How are your kids coping?

[WtfIsThisEven]

15yo girl: bit grumpy she can’t see her friends, but otherwise sitting in a dark stinky room for weeks on end on her phone is pretty much her usual pastime. 😬 Thinks she’s on holiday. Slept in this morning and forgot to sign in for her online schooling. 🙄

10yo boy: going round the twist. Has way too much unburned energy. Spends hours in the garden bouncing his basketball which must be driving the neighbours batty. So bored he volunteered to clean the house. 😳

Yours?

My 3.5yo is sad and confused

Mine are 10, 12 and 14. The two at secondary have a full timetable of online lessons - it really is almost like being at school! The younger one needs more help with his work. Luckily I'm wfh part time so I can help him and still get my work done. We're also lucky to have a garden for them to let off some steam. They have all been interacting with their friends using various means - we got the 10yo a phone last week, he would normally have had to wait till his 11th birthday but in the circumstances we felt that was unfair.

8 year old getting on ok although missing her friends and her sports (she loves gymnastics). Not enjoying the school work but does it reluctantly .

4 year old fine . Enjoying school work and think she likes being at home with me .

13 year old ds actually a bit low yesterday, really missing seeing friends and going to school. Not much I can do to cheer him up but I do feel for him. He is doing school work in the morning and then free afternoon but I think he needs a project or something that is fun to do.

6 year old - loves the freedom, now wears dresses every day (is a boy). Enjoys 'home school'.
4 year old - overjoyed not to have to go to nursery any more. Loves being at home.
2 year old - mostly fine but talks about nursery a lot. I think she misses it.

I wonder if the kids with siblings are doing better than the ones without.
DS hasn't played with another child in over 2 weeks now

Mine are 16 and just turned 18.Hard for them as in S5 and S6 and now no exams no certainty about anything.We are 2 weeks in and generally doing ok.Dd who is 18 is a home bird and seems to be managing fine ds is really sociable and misses his friends. Both are musical so doing a lot if that. Doing school work and some online courses and their guitar teacher is doing online classes. Ds has started facetiming his friends it was lovely to hear him laugh with them yesterday. DD is volunteering to help older people. We also watch a movie together most evenings, this is nice as they usually ignore me .Generally doing remarkably well but I do feel sorry for them,and would worry about them if this continues for a long time.

My 7yo is coping okay, complains of being bored, but her school is starting to do Zoom lessons which is great. She’s reading to my DM every morning on FaceTime, which is actually more than they would both usually see each other so that’s nice for them both.

My 4yo is okay but I worry more about him as he is very very sociable and usually loves going to nursery. And he has no sense of time beyond “x many sleeps” so I can’t explain that this is indefinite, he’s not getting it. Thank god he has his sister’s rich imagination to entertain him else I would be going crazy.

11 year old DS- he's fine! Plodding along with school work just about, He's generally a bit of an introvert so this sort of lifestyle suits him really!

16 year old DS- feels a bit lost, social butterfly so is missing his friends, upset that his year 11 stopped so abruptly. No schoolwork to do, so sleeping, gaming, phone chat and eating is about his lot. He's obviously starting to get a bit bored though as he's offering to do odd jobs around the house

DD (4) is loving having us both at home. It is all she has ever wanted - a captive audience to play games and dollies and fetch her snacks. This is her dream come true.

I do wonder if most kids are going to find the sudden lack of school and social pressure a relief.

4yo DS is having the best time. He is a massive home bird and has never really liked nursery (not unhappy there would just always prefer to be home) so this is a dream come true for him.

12. Constant talking and bouncing around the house which makes me feel over the edge. I need to send him out to garden to run around often, other wise I would lose it eventually. Slowly getting used to the idea of "this is not a holiday", and reluctantly do the school work, but keep on distracting himself and doing only things he likes like art, science and maths. Mentally, emotionally, physically coping ok atm, but not sure if long term.

Mines applying for supermarket jobs as a reason to have something to do.

@feelingdizzy interesting yours have school work. DS had some Chemistry to do as evidence gathering but apart from that there’s been nothing.

I worry about my 14 year old daughter spending to time in her room 😔 she had so much planned this year, her life has been put on hold, at 14 that is quite hard mentally to cope with.

11yo boy. So far he's completely unbothered.

We go for a 10k walk/run/cycle everyday, and we have puzzle sessions and board games. I ordered some books off his reading list at the start of this, and we have various projects like setting up a sundial that's been kicking around the garage for a while.

More worrying, he isn't bothered that his dad hasn't come to see him. Years of ex being lazy/uninvolved are showing.

14 y o is torn between doing school work (has full day of lessons) and loafing in bed - I can see the discipline of school is losing its grip and am really worried about next term. Lots of fighting with us for no reason and very irritable.

My neighbours teenage boys are coping by having their mates over every single day for beers in the garden

My ds8 is actually loving it. He keeps saying “this is the life”
He’s mild asd and is naturally a bit of a loner.

It’s helps that he’s already a minecraft genius and he’s getting more time for that. Also enjoying home schooling as it’s probably more varied and less hours than the normal school day. Quite how he will feel in a few months time I’m not sure.

We are on week three, and it has been different every week!

My teen dd (15) has missed her friends, and spends lots of time chatting to them all, she is doing a work out a day and is studying much more than usual which is great. She is occasionally saying she feels a little hemmed in. We walk, but obviously it is the same walk more or less every day and is getting a little tedious after three weeks. She talks about the impact on others, she has cried about people pets dying if they are taken into hospital, and is feeling the general tension but otherwise quite happy to join in with family activities when they appeal to her. I would pretty much do anything to take them somewhere amazing and fun with friends now!! I hope they don't decide on further restrictions as this will seriously damage children and teens. They need to go out even briefly.

My younger dd (11) has been as happy as anything despite being wobbly once or twice. She has been building things, zooming around the garden, doing all sorts of crafts and concoctions every day (the house is a tip now!) she doesn't enjoy our walks at all, and would prefer not to go, but I am insisting she comes, and she takes photos and seems happy enough when we are out. She also face times friends, although not as much as her sister.

We play music a lot, we try to inject party time into dinners and as parents we can set the tone for a positive week (it can be hard to do at times) I am praying this will end soon, I believe this is quite detrimental to the health and wellbeing especially for older children and teens (young children are happy to be with their parents mostly) I worry about the social and education impact on them. We are as a family, trying to make the most of it as much as we can.

macca I assume you are joking!!!

Nope

Can you not have a quiet word with the parents? If that doesn't work I am afraid I would be filing an on line report to the police. It is not safe for those teens to be doing that, and the parents should be much more responsible. It is also giving the wrong kind of message to other teens.

There is something to be said for seeing what the mortality and complication statistics are like in a month, and if it continues to be the case that children are by and large unaffected, healthy children, families and younger teachers with no underlying health conditions should be back in school. There is no justification for ruining the education and social welfare of the youngest in our society if there is almost no risk to them. Children that are compromised should be offered on line learning until it is safe.

An assessment should be carried out in the next few weeks to identify the dangers, and even a reduced timetable would be better than nothing.

I felt very strongly that schools should be closed initially, and I still think that action was correct at the time, as the risk was unknown, however once the facts become more obvious and become more reliable, and we know most children are safe from CV then we really ought to reopen the schools as soon as possible.

Ds 8 is struggling. He's pretty unhappy and as a result his attitude has taken a nosedive. He's being rude and grumpy to me.
I understand because honestly, he's also the last person I want to talk to 24/7. Being an only child in a lone parent household, without even a garden for respite is very hard on both of us.