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.

@Swayingpalmtrees

Schools should have opened before pubs

^ this

Pubs did not have militant unions keeping them closed. Said teachers were posting about lunches and drinks out, whilst simultaneously posting that schools must be kept closed because it was 'not safe' and braying that they were vulnerable to vectors aka children. It was truly despicable.

So yes we are angry, furious in fact.

Schools and nurseries should have remained open. Pubs should have remained close if the objective was to lower the infection rates, which we now know doesn't work and it was all for nothing! We have all had covid now at least once, and look not a single lockdown for a year. We had peaked by the end of March 2020 anyway, a natural tapering off would have happened anyway.

This is despicable. Which teachers were posting such things? None that I know of. Teachers did what they were required to do by government. We would much rather have been teaching our classes. Our unions are not ‘militant’ - we pay them to look out for our interests. Your anger is misplaced.

Yep, I work for the council in Early Years SEND and this is exactly what we’re seeing across the board. And the waiting list for SLT is already over a year long!

Despite nurseries being closed, parents could still have been singing nursery rhymes to their children and getting them out of nappies before they start school. Wfh parents were extremely stretched and busy but some parents who didnt work are quick to blame lockdown on their nearly 5 year old in nappies, in a pushchair with a dummy, with severely limited speech and no social skills, unable to feed themselves, dress themselves but with no diagnosed needs. The teachers and support staff go above and beyond to support the child but with more and more arriving and no additional funding this is challenging to manage on a large scale.

I had a lockdown baby. I actually think he really benefitted from being at home with me a lot more than he would have been had we been able to go to groups etc. He goes to them now as a toddler and loves them. I would say the lockdowns and restrictions were more damaging to my 6 year old (then just turned 4 year old, in nursery). Much harder to explain to her, to offer reassurance (where there wasn't much to give at the time) and keep up with her education and development. Also feel lucky that she still quite liked hanging out with us - can't imagine whst it must have been like for teens.

@LadyCatStark

Yep, I work for the council in Early Years SEND and this is exactly what we’re seeing across the board. And the waiting list for SLT is already over a year long!

Is the queue long because children's speech is behind because of lockdown, or because during lockdown it was difficult to see GPs and HVs to ask for a referral?

Your other point is a good one that as world reopened there weren’t the places there for children to just be able to jump back into activities
Firstly people are very keen to get their kids out socialising and doing activities to make up for what they’ve missed, so clubs and classes and even nurseries are full to overflowing. Secondly there are some activities which went bust or never reopened so there’s less available than there used to be. Thirdly people haven’t put their kids on waiting lists because they didn’t know when the world would reopen, so they don’t have places reserved and they can’t get their kids in to do stuff.

My son for example was on the waiting list for our local nursery from birth. He was due to start at Easter 2020. Obviously that couldn’t happen because nurseries were closed. So he lost his place on the waiting list. I didn’t put him back on the waiting list because with me being CEV I didn’t know when he’d be able to attend. At that point there was no certainty that we’d ever have a vaccine, nobody knew what would happen. When the world reopened in 2021 I called round local nurseries but was told “sorry you need to go on the waiting list, it takes about a year to get a space”.

I don’t think you can blame Covid lockdowns for everything here, parents need to own responsibility too. Nothing to stop them from interacting/playing/singing/reading to children to enhance their development and social skills. Even if parents were wfh they would have had evenings and weekends to do this. Too many making excuses and expecting nurseries and schools to do the work for them. Pre-Covid it was very obvious which children had help at home with their learning and those who did not. I am not a Royalist but agree with Camilla’s statement today for parents “it’s very much their job to get children reading at an early age”.

Problems with children's development especially speech and parental engagement were brewing before covid
Over reliance on ipads, digitally distracted parents and less importance placed on language and early reading as a society, together with the death of sure start centres already started the rot but now a small number of disengaged parents have the perfect excuse of lockdown to have absolved themselves from responsibility to teach their children early years skills. As a result infant school teachers are desperately trying to sort out this mess and fix the gaps in their development whilst also pandering to increasing demands in the 'catch up' curriculum which children just aren't ready for. The rest of the class miss out as the majority of the teacher and TA timebis taken.up with these issues.

