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!

I think a lot of how children were/are affected is how it was dealt with at home. We were very lockdown critical and didn’t expect the children to die (stats on healthy people dying were always available, and the number was absolutely tiny) so my dc weren’t terrified of anything, just pissed off and bored. They bounced back pretty well largely due to this - no fear, just frustration.

I think that's a problem though, we have all "moved on" but the impact on children and young people remains. Perhap also on adults too. I can imagine being in your 70s or with a chronic health condition and officially "vulnerable" to dying would linger in the.subconsious.

I expect it's pointless to try to explain anything to someone who can't (or chooses not to) understand at the most basic level how we are all shaped consciously and unconditionally by experiences.

I wonder why its preferable to think the worst of people - children! - than allowed space that a worldwide pandemic for 2 years might have a long lasting impact. Itd be odd of it didnt! It's quite a high level of denial.

@Octavia64 how sad for you all.

But it wasn’t a couple of months, was it? First lockdown started March 2020 and second lockdown ended a year later, but even then there were bubbles in schools, LFTs, isolations etc. Here in Scotland schools were not back to normal until August 2022.

I hear you OP. No way am I minimising the impact of covid (my own family was lucky and we quite enjoyed lockdown randomly)

. But it is used as an excuse for appalling attitudes and behaviour. I work in school and it’s a whole new ball game post Covid. But we are long past it now, need to acknowledge it and go back to the norms before 2020 and not keep using it as an excuse and a get out clause.

But you were working full time beforehand? With children?

People managed through 5 years of WW2 and the aftermath of having to rebuild an entire nation.
But guess what, they managed it!!

Data from the UK and globally indicates a significant increase in online grooming and various forms of child abuse during COVID-19 lockdown periods
. The isolation, combined with increased time spent online for education and entertainment, created what officials termed a "perfect storm" for abusers to target children, particularly during 2020-2021.
UK Parliament +4
Key Findings on Online Grooming and Abuse:

• Online Sexual Abuse Material (IWF Data):Reports of online child sexual abuse images increased by nearly 50% in the 11 weeks following the UK's first lockdown announcement in March 2020.
• Self-Generated Material: The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) saw a 77% increase in reports of "self-generated" abuse material, where children are coerced or manipulated into producing sexual images of themselves.
• Grooming Offences: Childline reported a 60% increase in contacts regarding online child sexual abuse. In the first 3 months of the 2020 lockdown, 1,220 online grooming offences were recorded by police in England and Wales.
• Platforms Involved: Instagram and Snapchat were frequently identified as platforms used in grooming crimes during this period.
• Global Surge: Europol reported that in 2020, reports of online child abuse material more than doubled globally.
• NSPCC | The UK children's charity | NSPCC +4

Real-World Child Abuse and Neglect:

• Increased Risk in Homes: Children isolated with abusers faced higher risks of abuse, with the NSPCC helpline seeing a 53% increase in calls from adults worried about child abuse during the initial lockdown.
• Serious Incidents: Data from April to September 2020 showed a 27% increase in serious incident notifications (cases of serious harm or death) to local authorities in England compared to the same period in 2019.
• Domestic Abuse: There was a significant rise in children experiencing domestic abuse within their homes, with contacts to the NSPCC regarding this rising by over 50%.
• UK Parliament +1

Factors Contributing to the Increase:

• Higher Online Presence: Children spent significantly more time online for school and socializing, often unsupervised.
• Lowered Detection: School closures meant teachers—often the first to notice signs of abuse—did not see children for months, resulting in many cases staying "hidden".
• Reduced Moderation: Tech firms reported a reduction in the number of human moderators available to remove harmful content, giving abusers more freedom.
• UK Parliament +4

The long-term impact of the pandemic has resulted in sustained high levels of online risk, with online grooming crimes reaching record levels in subsequent years. NSPCC | The UK children's charity | NSPCC

Because in my situation we both worked full time with a 1 and 4 year old, they missed several months of nursery, we had took works and do childcare in turn in shifts for months on end with no break. We had parents who were in the high risk category so we couldn’t see them properly for even longer.

My eldest missed sports days, nursery graduation, we missed her first school nativity and the following year we also weren’t allowed to go and were sent a video. No school discos or parties. Isolation for weeks on end when another child in class was ill. My youngest missed playing with other kids at an age when learning to do so was really important. Nursery no longer allowed drop off past the gate, and school drop off was in strict queues not gathering on the playground.

They were stuck at home with parents who were tired and stressed. Our work refused to allow furlough so we were working late into the night to catch up.

I know plenty of people who look back at lockdown as furlough and bbqs in the sun, a chance to do jigsaws and make banana bread, but for some of us it was just the opposite.

