Places actively discouraging children

[Allhallowseve]

Just wondering what other people opinions of this are?
I follow a few local garden centres as we visit quite regularly under normal circumstances. Since they have reopened they are advertising as being open but asking people not to bring children.
I am just finding the way children have been treated throughout this pandemic absolutely awful .... I don't know if it's just me?
Yes I know things could be far worse for them and people are shielding not able to really get out. But garden centres actively discouraging children from visiting?!
Adults are able to meet up in outdoor areas yet it's incredibly hard for children to do the same. Adults can pop out to shops now , grab a coffee maybe do a couple of things they enjoy . However the play parks are padlocked and taped up . Most school year groups are not going back until September , all playgroups , clubs and classes are cancelled. Yet they are the least vulnerable group in society and seem to have been forgotten.

Isolating healthy people and including every symptom and no symptoms as a symptom is simply illogical. Only the sick should have been isolated, like in every other pandemic through out history. Keeping children locked up in sterile conditions only weakens their immune system, and increases their chances of futur illness. No body seems to care that they're actively being stripped of their childhood.

No body seems to care that they're actively being stripped of their childhood
🤣
Oh, you're serious?

Because they take their cues from us, going by this and similar threads, I can see why many children MAY have issues. Doesn't need to be that way. Such dramallamas.

I quite like a child free shopping experience, see no issue.
It's interesting that everyone seems to have well behaved little angels. I can guarantee there are a lot of rose coloured glasses on this thread because, lets face it, who is going to say their kid can be annoying and perhaps not the second coming we think he/she is.

No body seems to care that they're actively being stripped of their childhood

can the same apply to those of us in our early 20s too? Feel like I’m spending my best days cooped up & wasting away - my good looks are going to waste!

Because children are unhygienic. We are hard wired to not mind our own kids germs but let's be realistic. Toddlers in particular are disgusting. They don't wash hands properly, dont social distance, run around away from their parents touching everything. They can't be expected to, they are too young to understand. But that doesn't negate the fact that strict hygiene needs to be observed at the moment. Where I work we are only allowing children either in a buggy or if older, they need to stay with parents at all times, not be allowed to wander. Everyone has to sanitise hands on the way in, children are not excepted. Anyone who cannot sanitise their hands are given gloves. Ideally we prefer them not to come in at all but that isn't practical.

I read something the other day that suggested up to 30% of children could end up with PTSD over lockdown. No wonder, treated as nothing but filthy vectors of disease, deprived of socialisation and an education. It’s a fucking disgrace and some of you people with your shitty attitudes to kids would do good to remember who you’ll be expecting to bankroll your pensions/wipe your arse/look after you in future.

No body seems to care that they're actively being stripped of their childhood

For God’s sake, it’s been 12 weeks. Just listen to yourselves. What your kids are experiencing was a typical childhood in the 1950s and 60s. They’re not being evacuated or imprisoned or starved or tortured. Some of you really do need to get a grip.

I assume some of these children will be traumatised because their parents are hysterical that they can’t take them to the garden centre and that they tell them they have been discriminated against.

Yes there are some very vulnerable children out there, but most of them are vulnerable because of their family circumstances and not down to the pandemic and not down to the fact they can’t go to the shops.

Vulnerable children were eligible to go to school all through lockdown, but many families refused to send them. They didn’t need to miss out on their education,

More ignorance.

I’m pretty sure you can’t cause PTSD just by telling kids they’ve been discriminated against. I’m sure it’s an actual recognised serious medical condition.

My parents were kids in the 1950s and 60s and I’m pretty sure they’ve never told me about a time they were banned from seeing and socialising freely with friends, had their education stopped and weren’t allowed in shops.

Kids are being shat on because they don’t vote. Bit short sighted because in a few years many of them will and they’ll remember exactly who shat on them and placed them and their needs at the bottom of the pile.

Have you got a link to this report of 30% of children suffering from PTSD?

Whilst it is a huge shame that kids are missing out on so much (some more than others with cancelled GCSE’, Alevels and Y6’s missing out on so much this term) they are hardly being stripped of their childhood.
As a previous poster said, family outings 40 years ago consisted of a walk in the woods, countryside or park. There weren’t all the fancy kids parks and play areas and zillion other things and places to go to entertain kids. A walk after lunch on a Sunday was for many as good as it got!
Of course, kids were allowed to play out in the streets with other friends and that lack of socialisation is hard right now.
However things are moving on slowly. It’s been 3 months and hopefully another 3 months into the future will seem different again.
Make as much of their childhoods right now as you can. Go for a new interesting walk- find trees to climb, streams to paddle in, logs to walk along etc. Meet up for a socially distended walk with a friend if possible with them. We can’t change it right now so need to try to make the best of it

I read something the other day that suggested up to 30% of children could end up with PTSD over lockdown
Rubbish.
If there are children who end up with PTSD over this, it will be on their shitty parents because that is who the children are taking their cues from.
Get a grip, seriously, because otherwise you really are contributing to the negative wellbeing of those you're supposedly worried about the most.