People justifying this are simply in denial.

The effects on development will not be seen for many years. And can’t just be fixed by being sung to.

The ability to form judgments on facial expressions; character; emotions… all of these are critical parts of development. This is well established. Removing normal social interactions will have an effect whether or not the lockdown zealots accept it.

[quote ancientgran]**@LittleBearPad* Yes which is why I said children didn’t go near a school for almost six months* And why I said they wouldn't have been in school for all of those six months anyway. Why not say they missed three and a half months? Well we know why, it isn't such a good headline is it.[/quote]
Ok then they missed 17/18 weeks of school but you see in those Easter holidays and Summer half term they weren’t allowed to see their friends either. And in the summer holidays they were restricted by numbers so couldn’t see more than one or so when supervised by parents.

But then you assumed your grandchildren’s experience was common - it wasn’t.

Absolutely @WouldBeGood

I had to teach year R wearing a mask for a few weeks and it was intolerable. Using your facial expressions is huge for early years. It's weird that young children are more accepting of a covered face than actual facial features and expressions. Many of our year R children can't read emotions through faces and struggle with empathy. Social skills in general are dire. No birthday parties, sports clubs, family gatherings etc for a long period has messed with these children's development.

@CornishGem1975

I had a lockdown baby, he thrived. Of course, there will be children affected but there will equally be many that sailed through. I have more concern for my teens than my toddler to be quite honest.

The fact that report mentions children not hearing stories or singing? That's a parenting issue, not a lockdown one!

Was thinking the same. My son was born summer 2020. He's been at home with me. He's also thriving. But at the same time if they were having to balance working from home and parenting, I can't imagine how difficult that must've been. I'm in the fortunate position to take 3 years off work so I wasn't working full time

@WorkEvent

Tbh I feel bloody lucky that I work for the NHS and managed to keep DS in nursery for all but the first six weeks of lockdown.

My frustration lies with everything being blamed on lockdown/covid. He has some difficulties that I am 99.999% sure can be attributed to high functioning autism. He’s super bright (basic reading and writing, counting, addition, subtraction and some times tables, incredible visual memory, very artistically talented etc. without any effort on our part whatsoever), but terrified of loud noises, new situations, and large groups of people, struggles to play with other children, is very easily overwhelmed etc. My dad is definitely autistic, and I score very highly on screening tests. However trying to get anyone to listen or have an assessment is a nightmare because ‘this is common in lockdown toddlers’.

DS was fortunate to get his diagnosis at the end of 2019 as he turned 9. The paper trail went back to concerns raised with HVs at the age of 2. There were actually some little idiosyncracies shown up in routine checks that made sense with years of hindsight. He spent his early years in a normal world and while he certainly has his sensory issues, it's been good for him to have that exposure and learning to (mostly) cope with the world.

I really feel for parents of similar children at the start of this journey, sorting through what's a lockdown delay and what is a SN. What influence the environment has had. Persuading professonals to take them seriously. Dealing with a system that was creaking before it was paralysed for so long then overloaded with the colateral damage of lockdowns and restrictions.

Lockdowns and restrictions greatly exacerbated existing hardship. They also overstretched and failed familes that normally thrive or manage well. That stretches scant resources even futher.

In our case, despite an abundance of time and a decade of teaching, I simply couldn't teach my autisic, dyspraxic, dyslexic 9yo myself and certainly not at the same time as his not very mature 6yo brother, and definitely not in what had now become DH's workplace. They lost over 6 months of school life. DS2's friends were children of precious keyworkers, and they were granted access to education and other children. We had no bubble. Friends were too busy or too terrified to meet. DS2 had no opportunity to play with neurotypical friends for very nearly 6 months. His friends carried on developing without him. He was lonely and depressed. We illegally went sneaking into playgrounds. We did days out and even a holiday. But what I could not be was a 7 year old boy to play with as his equal.
And once he began to settle late in the autumn, it was undone in Jan-March 21, this time with the cruel addition of enduring seeing some of his class on Teams each day as he sobbed into my lap day after day after day.

