To not understand why people go on about the impact of Covid lockdown on children

[PrunellaModularis]

It comes up all the time on MN and I don't get it.

They had several months off school, couldn"t see their friends or grandparents or do clubs. Then lockdown ended, back to school, friends, grandparents and clubs.

How come people say "because Covid" to explain young people's behaviour.

Disclaimer: I'm not talking abouy kids in abusive families.

Ignore poll - don't know how to disable it!

So if not exposing your child to 24 hr news makes me Mary Poppins, I'll take that.

There are papers and studies published on this by reputable institutions. If you were truly interested, rather than trying to goad people who have suffered, or whose children have suffered in ways you are apparently unable or unwilling to comprehend, surely you would search those out?

My vote is: here to take shots at other mums and stir shit.

The difficulty was younger ones could be kept in the dark and limits with their exposure, my son was Year4 so aged 9 and fully able to understand and when school went into online learning it became even more difficult to limit.

My mum grew up in the war. Her education was completely disrupted, she was evacuated and when it was all over she had a ‘nervous breakdown’ as they called it then. She said, latterly, that she didn’t want to grow up, probably because she didn’t have a proper childhood. Thankfully after a stay in a psychiatric hospital she didn’t have a recurrence of her MH, but obviously it affected her. I’m sure many people were scarred by ww2.

The poor mh violence/online abuse in the UK was climbing waaay before covid hit.

@IwishIcouldconfess There were billboard advertisments in the streets! I walked last one for months on the way to work that depcited a very sick looking woman on a ventilator with the line "look her in the eyes and tell her you will never bend the rules".

Children definitely had a raw deal in 2020/2021 but to say most or even many children are still suffering the effects of COVID lockdowns 5 years later is a bit of a reach.

I wasn’t in the UK for Covid and my kids didn’t step inside a classroom for a full year and even then it was part-time. And they had very very limited social contact with peers for that whole year. It was awful for my DS and he had a really difficult time. Would I say he is still affected by it now? No. He was 9. As soon as he was back into the routine of normal life he started thriving again.

Of course some children / teens have ongoing impact through long covid.
And presumably there are a lot of kids in year R / year 1 who are struggling in various ways because of increased screen time and limited normal social opportunities at a formative age.

But for older kids we’ve had close to 5 years of relative normality with ample opportunity to close some of those gaps. I’m not sure if we can still link lower attainment or social / mental health issues exclusively to Covid anymore.

Yes, he was, he was poorly. But, I didn’t really expect him to die because hospitals discharged patients without testing, and he would have to die alone.

On the day Johnson held a party. Followed by a restricted funeral for 10 people. 🤷‍♀️

My fully vaccinated DH, I did not expect to die in 2023.

But, I still had to just get on with it. All you can do. 😉

Well, indeed. I didn’t mind it on a personal level this isn’t corrrct. My youngest sat his A levels. No cohort missed both exams.

Well, they had an impact on various people - those that lived alone, those that were vulnerable etc.

The whole thing was handled badly - as the enquiry has shown. I don't think they’d get away with lockdown again, now we know the cost in all ways, and how much we were conned.

My son was 12, did online learning, I worked on the front line, but I still limited what he was exposed to etc .

Was badly handled because no one had experience of it before, the world hadn't seen anything like it.

You are not alone.
Some children coped better than others.
I remember being very struck by several friends telling me how badly their children were coping with lockdown and the loss of their busy happy lives.
These were the children of very happily married couples, lovely affluent homes with every advantage.
When my teacher friend who worked in a school with a very mixed socio economic grouping where some children lived in very tough situations, it really helped me understand how hard it must be for them.

I had a son at university who hated online lectures and I consider him amazing to this day that he went on to ace a very tough degree.

The attrition rate in universities as a result of Covid is still an issue I believe.
It's not spoken about, but it is an issue.
It derailed so many young lives.

I'm so glad your son is better.
Mine had a wobble for a year after he finished his degree, burnout, combined with a broken heart.
It was such a worry.
He too is very well again, thank god.🙏

There will be various reasons, but one of my colleagues was so anxious about her son catching coved she did not leave the house with him for months. She was even scared to take him to the park in a pram incase he reached out and touched something. No way has that level of anxiety not effected her child. Its sad as she is a lovely person.

