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.

And this

A current news report prompted the op to start the thread

If Many wants to talk about it and some others do too then fine

If people think that’s dragging it up two years later etc feel free to avoid it.

Personally I think it’s key to acknowledge the damage and put in place systems to avoid the same happening again. It’s hard as where does the push come from? Not children themselves but adults on their behalf. I hope we do, as a society.

That Times article is good LittleBear, with the word mistake I think it’s the first time I’ve seen a strong statement like this

An exception is Nadhim Zahawi, the education secretary, who has said school closures were a mistake that should never be repeated.

That’s a good article

See, “misery thread” is just being deliberately provocative for no good reason.

It’s a thread pointing out that news indicates some of us were correct. I honestly can’t imagine anything else that would provoke this amount of unpleasantness and snideness and barely concealed provocation.

That proper funding for catch-up services and standard services and ambitious national programmes to support the needs of children and their families are essential (good sodding luck with that with a Tory government I suppose but those of us in the other UK nations might have a chance.

Unless the Tories find the money and ring fence it for the other nations then no chance of extra funding in Scotland either.

"Personally I think it’s key to acknowledge the damage and put in place systems to avoid the same happening again. It’s hard as where does the push come from? Not children themselves but adults on their behalf. I hope we do, as a society."

I agree 100% with @MarshaBradyo on this.

I think it is fair to say that, having never had to deal with a pandemic on this scale, it would be unreasonable to expect the government and the health authorities to have dealt perfectly with the situation, and to have correctly predicted any and all negative outcomes from the quarantine and lockdown measures (which I do believe were necessary, during the worst of the pandemic, to save lives and to enable the NHS to cope with the huge demands made on it).

But now we do have a lot more experience and knowledge - both of how the useful and successful the covid measures were, and of the collateral damage - and it would be a very foolish Government and country that did not learn from that. But I do think it is not fair to judge the decisions that were made then, in the light of what we now know.

To be honest I worry that this public handwringing (I don't mean this thread, obviously, I mean the media) could end up being damaging to children in the future because it's putting this idea in their heads that they were all irrevocably damaged by lockdown and their lives will be negative impacted as a result. When my husband died I was lucky enough to be able to speak to a child psychologist and one of the things she emphasised was that although I of course should be on the look out for any issues etc DD might face, I shouldn't expect them or act as if I was, because this could become a self-fulfilling prophecy for her, and actually children really are remarkably good at being resilient after trauma. And while I'm putting in place what mitigation I can (play therapy, establishing a secure attachment between us, encouraging relationships with other male role models in her life), I'm working on the assumption that she's going to be okay. Personally, I'm approaching lockdown the same way. Was it great for her development? No, obviously. But I'm doing what I can to address any issues, and she's going to be okay. I think our children as a whole would benefit from this attitude from the wider media etc.

@peachgreen you aren't comparing the same thing, everyday children in the UK lose a parent. Child Psychologist know how to deal with it and help them make the best of it.

Lockdowns and lack of social interaction is unprecedented we don't know the long term effects on children and young people.
Children lost time "growing up" many will be OK but many will need extra help, to make up for those two years.
Screens which are normally frowned upon became the main source of interaction with the outside world.
Children were put into solitary confinement kept prisoners in their rooms for 14 days at a time - their crime was to have been near someone with covid. Many had multiple periods of this, particularly secondary kids.
That could not have been good for MH or child development.

We did things to children that at any other point in time would be classed as neglect and have social services involved.

Yeah, I'm guessing most kids who have lost a parent would probably class it as fundamentally more damaging and traumatising than lockdown.

This is why I refused to wear a mask around my baby / toddler and why we still saw people - albeit often outside - during lockdown. His development meant too much; I have zero regrets or guilt for breaking "the rules". I very often get comments about how confident and sociable he is for a lockdown baby.

I agree that it doesn’t help to tell children, explicitly or implicitly, that they ‘must’ have been damaged by lockdowns. But this report is about children that have been affected, changes that have happened.

It is always difficult to look back on things we did or agreed to and pick apart our collective thinking and work out what we need to do to address the damage and what lessons we can learn for next time. It’s uncomfortable for a lot of adults to do this. Which is why, I suppose, we’re going from “it won’t harm children don’t be so silly” to “oh looks like it did harm children, but what’s done is done no use thinking about it now.” Still worth doing, though, even if plenty of adults would rather we didn’t.