Finally after a year he is catching up, socially and academically. He's the one of lucky ones. His clubs came back. I'm educated and can support him, and while academic learning to the narrow curriculum was a big failure, we do a lot of general learning about life together.
He hasn't fallen off the radar.
He'd got a decent foundation of social and communication skills.
He's not lost out on key transitions or assessment stages.

The damage to u25s as a generation has been immense, and not surprising in the slightest. No hindsight here, it was bleeding inevitable as lockdown 1 rumbled on, and on and on and children's needs were ignored time and time again, and minimised. I spoke out and was called Selfish and a Granny Killer time and time again.

"Children are resiliant"
"It's just a few months"
"Children don't need ... anyway"
"Have you gone for a walk/ puddlesuits/ kick leaves"

Opening playgrounds on the same day as pubs was an after thought. Not that they all opened on July 4th. Some remain in a state of missing equipment. From September 2021 for over 6m, it was illegal for two families not in a bubble to meet if they exceded 6... yet you could go and get pissed in a pub with mates from 5 other households until the tiers stopped play. In Jan-Mar 2021, two adults could meet for exercise. U5s were rightfully exempted. But primary age children who needed supervision in public were banned from seeing anyone not in their household/ bubble, especially if they'd been denied access to school.

Voluntary activities often didn't come back for a year to 18m due to risk assessments, volunteer avaliability and venue restrictions. Many were lost. Organisations like Girl Guiding have shrunk by about 25%. Two years on, children are often still missing enrichment/ practical/ social opportunities like residential trips. My Cubs have the maturity and experience of Beavers. 7yo Brownies are coming in with the confidence of 5yo Rainbows. Time and time again the feedback is of young people behaving two years younger.

It needs to be said, because if we brush it under the carpet and don't critically analyse what happened, it makes it more likely that it can be repeated.

And recognising names of people who were pro-restrictions who are now just blaming the inevitable consequences on parents despite everything we know about child development and good practice is just sickening.

Did we get to page 17 before the mythical militant teaching unions were blamed?

What a joke. Teaching unions are pretty toothless. School staff did what the government directed them to do and found out at the same time and in the same way ie via the telly as everyone else.

If schools and nurseries had remained open, there would have been many more deaths and many more cases of long covid, aside from the constant disruption of short-term closures as not enough staff.

I wouldn't have wanted any more teaching staff and parents from my children's school to die - or heaven forbid, children - nor more to still be living with long-term effects of covid.

Maybe we've all got so used to living in a vaccinated country that we've forgotten how frightening the virus was prior to this?

Although in a local school, the whole of early years was out with the virus last September, and two are still off unable to work with long covid.

30s, double vaccinated.

In Scotland children are still masked in school. Asked fir by the unions

It’s the denialism that gets me - something that, in places, is still in evidence on this thread. Of course the rights and wrongs of masks and lockdowns can and will be debated ad nauseam, but the fact is that they happened, and that for many children and young people they have had an adverse impact. It’s pointless stating on here that your own children have come through it all unscathed when all the evidence suggests that on a societal level there is and will continue to be ongoing fallout from measures taken to tackle the pandemic, and we now need some kind of strategy to deal with this.

Masks and lockdowns didn’t cause all of the emergent speech and language issues we’re now seeing, or the mental health difficulties, behavioural problems, obesity issues and so on - as a former teacher I know all too well that such challenges have been increasing for years, blamed previously on screens, or poor parenting, or austerity, or the increasing demands being placed on small children in terms of curriculum and testing. But it has certainly exacerbated them, dramatically increasing existing social and educational inequality.

And, because society is interrelated and ‘No man is an island’, the vast majority of children, however well shielded from the direct impact of the pandemic, will most likely be indirectly affected in some way. When my fortunate, well adjusted, middle class child starts Reception in September she is likely to be part of a cohort that has a larger than average number of children requiring extra support - which in turn will probably mean fewer resources to engage and challenge her and her more developmentally ‘normal’ peers.

