To think some people found lockdown really hard and it wasn't their fault

[elliejjtiny]

I don't normally think about this, it's something horrible that happened but it's over for us for the most part thank goodness (I appreciate there are people who are still struggling a lot).

It's that time of year so some people are saying 5 years ago we were doing xyz for the last time etc. Mil was going on about how great she found lockdown. Not a lot changed for her and FIL as they don't go out much and they are retired. Meanwhile I had 5 dc with SEN, one of whom licks everything and for us life changed dramatically for the worse. I was saying that it was nice that MIL enjoyed lockdown but for us it was extremely hard. She told me it was my fault and it would have been fun for us too if I had been more organised.

IMO for some people lockdown was awful.

i loved lockdown and i broke every rule.

Also any sort of media was incredibly toxic, I wasnt on this forum but I would imagine it being very similar to forums I was on at the time where you were essentially viewed as a mass murderer for going shopping or going into work with other people. I worked at the office at the time, I didnt work from home. I also went to the shops a lot and went out a lot walking, driving around, cycling, days out. This it seems was akin to murder.

I hated lockdown. I hated not being able to get out of the house like I normally would. I was/am a key worker, so I was still going to work, but it wasn't enough for me. I hate being stuck indoors.

I now have a 2 year old, and he's just like me. He needs to get out and about every day. I can imagine it being even harder if we had to do it again.

This is what those who made the absurd roolz (and disobeyed them) simply did not understand. It’s all very well for Saint Boris to say “just a little bit longer, it will be normalish by Christmas, I mean significant normality by Easter, I swear” from his extremely privileged lifestyle, while everybody else struggled, watching their livelihoods and children’s mental health crumbling before their very eyes.

Ditto billionaire Sunak saying “just hang in there” while people have to choose between eating and heating.

I also hated watching people die on a daily basis while at work.

I remember thinking this when we came out of Lockdown the first time. We had moved to the countryside so had fresh air, space, had furlough, no kids yet. We lost some holidays and pre booked things but it was great. Then we went back to london to tie up things with work and so many of our friends had been freelancers, in tiny flat shares. It destroyed peoples mental health.

I think we had to act drastically at the beginning when so much was an unknown and the people in my family who are NHS and worked up close with this stand by the lock downs. However, had there been a comprehensive report of what worked, what didnt, lessons for next time etc?

Of course for some it was awful! It was terrible for my DCs, their mental health went to pot. They were about to sit A levels and GCSEs respectively, had good social lives after a time of struggling with friendships a bit and were out every weekend partying etc. That all came to a complete halt and so they were left with nothing going on except what they could access online and in their heads. Not good.
For me personally, I didnt' find the first lockdown too bad. Was a relief not to commute to work, I handed in my notice when we got back. Weather was great and I sat in the garden a lot.
Financially we benefitted quite well as we were both still earning, not furloughed (DH runs his own business which he did remotely still) and I wfh but sporadically as my job involved a lot of meetings which just couldn't happen in lockdown.
Friendships definitely suffered though, but since then I've had more health issues so don't go out as much anyway. Would probably be even less affected now personally.

Everyone’s situation is different. I was retired, my husband was still working in the NHS as a hospital consultant, so
that was worrying, but he retired during it…we are all completely unaffected by it. Lockdown didn’t bother me at all.

My mil put a post on social media harping on about teens being "snowflakes". Just a week after I found my teen dd trying to hurt herself. Lockdown was a very very dark time for us. I still have awful flashbacks and it will stay with me forever.

Your MIL is an idiot.

From a former health care worker.

I was pretty agog at the expectation that parents should home school their children and school was basically cancelled.

And uni students? They pay the same money and got two years of probably half or less of proper learning?
That stuff was so messed up.

I personally found it alright as I have severe anxiety around crowds and could go outside feeling quite ok. Also I can't work so my livelihood wasn't messed with.

I also felt for people running small businesses that were supported by office workers. Cafes, pubs, bars, tailors, convenience stores etc in business districts all had to shut. Many permanently.

Well, she sucks.

my kids were 3 and 1. I was a SAHM and husband worked very long hours (not furloughed). The mix of lack of sleep and having to watch the kids constantly with not even a trip to the park to break up the day drove me to the very brink of my sanity and beyond. It took a very long time to recover. I cannot even begin to imagine what it must have been like with 5 children with SEN. How are you doing now?