This

I dread to think how half if you would cope in a real crisis, another WW or if you lived in a war torn country.

But the weren’t contending with what young people are now.

There were children and babies who were not out and about in public during formative socialising stages of life. Even when they did see adults they had masks on their face. Normal day to day interactions are massive learning elements for little ones. They see people smile and speak to each other and they learn to do the same. They missed this entire developmental stage.

Then take older kids who miss one off opportunities in their sports or hobbies. It was years before some came back fully. I know a few who were peak for their age but after lock down had hit puberty and physically had changed and never returned to sports.

That's not to mention those that struggle socially already and lost the few skills they had in lockdown and are still in their bedrooms on computers all these years later.

You sound very naive and limited in life experience OP.

on a radio programme More or Less they debunked the theory that it made a difference to children.
yet people Insist that it has caused all of today's woes

I'm not sure what happened with DD2 would have happened anyway, but EBSA can't have been helped by hitting puberty and starting secondary school in 2020. I can't help feeling she did not reach her potential and some of that, maybe all of it, was due to the disruption of education and missing out on so much at a crucial time. And at one point her cohort were certainly the worst affected in terms of absence from school, with about 20% of them out of school at age 15.

More or Less can fuck off on this issue then, the complacent upper middle class twerps.

Missed out on a nursery graduation?? Really

What about all the kids who never had one anyway because it isn't necessary

Missed out on sports day, how does a 4 Yr old know what sports day is??

Others including experts that work with children, charities and the uk government disagree.

I agree with this

The norms of 2019 aren't coming back. The post covid world is the new normal.

Exactly. No one in RL talks about it! Hence I'm chatting here as it baffles me.

WW2 also affected young people's educational outcomes profoundly and caused severe generational trauma. Read a fucking book.

So it doesn't fit your narrative it can fuck off?

You talk about your DD jumping right back into it, but by year 10 she has had YEARS of socialising and education. Academically, children like your DD missed out, but socially were at an age of greater resilience.

I teach at the other end of the school and the children that have come through who were pre-school at the time of the lockdowns are seriously delayed and have atrocious social skills. I’ve just had my first cohort born 21/22 and the difference is night and day! These children are what I remember from before Covid. They have had socialisation and did not experience a great disruption. They trust and listen to adults. They interact with their peers. It’s so much easier than the last 5 years!

DH was 5 in reception.

His classmates were put on screens and never taught to sit down and listen to the teacher.

They didn't learn to read and write at the time the curriculum expected.

The knock on effects were disastrous.

The curriculum doesn't have space and time to recap on missed things. And in missing the window to learn to sit down and listen before more formal education started you had half a class of very disruptive kids who weren't ready to learn and because they'd missed bits were behind. They also had got used to one to one and pestering an adult so didn't understand they couldn't do this in school.

If you can read basics, it stops you being able to do the other subjects because instructions need to be read. It's ok if the teacher has a normal number behind but if it's a huge number it's problematic.

Then you have the kids who did keep on top of where they should be, not being looked after so get bored and disruptive. And the kids who were at greater depth get ignored and forgotten.

DS class turned into a nightmare with behaviour and a large number way behind where they should be and unable to catch up which led to more disruption. There was a kid who should have been put on a pathway to diagnosis very early as his behaviour was so bad, but there was a two year delay before it was even flagged.

They are a lovely class but my god we're they feral. And it's a middle class area but so many parents just weren't interested in dealing with it as they were preoccupied with work.

Many of them never learnt to swim as well as they couldn't get classes even after things opened up because the waiting lists were so long.

Fast forward to yr6.

One kid has moved abroad because he had so many issues and was behind. He wasn't ready for High School so parents decided to try and find a radical alternative. The class is significantly behind previous years - I'm expecting the SATS results to be a car crash and the lower years parents to suddenly panic and all sorts of questions be asked. It will be regarded as scandalous. Even though it will happen in other places too - it'll be interesting to see the national results this year. I think our school is particularly hard hit because so many parents worked during the pandemic - apparently it was well above average - but many of these were working from home. So the kids just got ignored. I've been tracking the class throughout primary and they just are way behind.

I know the local high schools have already put in booster English and Maths classes for years 7 and 8 because they've recognised there's a significant problem - so not just our primary but in all the feeder primaries. They've NEVER had these booster classes before.

It had a massive impact on vulnerable children not so much on others.

I think it delayed the normal maturing process in children but most will have caught up since then.

That's interesting. I, too, work in a deprived area as a supply TA. Almost every primary school I have worked in has had difficulties with the cohort who were reception/year 1 at the time of COVID. It seems to be widely recognised here that COVID definitely had an impact on those children whose start at school was disrupted.