number of adult safeguarding reviews and domestic homicide reviews where people slipped through the net during covid with deadly consequences. For example I know one case where a mentally unwell man killed his parent. He was no longer on his medication and no one followed up to check on him, his parents weren't consulted or offered carers assessments.

I think more will come out over time about the impact of covid, but in some ways we're pretending as a country that it never happened

A distant relative got T1 diabetes aged 8, a month after contracting covid. Her pancreas was affected by the virus.

She only got diagnosis as her mum works for the NHS - in the diabetic clinic as a nurse.

And worse was the BS about how teachers didn't want to go back in to the classroom.
So lets not pretend that it was just one way.

The case of Olga Freeman who murdered her disabled boy as she was struggling with him as school was closed is one of the things I remember about MH taking its toll on families https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-56025628

My 17 year old DS is still working through the impacts of lockdown. I really wish it hadn't happened.

And the BS continues.

No hate whatsoever here.

Parents' neighbours are teachers and took turns into going to school for teaching pupils with key workers' parents and those who have no room/facilities for home schooling - ie no computer etc.

As the lockdown went on, fewer kids turned up. Can't remember what happened after that.

I never agreed with the closing of schools and I think children were completely disregarded for the benefit of others.
People have selective memories because mumsnet was an astonishing bed of mass hysteria. I stopped coming on here by April 2020 and it wasn't until last year that I wanted to regularly be back on here again.

My children had a lovely lockdown experiences, it was a good time for us other than financial stresses and stress with DH work. But my background pre-children was childrens services and I knew it would be devastating for so many families. I feel a lot of adults were cowardly and selfish tbh. There are friends and extended family who I have distanced myself from ever since because seeing how they reacted changed how I saw them.

I also think some parents need to take responsibility. I get that it was a very hard situation and my children were all under 10 so I am aware it's completely different to having teens in lockdown but some people I know really didn't help their children's mental health. We had no news on, no TV or radio etc, I refused to wear a mask except for once in hospital when they would have refused my child medical care if I didn't. I didn't associate with people who wore masks. I didn't go loopy over hand washing, a little more than normal but nothing excessive. My eldest was showing OCD tendencies before 2020 so i was very aware of not doing anything to exacerbate this. I can't believe some poor children had to watch their parents hyperventilating while washing groceries and screaming at by passers on the street to keep their distance. I'll never forget some of the scenes I saw. We spent as much time out and about in nature around our village as we wished and I just laughed at the one walk a day rubbish my neighbours were grousing about. One neighbour called out he'd timed us and we'd been out walking for over two hours which wasn't allowed and he would report me, eldest DD worriedly asked what he meant and I said loudly 'don't worry darling he has dementia poor thing.' He always looks very embarrassed when he sees us now, I should think there are a lot of people that feel embarrassed. We still went to the beach, saw family as much as we liked, went in all the roped off parks etc as much as we liked. We had my parents, my brother, his wife and their baby, come and lock down with us. It was not without its stresses, but mostly a wonderful time. There is a housing estate near our home and we had lots of local children and parents come round for a play in the garden as we have a lot of space. DH and my dad did BBQs etc. Neighbours reported us but my conscience was clear, those families benefited a lot and we met people we wouldn't have otherwise.

I think for poor kids, with no big back garden with trampoline, swings etc, it must have been terrible and I'm sure childhood obesity rose a lot in that time.

We were talking about this today (teachers). The current year 10 and 11 are a worry. Behind on terms of effort and attainment. Next year's GCSE results will be disappointing.

Lordy, 'in' and 'years'. ☝️ Sorry for the typos. It's Friday and I'm on the wine.

Is that the 2020 or 2021 lockdown? I got the impression many more parents were much keener to have their DC in school second time round.

and yet that isn't teachers wanting to keep the schools closed.
What teachers wanted was mitigation in place so that schools could stay open.

And what we had was the opposite, as lockdown went on we had more pupils allowed to turn up.

I remember parents on here actually making their ill children isolate from them. So the child had to stay in their room for days and the parent would pass food to them. I mean! I told them that solitary confinement was a punishment in jail. Why wouldn’t you look after your ill child? People went crazy.

Yes that’s interesting. I’ve been told by a few teacher friends those year groups have issues. I have one in both! Fabulous

There were literally no benefits to lockdown other than controlling the spread of the virus. My mate killed himself because he was so lonely. Children didn't benefit they were in school, out of school. It was a shit show while all the politicians partied. Never again.

And anyone who started a thread about how miserable it was that schools weren't open was leapt on and accused of wanting to kill teachers. It was insane.

My favourite was that if you were struggling with homeschooling and work you shouldn’t have had dc because apparently you shouldn’t expect your dc to go to schools. Fucking batshit!

Scottish schools were shut much longer than elsewhere - March 2020 like everyone else but did not open until after the summer in mid-August, then closed again just before Christmas right through until after the Easter holidays mid-April.

Hugely inconsistent approach, my three got no video classes or online anything, just some optional worksheets and activities which were not marked and they got no feedback on. Parents were supposed to pick up the slack which is fine when it's phonics and a 5 year old, less fine when it's advanced higher chemistry and 17 year old.

Do I think it was worth it? No. Throughout the whole thing, Sturgeon prioritised football matches and drinking in pubs over getting schools open and there is just no excuse for it. Unforgiveable.