To think that everyone who told those with preschool children in 2020/21 to get a puddlesuit and that lockdown wasn’t that bad needs to read this

[manysummersago]

BBC link

Reading the above has made me feel so angry and sad at what was done to the babies and toddlers of this country, and I can’t believe that we let it happen, quite honestly.

@NovacDino
I have no doubt some children benefited from furloughed chilled out parents who were able to focus on their DC.

But please do not forget the DC who's parents where doing their best to hold onto their jobs, made more difficult WFH, covering for other covid hit staff, and trying to juggle in extraordinary circumstances.
Children were neglected because keeping a job to pay the bills was more important than singing baa baa black sheep

@NovacDino

Honestly, blaming lockdowns is way too simplistic and the trends being discussed here have been present and growing since before the pandemic. Many, many young children were not adversely affected and even thrived during lockdowns, I have witnessed it personally. More needs to be done to address the glaring differences in the circumstances in which these children are developing. There is a world of difference between the upbringing and opportunities they have which has a real impact on their cognitive, linguistic, physical and emotional development. Blaming lockdowns just isn't helpful.

I have all those things in place in normal times. I have time to spend with my children after work/school in which we do enriching activities, we bake together, do crafts, practice their music, read together, go for walks, bike rides… my children are not short of linguistic, creative, emotional or physical opportunities. Lockdown meant I couldn’t do any of that. I was working, caring for a toddler and homeschooling 2 children at the same time. I worked into the night. I was exhausted and broken.

You need to remember that a lot of the puddle suit brigade are women in their 50’s/60’s telling us that hey never had playgroups and their kids are just fine. It was unadulterated selfishness. They were scared so we’re happy for kids to suffer.
I have been against lock downs since April 2020 when it was obvious looking at the demographics of those dying that it was madness to shut down the young and healthy and crash the economy & deprive children of childhoods for an illness that was very little danger to them.

The damage done to my now-preschooler, then toddler, by losing her father far exceeds any damage done by lockdown.

Ohhh, @peachgreen, so sorry to read this. Hope you're managing as best you can.

The report says The report said a few early years care providers suggested face masks were having a negative impact on young children's language and communication skills.

So a few, not many, not most, a few.

Seems sensationalist to me.

The real problem with the first lockdown was not that it happened but that it dragged on for so long. I have teens rather than little ones and the impact on them was really hard to watch the constant hope that they would be able to go back to school and then being dashed back time and again. It was especially grim that Year 6 were able to go back but Years 10 and 12 weren't prioritised at all. Mine were offered an hour with a teacher but not to discuss school work. In the meantime infection rates were plunging and their grandparents were out playing golf and visiting garden centres.

@ancientgran and that might primarily be amongst families who don't communicate much with their children anyway, and those children rely on outside influence. I posted above, how do children cope in cultures where it is the norm for women's faces to be covered, do those children normally have communication problems when they start at pre-school?

I am not denying that there are issues, but hopefully with supportive families, many of these will be overcome, but I am afraid as with many things there will always be an attainment gap, and that unfortunately, can be down to how supportive their families are

And a bit like the toilet issue mentioned above, some people will attribute issues to lockdown, whereas it might not be. DS had toilet issues and that was before COVID. Some children don't like being in large groups, even if their older sibling did. It can be down to personalities as much as anything

Agree with others that there is a special place in hell for the "actually my children benefitted from all the quality time" brigade. I was working full time in a demanding job and trying to home school two children who were at very different levels academically, both anxious and confused, and both desperately needed me, but I needed to keep earning. I'd have given anything to be furloughed but my employer wouldn't contemplate it.

I am genuinely gobsmacked that people are trying to blame this on parents not being ‘engaged’ enough, or not communicating enough, or being ‘unsupportive’. Some (many) of us were genuinely drowning in work, care of toddlers/pre schoolers and homeschooling. To have no empathy or understanding for that… well I don’t really know what to say.

And whilst we’re all arguing about this and some of us are concluding that we’re simply better than others because our children seem ok, we’re not challenging the government about the fact that their only actions are to tell children, schools and teachers they need to do more and more (last week’s white paper is a total joke) whilst funding only returns to the level it was in 2010. It’s criminal.

We can support children and families, we can get through this but it will take time and proper funding. The education system is going to break if things continue as they are right now. Then all children (using state schools) will certainly suffer.

@toomuchlaundry because women's faces are not usually covered around the kids. E.g. in the Sister's area of the Mosque there are plenty of young kids running around and the women have their heads uncovered.

@Patchbatch Focussed protection was suggested as an alternative.

@MarshaBradyo Thank you.

Lockdown was warned against by many experts.

Jonathan Sumption wrote eloquently about likely harms, arguing that lockdown will cause greater loss of life in the long run, due to massive economic contraction and negative effects on public health.

Kenneth Rogoff (a Harvard economist) forecast an ‘economic catastrophe’ which he said would likely exceed any recession during the past 150 years.

It is starting now, it seems.

Also Philip Thomas (professor of risk management at Bristol Uni) calculated that lockdown-induced economic decline would cost more years of life than were saved.

No one wants to be proved right about this, but I sympathise with angry posters on this thread. Many of us said two years ago that the current problems would happen.

@Swayingpalmtrees I was on here too, under a different user name. There is no point arguing. In my friendship circle I now have a majority who claim they were always completely opposed to lockdown. Could've fooled me, because I was vilified for opposing it at the time.