My 19 year old’s life was effectively stopped the moment we went into lockdown. We are still dealing with the fallout on a daily basis. She never went back to school, her bad mental health was not caused by the lockdown but deeply exacerbated by it - and there was no help to be found. Her education was destroyed, her battle with her mental health continues and the impact on our family unit has been profound. I am ANGRY beyond words and I am devastated at what this has done to my beautiful DD.

To all PPs suffering similarly, you have my heartfelt understanding and sympathy 💐

But, hey! It was just “a few months off of school” so I guess we’ll stop “going on about it” 🙄

It wasn't a few weeks or even a few months, it was 2 years of stopping and starting, closing and opening schools, followed by a long period of social distancing measures.

Surely you can see that learning that contact with all other people (including extended family) is dangerous in your formative years, will have a lifetime impact?

Conversely, we found a much better way of life in being at home together, going out for walks with no traffic, hearing the birds, playing in the garden (DC), having lunch together...It was possible and it worked. It was then taken away (from the DC's perspective).

Only anecdotal, but this is what I also found. It seemed to me that people in their late 60s and 70s were the most concerned, basically old enough to feel really at risk but young enough to think sacrificing a year or two of normal life was still probably worth it. Whereas if you're very elderly, the immediate is much more of a concern.

Well there is a war raging in the ME at the moment. My 7yr old knows nothing of it. Why, you ask? Because I choose not to expose them to the horrors of war.

Hear,hear! I could have written this about my daughter. Add in DA, undiagnosed autism, and her dad walking out and we had the perfect storm. Her mental health has still not recovered at 17.

My DS was year 5 when lockdown started, we had just moved to a new area and he never went back to the school he was at from nursery. Online learning at that age was hard for him to engage with properly, his SATs were affected, he’s carried the gap with him to GCSE and he spent a good 2 years mourning not seeing his primary school class again; he really missed them and it was a huge wrench.

My DD had just started secondary and hadn’t really settled fully or found her friend group. She ended up socialising online and getting into various alternative fashions etc earlier than the otherwise might have, which made it hard for her when she started a new local school in year 8. She may still have done the same, but when she was a bit older and more settled.

Our environment and house were lovely, no money problems - but both kids definitely negatively affected and would have done better without it.

It was illegal for my daughter (an only child) to see another child in person for months on end. Of course that had an effect. We are lucky in that she has largely bounced back, but she does have issues with anxiety that I’m pretty sure were exacerbated by the lockdowns. Children were treated as an afterthought and no consideration was given to their mental health or wellbeing.

Pandemics are difficult to manage and mistakes will be made, because every virus is different, and it is impossible to design out all risk, but for definite, the pandemic was poorly managed by the government of the time.

The scientific advisory committee was inadequate. Over representation from the great and the good of public health, when people with needed detailed expertise were sidelined. There was far too little representation from experts who could have advised on and helped mitigate the effects on children, and on families trapped indoors with their abusers, or with inadequate resources.

Pandemics are inevitable, and yet resources were pulled from planning and stockpiling, or from social research into the potential impacts, because politicians always have an eye to what will keep the public voting for them in the short term.

The whole thing was a shit show, honestly.

I am kind of with you tbh. My kids were 6 and 7, life was really rough. As a family we had alot more going on then just covid. We had just moved out of the family house, living in my mums spare room. I had just changed jobs, we were going through some really tough family courts stuff and then a family friend died (not of covid) . At the time my kids were effected by it yes. Not being able to see family, my daughter also became obsessed with washing her hands.
But no not now, kids are emotionally healthy pre teen agers and its something that never comes up in conversation.

Who on earth am i supposed to be hating ? 😄

You're thinking lock down was about few months of missed school and clubs?
Some children don't have siblings and they had nobody to socialise or play with. Some parents lost their businesses and really struggled financially, some had family members in hospital or dying, some people live in flats without access to garden, some people live in high conflict households. Some kids have additional needs.
And that situation lasted way longer then "few months ".
We all know there were some lucky families working from their big homes or being on payed furlough while kids played together in their lovely back gardens, familes lucky to not have suffered financial or health problems. When people say kids were affected by covid they mean familes in totally different circumstances.
We weren't "all in it together ".