CJ This thread is about not being allowed to take children out, which is unlikely to be populated by lots of posters who are extraordinarily anxious about covid.

I’m baffled by all these people who find children so inconvenient while out shopping. I imagine they are the same people (adults) who wander along at snails pace meaning I am held up as I try to walk fast from one place to another. Ban slow walkers, ban children, ban older people who should be careful with covid in fact ban everyone so I can have the shops to myself for the hour I have to go. Or maybe have some manners and learn to actually share the space with others. None of us are actually special, no matter what some on this thread may think.

No body seems to care that they're actively being stripped of their childhood

Think of people who were children during WW2 - that went on for much longer than the pandemic has (so far). Schooling was disrupted by schools being bombed, and air raids at night affecting what people could do during the day. There was no form of remote educational support available in those days. Many lost their homes and loved ones. Movement was restricted, there was rationing, very limited availability of retail goods, leisure activities took second pace to the War Effort, beaches were barricaded with barbed wire, holidays away from home were non-existent. Yet, that generation survived and managed to complete an education - many of those children became the first in their family to go to university. Children were doubtless traumatised but if you look at people who are now in their 80s, they don't represent a 'lost generation' due to to the disruptions of their childhood.

I also don’t understand the comparison to ww2. A lot less education was needed then to get a job in comparison to now. People stuck together they didn’t ‘socially distance’. Of course it was a horrific time but it doesn’t mean kids can be treated worse than adults in 2020 which is what this thread is about.

I’d also love to see your actual evidence of lots of people going to university after WW2. I suspect you are talking about the baby boomers who weren’t born during the war.

@SudokuBook

I read something the other day that suggested up to 30% of children could end up with PTSD over lockdown. No wonder, treated as nothing but filthy vectors of disease, deprived of socialisation and an education. It’s a fucking disgrace and some of you people with your shitty attitudes to kids would do good to remember who you’ll be expecting to bankroll your pensions/wipe your arse/look after you in future.

If your kid has PTSD after a 3 month lockdown you're doing it wrong. Stop causing damage to your kids.

@choli does that extend to the parents of children who have lost loved ones from covid or have had family members/ close friends seriously ill? I imagine their risk will be disproportionately high for this.

There really are some highly unpleasant people on mumsnet

Children are a lot more resilient and adaptable than many people give them credit for. Even if this goes on for a year (which I really hope it doesn't) it's still only a small proportion of a childhood. There are still plenty of fun things for children to do but it just takes a little more creativity than going to the playground or shops.

There are many many children living through far worse than this every day all around the world and their situations won't improve.

My parents were kids in the 1950s and 60s and I’m pretty sure they’ve never told me about a time they were banned from seeing and socialising freely with friends, had their education stopped and weren’t allowed in shops

I was a kid in the 1950s. I rarely saw another child except my brother until I started school and even then that was the only place I saw them. I don’t remember being taken to shops either. Shopping was functional in those days, not a leisure activity.

The worst these kids are experiencing is a bit of boredom for a few weeks and, if their parents would stop catastrophising, the main effect on them would be increased resilience.

Surely it’s just about the queues? I frequently have to queue at my local Waitrose for half an hour (closer to an hour in the early days). Children are counted as people and it makes sense to limit the number of people to speed things up? There was a woman with two young children in front of me the other day. I presumed she had no choice, which was absolutely fine. The younger one was fretting and if she’d been behind me I would happily have let her go before me.

Nobody seems to care about the number of young couples who seem to be unable to shop alone either. They vastly outnumbered pensioners in Morrisons this afternoon

I do . I emailed Waitrose to have a moan after standing in a queue behind three young couples (one of whom pretended not to know each other when they got into sight of the security staff). In my defence, I wouldn’t normally have bothered, but had had a shitty day and the sign (which I’m sure everyone has read at some point while standing in that bloody queue) clearly says one person per household. I also work for the NHS so could easily just flash my card and waltz to the front of the queue, but I never have because I only work a few hours a week, have just as much time as everyone else to queue and am not (normally) a CF.

I get it and support it with supermarkets but not non-essential retailers/ garden centres.

Children have been very much disregarded during the pandemic

Completely agree with this.

I am not sure DIY stores or garden centres are particularly interesting places to take kids though, especially with no cafes or outdoor play areas (my local garden centre has a play area in normal times) open.

And I am seeing the family outings to the supermarkets creeping back - why?

Why would a child want to go to a garden centre anyway.
Some people have no choice but to take them if they want to go out.

@pigoons

I think it is disgracefu.

children and parents of primary school age children / pre-school children in particular have been forgotten about / left to just suck it up / get on with it.

Do you think everyone else has had red carpet treatment then?

People shielding have been forgotten about

The elderly have been forgotten about

Many of those in the categories above have spent the past twelve weeks completely alone. No children have

What do you think government have done for the shielded and vulnerable who have had to isolate alone? You must think they've had special treatment if you think only children have been forgotten about?