At least after reading this thread I know that if only I’d been better at holding down a full time job, looking after a 14 month old and homeschooling 2 primary aged kids, my kids wouldn’t have suffered. So thanks for that 👍. If only I’d thought to sing them a nursery rhyme, eh?

[quote Porcupineintherough]@manysummersago where do you live where everything was shut for 6 months straight? Wasnt like that in Sheffield and weve always had high rates and been in high categories of restriction.[/quote]
Leicester got (and it's been forgotten) absolutely fucking hammered by local restrictions. As well as everything else, for some reason only known to Leicester - it's got strange summer holidays and breaks up 2 weeks earlier than everywhere else, so they finally announced schools were able to reopen there... the day they'd all broken up for summer.

Everyone's forgotten about them - but Leicester got shat on more than any other area of England at least. I'm not from Leicester - but I remain bloody pissed off on their behalf.

@ReadyToMoveIt

At least after reading this thread I know that if only I’d been better at holding down a full time job, looking after a 14 month old and homeschooling 2 primary aged kids, my kids wouldn’t have suffered. So thanks for that 👍. If only I’d thought to sing them a nursery rhyme, eh?

Posters must have had a very different experience if a nursery rhyme is the cure

I'm not disagreeing that lockdown was damaging. I'm just saying it isn't as simplistic as that. Children from advantaged backgrounds will make up ground, they already have in my setting. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are even further behind and that isn't just because of lockdowns.

@CoffeeWithCheese

Leicester had an awful time of it. Did Leicester ever even leave lockdown?

Absolutely overjoyed to see the narrative is now being rewritten and the parent blaming is out in force now over it all. You can't put kids in a box at random intervals for a year and a half and expect them to come out well developed despite those chunks of time being missed.

I could sing fucking The Wheels on the Bus till the cows came home (to Old Macdonald's Farm) - but I am, as yet, unable to split myself into 29 other classmates of the same age as my child and deliver the same spontaneous peer-to-peer interaction that they would have got at school for all that time. I could sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in a puddle suit and stomping through the woods - I'm not the school routines, rules and having to negotiate sharing resources and what game to play on the playground that they'd be learning in school. I can teach the bloody primary curriculum... hell I'm double-sorted in that regard since I'm also about to qualify as a SALT - but that doesn't help a child with ADHD who organises her life into the school box, home box and the reluctant homework box - and doesn't deal with the boundaries between her mum and school teacher being blurred like that.

The same people outraged about cartoons now seem to have been the "oh CBeebies won't hurt them" ones back then when people were asking how the fuck they were meant to get any work done and not get fired back then.

And how dare Ofsted 'have an agenda'... of looking at how things are progressing in education and early years?! I mean - the eagerness to dismiss anyone you disagree with as some kind of fringe conspiracy has got ridiculous anyway when you have the likes of UsForThem being dismissed as some kind of front for the Tories/Russians/CatsWantingTheirSofaBack... but the standards in education office?!

People are so determined to stick to the narrative that the reason their children haven’t suffered is because they’re better parents, that they can’t even acknowledge how fucking hard it was for those of us who had a million plates to juggle. They’d still rather tell us it’s our fault.

[quote Flyonawalk]@Patchbatch Focussed protection was suggested as an alternative.

@MarshaBradyo Thank you.

Lockdown was warned against by many experts.

Jonathan Sumption wrote eloquently about likely harms, arguing that lockdown will cause greater loss of life in the long run, due to massive economic contraction and negative effects on public health.

Kenneth Rogoff (a Harvard economist) forecast an ‘economic catastrophe’ which he said would likely exceed any recession during the past 150 years.

It is starting now, it seems.

Also Philip Thomas (professor of risk management at Bristol Uni) calculated that lockdown-induced economic decline would cost more years of life than were saved.

No one wants to be proved right about this, but I sympathise with angry posters on this thread. Many of us said two years ago that the current problems would happen.[/quote]
Ah JS, and omg an economist. The pandemic would have had a crippling effect on the economy whatever happened. I don't think everyone else is disagreeing that lockdowns would come with a huge fallout or that they were perfect- but again no one really has any viable alternatives.

@ReadyToMoveIt

People are so determined to stick to the narrative that the reason their children haven’t suffered is because they’re better parents, that they can’t even acknowledge how fucking hard it was for those of us who had a million plates to juggle. They’d still rather tell us it’s our fault.

I don't think its any parents fault, I don't think a lot of issues outlined in the article are solely down to lockdown though, or perhaps they are for the demographic who are so concerned but have never been bothered before about factors that wildly affect young children.

There was an entire pandemic plan written for exactly this purpose that didn’t include lockdowns. Very experienced people have spent years planning for this very occurrence, and it was all thrown out of the window as soon as China mentioned lockdowns.
We had never heard of a ‘lockdown’ before 2020.

@Shelaydownunderthetable
This thread has got me thinking about my own childhood. Working parents, cared for by my grandparents, not in provision until preschool at 3 and half… however did I turn out to be a productive member of society?

Try and actually think about the flaw in your arguments that nursery doesn't matter.
Your parents sent you to Granny who was presumably retired and had all the time in the world to entertain and interact with you.

Granny was a no go, you might kill granny.
Now try and picture the quality of care you would have received from your two full-time working parents with no childcare provision - Ceebiees 9-5 - just grand!