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!

It was a huge unnatural social experiment. No one can possibly predict the impact it'll have at an individual or societal level or the timescale involved

It wasn't an experiment.

It was a virus, that affected the world over, no one had seen anything like it before and the Government had to take steps to reduce the transmission rates because they wanted to give ICU's a chance to expand, to get more ventilators, to get staff in etc!

I am no fan of Boris, but I can see that he was facing a situation that was affecting the world and like no one had seen before.

My neighbour who had a large house and garden and was also a teacher found it very stressful teaching her 3 children. She wasn’t working then. One of the saviours was the ice cream van and a cafe in the local park. My nephew who was 2 at the time was taken out of nursery and went to live in the country with his parents, his dad then developed anxiety. I worked with single parents (lawyers) who found it incredibly stressful working and homeschooling children.

Yes it was an absolute shit show. I worked FT (NHS) and had to do homeschooling for a reception aged child. Safe to say I didn’t manage to teach phonics very well

And yet he couldn’t abstain from parties himself? Pull the other one.

So people who had been working together all day in an office, went into the garden for a drink!!

None of these things make it not an experiment. That is precisely what it was. All you've done here is explained why it was an experiment. Boris isn't a particularly important aspect of that argument, as the movement towards lockdowns didn't start in the UK and whoever we had as PM would've been equally subject to the same pressures.

Ah you’re one of those . You do you , boo.

Lockdown was put in allow ICU to expand, to get more beds, more staff, more ventilators and to deal with the existing patients it already had.

The unit I was in had to double its capacity! We needed time to source more ventilators, get staff in and train them.

One of what ??

But they weren’t the ones creating the shambolic rules. At least Boris could have made sure his party members and cabinet were following the rules and not partying all night and shagging the staff

I think how children dealt with lockdown is a direct result of how they were parented during that time they were stuck in the house with their parents. The only real influence they had during that time were the people in their household.

Pretty sure it wasn't just the Government who was shagging about!

The rules were shambolic! But they were there to protect the majority and to buy the NHS time

And so the people creating these rules should have adhered to them. Don’t make excuses.

The issue is covid removed support networks, external help, and other coping mechanisms that made things run ok or even smoothly during normal times, while adding immense stressors like job loss/insecurity, financial troubles, grief/trauma etc.

I think a lot of people broke the rules, NHS staff as well

I was always taught that it takes a village to raise a child. It's not healthy for a 3 year old to be stuck in with just their parents and no community or support.

Also in my experience most 3 year olds aren't oblivious vegetables that won't notice that mum isn't taking them to playgroup or the park or for playdates anymore. They are actually quite observant.

I have never said my child had delays or behaviour problems or made any excuses for anything.
My overall point is that we are all a combo of nature vs nurture and I believe covid was a significant thing for children to live through. Off to enjoy my day with my little boy.

Including the rule makers.

You can keep on saying, but this group broke the rules, but that group broke the rules!

You’d have thought the one group who needed to show the example were the rule maker, or don’t threaten the general public with arrest.

As I said, it was an experiment. What you're doing here is giving reasons why you think that experiment was justified. And that's fine! You may even be right, not that it necessarily matters because by the time other countries had locked down before the UK, there was no way to avoid it anyway.

Which were the only way of kids maintaining any contact with friends and keeping up with any schoolwork.
For many families who had restrictions/limits in place on screentime and device use these limits all but went out of the window during covid. Because 11 year old kids were expected to be sat in front of zoom school for 6 hours a day.

It wasn't just a "few months" - children's education was affected in some way for 2 years (or more in some cases). Some thrived on being able to do work online IF they had teachers who were putting quality work on the internet for them and giving proper feedback etc. Lots didn't get that and were basically just given links to some (often poor) online resources and left to fend for themselves. Even when allowed to be in school, lots of teachers weren't (i.e. ill, shielding etc) so classes were given by classroom assistants or merged into "super" sized classes. Lots of kids never really got back on track after a year or two of poor teaching (if at all), yet after the end of those two years, school just went back to normal with kids left behind, yet still being pushed through the "year by year" system struggling because they'd not been taught things they needed to know/understand for the later years. And that's just the "education" side of things, lots suffered from lack of activities, groups, hobbies, sports, etc. - OK if you had a big family and could hang out with siblings etc but "only children" really suffered from lack of socialisation for so long. Even worse were those in "problem" households, maybe suffering abuse, with no escape when they were "locked down" in homes with their abusers, who likewise were trapped and frustrated and more likely to abuse etc.

I agree that to some extent IT WAS a social experiment. Quite simply, had covid happened a decade earlier, we couldn't have had lockdowns as society/technology wasn't ready. It was ONLY because most people had the internet, internet shopping was common place, as were grocery home deliveries, Facebook, teams, etc., that a lockdown was even possible. We certainly couldn't have had a lockdown if people couldn't order their food to be delivered, or kids couldn't get some kind of education, or workers couldn't hold teams meetings etc.

Yes, there's a clear and massive distinction between breaking rules you were responsible for creating and enforcing, and breaking rules that were imposed on you and you didn't expect anyone else to observe either. The former is obviously much more damaging. Which is why Partygate wrecked public trust so effectively.

No, my child is very well behaved. However the first 5 years of a child's brain development are the most important and to go through a lockdown at 3 is a big deal.

I've worked as a primary & pre school teacher so am well aware of the importance of the first 5 years. A parent can provide just about everything a child needs, if circumstances dictate, during the early years. It's not ideal but was perfectly possible during lockdown and certainly no reason to be blaming lockdown all these years later.

Children are adaptable and resilient by nature but it does need modelling by parents and teachers throughout their cildhood to reinforce it.