It infuriates me that that some still cannot see the bigger picture, and still rely on their own anecdotal evidence rather than heeding the many paediatricians, child psychologists and teachers who have been warning about these consequences for nigh on two years now. Whether or not you were in favour of lockdown, this is the situation we are now in, and we need clear vision and long term thinking to deal with the reality on the ground. No sign of that at the moment, however, especially where Early Years education is concerned.

Children need more than just their parents.
I can tell who my children hear words from most by their accents changing. They hear "bath" most from me, and "grass" most at school because their vowel changes depending on who they hear it from.

I talked to my DCs a lot anyway. I scafolded the language and built it up. Obviously it can't override DS1's ASD issues, but I did maximise his potential. Getting out and about was good for increasing vocabulary. A child banished from shops won't hear words like "aisle". Words that are said more when out will have been obscured more by masks for both lip reading and clarity. So many social interactions lost when people were scared to be near others.

It does matter.

Also children have to learn to detach. It's part of the gradual process of growing up. The ultimate objective of a parent is to produce a functional adult. Children have to learn how to function in society and that can not be learned exclusively in the house only from their parents.

@Invasionofthegutsnatchers

A lot of children who arrived in year R at my (leafy, affluent) school had never been sung nursery rhymes, couldn't hold books and tried to swipe at them like they were tablets, had dummies, pushchairs and very limited speech. Many cried all day, were constantly tired, had no core strength, no concentration. I think a combination of lockdown, no sure start centres, poverty, distracted parents, working from home parents unavailable because of work commitments, and mental health issues has contributed to this. The results are scary

A lot of children who arrived in year R at my (leafy, affluent) school had never been sung nursery rhymes, couldn't hold books and tried to swipe at them like they were tablets, had dummies, pushchairs and very limited speech.Many cried all day, were constantly tired, had no core strength, no concentration.

Come on, there's no excuse for children not knowing nursery rhymes, not having interacted with books, and being in buggies with dummies at school age, except bad parenting. Very few will have genuine additional needs. This just illustrates how crap and low the expectations of these supposed parents are!

“Supposed parents?”

That’s just not a thing. Stupid comment

Children do need societal interaction, socialisation and peers.

Most on here know that which is why the bun fight for schools places happened the second lockdown.

Unfortunately for the unlucky it was at the same time many argued for closures again.

@ChoiceMummy I'm just stating the facts. This is what we're working with. Big children with a toddler level of development.

@WouldBeGood

In Scotland children are still masked in school. Asked fir by the unions

This is inhumane, I don't know how more parents aren't up in arms about it. I hope the mask mandate is lifted soon for you.

I don't understand where this idea came in that teachers were sunning themselves in their gardens. All the teachers I know - and I know quite a lot, because of where I went to uni - have had the hardest, most stressful and demoralising years of their working lives. If they were at home they were trying to teach over Zoom and then trying to keep up with marking, planning and dealing with (understandably) concerned parents on equipment and systems that weren't fit for purpose and impossible to use. Often they were doing that and teaching in school at the same time. Many of them have had Covid, some more than once. They are exhausted, on their knees, begging for help that isn't there, and then they have to read threads like this?! Disgusting.

I don't understand where this idea came in that teachers were sunning themselves in their gardens

Us4Them and the Daily Mail, mainly.

I think we need more detail on who the most badly affected children are, and why. Many mothers will have been on maternity leave/furloughed/SAHM anyway/still going to work (and dcs at school if key worker parents). Working from home with small dcs must have been horrific- but it’s not clear that it is their children that have been most affected. The children of people who weren’t working still had a tough time undoubtedly, but I can’t understand why this would affect potty training, crawling, speech, being able to use a book. If anything you’d think these things might be ahead! I think it’s more likely that an element of disengaged parenting has affected children who would have benefited from preschool etc. I also find it hard to understand how months of lockdown has caused years of lost learning.