I would say the same about many of the decisions made in lockdown. There were reasons at the time why discharging covid-positive patients into care homes back in March 2020 seemed like a good idea to decision-makers. But it was disastrous, and we are not going to learn the lessons we need to if we go right from “it’s only sensible to free up hospital space” to “oops looks like lots of old people died, oh well no point moping about it now let’s move on.”

@peachgreen I do agree with that, although I also think the reverse can be damaging, that if we act like something isn’t a big deal when it is (like losing a parent) the child can feel very unimportant and dismissed - I’m not suggesting you did this by the way! And sorry for your loss

I also think that this can’t be applied to the very young.

Bad things or sad things happening to children are not damaging to development per se, such as the loss of a parent. Though obviously an awful thing to happen. But it’s the handling of it which is so important and exactly why reflection on the poor decisions made around lockdowns and children is crucial.

I’d disagree with that, actually. The loss of a primary caregiver is probably the worst thing that can happen to a child.

The other issue a big effort was made to stop this discussion at the time. And a lot of this isn’t just in hindsight to many.

Now we have the reports re the harm it’s harder to dismiss

We need to face up to it though, even though you can see so many attempts to stop the discussion even now.

@WouldBeGood

Bad things or sad things happening to children are not damaging to development per se, such as the loss of a parent. Though obviously an awful thing to happen. But it’s the handling of it which is so important and exactly why reflection on the poor decisions made around lockdowns and children is crucial.

But I'd argue that the same is true of lockdown. I don't see my daughter having been "damaged" by lockdown or any of the restrictions. That's not to say it wasn't tough - of course it was - or that I haven't had to try and mitigate some of the impact. But in and of itself, it isn't necessarily inherently damaging. Some children's specific circumstances - maybe even many children - has made it damaging for them. But that doesn't mean the alternative would have been better. We can't know that.

@manysummersago I think there's a difference between acting like something is significant and acting like something is damaging. Losing a parent is significant but - particularly for a child of a very young age like my daughter was - it doesn't have to be damaging. Sad, yes, and regrettable, and something that will impact her forever. But she's not inevitably going to have a worse life because of it. Lockdown is the same, imo, only less significant. It wasn't ideal, and we absolutely should look at ways we can support those children who WERE more significantly impacted. But we also shouldn't talk about it like it was this great generational trauma that our children as a collective will never recover from. That's just not the case for many children, and positioning it as such can only be harmful.

Actually maybe it’s more like that Yes Minister joke about how to deal with a crisis.

Stage 1: Nothing bad is happening stop worrying.
Stage 2: All right maybe something bad is happening, but we shouldn’t interfere.
Stage 3: Well maybe we ‘should’ do something about it but there’s nothing we can do, realistically.
Stage 4: Fine, we could have done something about it - but it’s too late now.

@GoldenOmber

Actually maybe it’s more like that Yes Minister joke about how to deal with a crisis.

Stage 1: Nothing bad is happening stop worrying.
Stage 2: All right maybe something bad is happening, but we shouldn’t interfere.
Stage 3: Well maybe we ‘should’ do something about it but there’s nothing we can do, realistically.
Stage 4: Fine, we could have done something about it - but it’s too late now.

Very true. I’ve been rewatching Yes PM on IPlayer - it’s scary how apposite it still is.

There is a real danger the government doesn’t do enough to help children catch up. Sadly there’s no money made from funding schools and nurseries etc properly. So Sunak won’t make the funds available

@GoldenOmber

Actually maybe it’s more like that Yes Minister joke about how to deal with a crisis.

Stage 1: Nothing bad is happening stop worrying.
Stage 2: All right maybe something bad is happening, but we shouldn’t interfere.
Stage 3: Well maybe we ‘should’ do something about it but there’s nothing we can do, realistically.
Stage 4: Fine, we could have done something about it - but it’s too late now.

That's brilliant!

I bet the Tories could find plenty of cronies ready to set up 'catch up academies' or consultants to cobble together a 'catching up curriculum' for a few million £££ and spare schools the work...