I think it was difficult for most people OP.

Probably least affected would be financially stable adults with no care responsibilities who had the opportunity to work from home, or were retired. This may describe your PIL, and it is the position that me and DH were in but we recognised that we were lucky compared to so many people, and it's not something I could say we enjoyed or would want to repeat. I mean, yes it was nice being able to WFH and sit in the garden, but with a bit of thought, many people could have achieved some of the good parts outside of lockdown, given a bit of thought.

There was and still is a huge impact on anyone who was a child/young person, their parents, the elderly, those with health conditions, those living alone or in difficult relationships, those working in emergency services, health, care etc

I think it was a very mixed bag, and a lot depended on what your life usually looked like.
And I think the repercussions for many of us are still felt - job loss or reduction in income; business closures; missing education at critical points.

Op, your MIL lacks empathy if she cannot understand that her experience was not everyone’s experience. Try to ignore her.

I've posted this before under different usernames, but unless you gave birth to the miracle baby you spent years and multiple losses trying to have in March 2020, and you genuinely believed the world was going to end before anyone could hold your baby, and you paid for a birth announcement online because the register office shut down the day of your scheduled appointment and you thought the world might end without his birth being officially recorded anywhere, and the first time you brought him home from the hospital into a new world you stripped naked in the kitchen, boil washed all the clothes that had been in the hospital with you and Hibiscrubbed both yourself and your baby to get the deadly germs off, and no midwives or health visitors could come in, and your family had to look at him through the window, and you can't have another baby so that's your only experience of maternity after years of yearning and you feel so conflicted about the happiest time of your life also being the scariest, then you can't possibly understand.

I didn't mind it because we didn't obey it after the first round. I enjoyed time at home, I enjoyed cleaner air and a sense of calm.

I loved lockdown but I absolutely understand that other people had it much harder and some really struggled

ds1 and his partner really struggled mentally and 5 weeks in had to come home and live with us…the only thing I regret is that they didn’t tell me how hard it was for them and that I didn’t realise, i feel guilty that i was saying that they couldn’t just pop home (which they couldn’t! But i could have said they could come home to stay)

Don't let your idiotic MIL bully you, @elliejjtiny What was the response of your DH when your MIL was saying those prattish things?

It wasn’t horrific, I acknowledge we were lucky in that I was a sahm and my kids were 2 and 4, so getting easier to manage and not really aware of what was going on, and I didn’t need to bother with online school or anything. And we had a house with a garden and DH working from home.

It wasn’t great either though. Keeping the kids quiet so DH could work, and basically just alone at home with them all day every day from 9-5. Previously I had had a good routine of friends and activities to keep me sane.

My in-laws had a great time. Retired and chilling in the garden. I don’t remember the time fondly at all!

Oh and your MIL is an idiot

100 percent this. Even if it suited someone personally, they should shut up about that- because the lockdowns gave British society the biggest kicking since the end of WW2. The OP’s mother in law is clearly someone who fails to see the big picture.

I think some people's lifestyles and personalities were more suited to lockdown. Some people even enjoyed having it to take it easy , especially if they didn't have extra worries(financial, having to work and homeschool, caring responsibilities etc.) .

That doesn't mean that people who struggled were weak or disorganised or that in was in any way , shape or form their fault. Thinking that is just stupid and narrow minded.

My nearly 12yo is excited for her birthday and counting the days.

After a rough few years, especially around March as her birthday is the time the world changed, she's stopping seeing her birthday as a bad day.

She was fine in first lockdown. It was the subsequent ones, and the isolation periods etc which messed with her mind. She basically lost trust in people as people could disappear overnight.

Some people loved it, some people tolerated it, some loathed it.

My SEN son loved it as he always hated leaving the house anyway. DH loved it, working from home suits him as he hates mixing with people unless he knows them very well and he worked from home a bit anyway before lockdown. I tolerated it as I had to go to work anyway as school was still open for vulnerable children but missed our DD who lives on her own a few hundred miles away.

It was a very difficult time for a lot of people. I know people who died because of Covid. I know people who couldn’t say goodbye to dying relatives because of lockdowns. I know people who couldn’t go to loved ones funerals because of lockdowns.

“Being more organised” wouldn’t have changed things really.