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!

Because my baby was 7 months and for the next year hardly saw anyone and when they did it was with a mask on. How can that not impact development when humans are social animals and evolved to live in groups

Yes but they are still going on about it 80 years later. It's often mentioned as an excuse for certain behaviours especially hoarding or social issues, usually in relation to now deceased parents.

We were somewhat lucky because I was on maternity leave (totally unlucky to have to give birth at the height of lock down restrictions, not sure those feelings will ever completely go!) and my husband was furloughed. We have a garden and everyone has their own room, we had some resources despite less money coming in so that we could make home education fun as could afford baking ingredients, art supplies etc
Our friends experience was totally different, trying to homeschool on the days she was off (frontline worker) because even though her child could go to school he was really anxious about going, scrubbing his hands raw etc
They couldn’t see 2 of their Grandparents they usually saw daily because they were self isolating so could only talk through windows.
When restrictions started to ease many children in my older son’s class were genuinely scared to go in.
Children would have witnessed parents worrying about money, health, having to test, society walking around in masks and avoiding people, news of people seriously ill and dying.
That level of trauma, stress, heightened anxiety and uncertainty will for some, have altered their neurological pathways permanently.

You sound very naive and limited in life experience OP.

Exactly. And you are very polite @Dontlletmedownbruce

Do you regularly demonstrate how embarrassingly ignorant you are in real life @PrunellaModularis or do you just save that special gift for Mumsnet?

But did they? I remember my grandparents generation who fought in the war, their children who where born just after. Both generations where affected by the war for life. Yes they managed it but it still led to life time trauma for many people

Which icu had no one die of Covid? or do you mean only when you were on shift? Are you clinical?

I don’t need to my grandparents and parents and in-laws were there. I have family who were bombed and evacuated that have the intelligence, where with all and understanding to recognise that what children are going through today is different hugely challenging and deeply concerning.

It’s not a competition.

Hmmm yeah right-o.

If you say so and @PrunellaModularis says so - then it must be true 🙄

Those people 'unable to get on with it' are obviously inferior to strong people like yourselves.

Obviously people are responding to a thread on the topic. It won’t come up as much irl

I still get a huge wave of panic every time I enter a place that provide medical care because “I’ve forgotten my face mask”.

Ok, but consider this. A cohort of 4 year olds miss out on sports day (and in Scotland also miss out age 5).

They are 6 at their first sports day. They have no sense of how to behave. They haven’t had the practise the 6 year olds in 2019 would have had. They don’t quite know where to stand or how to follow the line and at least one will sob inconsolably, like a 4 year old might, experiencing “competitive sport” for the first time. Parents are watching and judge the behaviour.

Why is that? Is it perhaps missing formative experiences that drip feed behavioural expectations to children?

In the early days of what was social media before it became known as social media, in the days before the eternal September of aol there was Usenet.

and on Usenet flaming stupid people who could not be bothered to care about anything was something of a sport.

in that spirit, and because I will find it cathartic I offer the following:

the first time I went into school as an adult I went in as a counsellor because one of the teachers had died. The school had had an ofsted inspection and her teaching had been criticised. I went in with a colleague to work with the head to communicate with the parents and the students what had happened.

that teacher had been so filled with shame of letting her school down that she drove away in her car and killed herself.

i wish, that as you clearly have no understanding and empathy at all, lower even than the lowest life form, that you will experience the shame that that teacher must have felt. I wish that one day you may develop enough cognitive skills to understand that there are other people in this world with you and not all of them are the same as you nor do they all think like you.

the second time I went into a school in my adult life I was asked to work with the head. A boy in year 10 had died in a car accident. The whole year group knew already and some of the students had told the teachers and the head had found out that way. I sat with the head while he thought about what to do and took the time to cry and feel his own feelings before he went out and organised a whole year group assembly and pulled as many teachers off timetable as he could to support the teens.

that head was in the depths of despair about the senseless death of a teen who he’d known, and after a short time when he needed to grieve he put those feelings aside and went out to be the strong person that his school and the teens needed him to be.

i know, that you cannot have experienced anything like this. I hope that anyone who had would not be so hideously uncaring about the deaths of others, and so cruel and unfeeling that you totally dismiss them.

i am not so cruel as to wish that you do experience the horrific grief and sadness of a young life cut short, a life that you have nurtured and spent time with and come to love.

but maybe if you did, just maybe, you might begin to be a reasonable human being.

i live in hope that you will develop some compassion for others because god knows we all need it.

I’m a therapist working with young people, most of whom were in secondary school during lockdown. It affected them hugely in different ways. It was awful for all of us, but it was worse for young people imo as they missed out on a lot of formative experiences. I was in my 30s with a small child and it merely sucked. I’m glad she was too small to really notice or remember it.

Define vulnerable.

A child with 2 key workers out at work is vulnerable….

I do think there is a difference between MNers experience and real life. I don't know anyone in RL who hasn't moved on from that time. Children ranging from Y1 to Y12, all walks of life.

I genuinely feel for you, I would really have struggled without baby groups, getting out and about and seeing people, and friends support.

I can see how it was hugely disruptive to school aged children. But these stories of how babies were affected really confuse me. Your baby was extremely little during the lockdown period and was unlikely to have needed much socialisation outside of interacting with you, their father and their sibling whether we were in lockdown or not. Its highly likely they would have struggled all the same when being left with your mum for your work day anyway - not attending baby classes for the early months will not have made any difference to her development.

And forgot to add that many of those children had parents working for the NHS.

What a thoughtless post.
My child had a ball during lockdown spending the most of it in our big garden with her dog, but surely you are aware why this wasn't the case for many children and their parents.
Then when she went back to school she was sent home for 3 periods of about a week due to being in contact with someone who'd been in contact with someone who'd been in contact........ Absolutely ridiculous waste of educational time, in fact she was talking about it yesterday and even though she wasn't affected emotionally she accepts maths which is her weak point was a complete failure for her because of it.
There are so many children for whatever reason have a better life being at school sadly , you can get further education any time but no-one can fix damage occurred during formative years.
Some children must have gone through hell stuck in a home with no escape from shit parenting/abuse , no books, art material etc.
I don't know why you would think otherwise op.

Our ICU had lots of people die.
I held their hand.

I said I don't know anyone personally who died. I dont class patients as knowing them personally. Until they come through the door I don't know them

Where in Britain are you that lock down was a few months?? Started March 2020 - by your reckoning it was all over by early summer??

Yes. I had a very young child at the time, and my mum friends and I didn’t see the big deal. Now we’re onto second and third children, many of us can see huge differences in the way our lockdown children developed vs the others.

Yes, journalists are frequently and horribly wrong about many issues. I sometimes listen to R4 and More or Less enjoy it, but journalists and presenters on there are definitely capable of being horribly smug, ignorant and wrong headed at times!

I'm a secondary learning support teacher and the kids we now have in S1 missed a chunk of P2 AND a chunk of P3. Not accounting for, as you say, poor circumstances at home, they still missed at least 6 months of schooling in their most formative years. I have pupils with really low literacy levels and it's gradually gotten worse for the last few years. We are seeing social, emotional and behavioural difficulties increase in our students due to the lack of opportunities that were available to them. When I think of the impact the time had on my own mental health, where I am able to rationalise the decisions made that kept us inside, its no wonder it's had a lasting impact on our children.

Baby classes and groups may not have made much difference directly to the baby but for many of us mums our mental health went to absolute shit stuck inside with only our babies and toddlers for company. Humans are a social animal whatever the misanthropes of mumsnet insist is normal.