Is anyone worried about their primary-age child?

[pistachionuts]

My son is 9 and seriously seems to be struggling mental health wise as the pandemic has dragged on, and seems to be getting worse :( he never had any problems before, was always a happy easy well-rounded child who has now transformed into an anxious boy who loses his temper quickly, cries easily and is always getting stressed and angry.
He hates homeschooling and it’s an absolute struggle trudging through all the work school sets whilst he rubs his eyes and fidgets and stares at the laptop, he always plods on and finishes it but has little motivation and no enjoyment.
I’m trying everything I can to try and make the time at home as nice as possible but there’s only so much I can do.
Is anyone else finding this with their children? He’s like a completely different person im so sad and worried :(

Mine go in a few days a week,on the days they are home they miss going. I have never been more grateful than I am now to have twins. They have their best mate with them all the time, can do the same work together, read together etc... without each other go knows how they would feel.

My 8yo DD is absoloutely broken. She has regressed to thumb sucking, has huge anxiety that keeps her up at night and just has no desire to do almost anything at this point. Schoolwork is heartbreaking she just breaks down at almost every task given other than math and getting her to produce anything has us both in tears, another school here who show all the children in school, waving and saying hello, EVERY ZOOM CALL. Throw in a toddler who sleeps 4/5 hours a night and I work evenings until very late and honestly I worry we won't ever recover fully from this. I'm so scared its going to really affect our relationship and she will forever feel a bad way about me because of my failings to teach her, stay calm and fulfill all her emotional needs whilst barely holding myself together I don't even care she's now over a year behind academically I just don't want her to hate me. I feel like such a failure as a parent but I'm also angry that kids have just been thrown aside forced to carry a burden thats not theirs. God i didn't realise how much I'd been holding that in, off to eat a bar of chocolate and cry into my cup of tea

Im a lone parent with a year old DS, he is desperate and I mean desperate for some social interaction with his peers. He has no one to play with and it’s destroying his confidence and self esteem. I try my best to motivate him but he is so disengaged from learning. A lot of the knowledge is starting to drop out of his head, things he knew confidently last year he has now forgotten or doesn’t understand.

He is clingy and follows me around the house. I can’t even have a wee without him banging on the door for reassurance. And why wouldn't he need reassurance? Everything he cared about has been taken from his life. He wants to make sure I’m not going to disappear like his school, his friends and everything else he misses desperately.

That should have said 6 year old DS

My 5yo who has been potty trained well since 2 has suddenly started wetting herself. She is a very very social child, she's the kid who makes a friend for life just walking around the supermarket. She is desparate for some kind of social interaction. She needs someone to tell news to. I think if she's off school until Easter then the damage will be long lasting.

I've just realised a lot of the mums have teamed up and are doing childcare bubbles where they take eachothers kids for part of the week. I feel like Ive failed her because I haven't organised one of these as they are technically not allowed (as they're not for childcare really), and now I've missed the boat as everyone is teamed up.

This thread is heartbreaking to read.

@Lifeinaonesie DS had some bed wetting and soiling problems in the last lockdown. Like yours, he was reliable and dry (including overnight) but was so stressed and anxious it started showing in other ways.

We moved to the area in the last 2 years and I haven’t really been able to make many Mum friends so we haven’t had any opportunity to arrange anything either. My child’s social interaction with peers happens at school and he can’t go to school, so he doesn’t get any social interaction or play with anyone his age.

The impact of this on children is extremely cruel.

This is all completely heartbreaking. If you can bubble up with another family for childcare and have all the kids half the time I really would.

Also, pets for the only children

Oh, God, this is so sad but I’m also so relieved to hear so many of you saying the same thing. My 4-yr-old DS is going through exactly this. He loves his parents but we shouldn’t be his only company, day in, day out. He needs other children.

My 6yo DS is actually going to school still as a keyworker child but he is really struggling. For him it’s the lack of control over everything - even with school carrying on (relatively) normally, nearly everything else in his life changed overnight in March and there has been & continues to be high levels of uncertainty since then.

So he is really limiting what he eats, isn’t sleeping and showing separation anxiety type behaviours. It’s horrible and I feel so helpless. He is very distressed right now and there is very little we can do to help him. It’s definitely not as simple as go to school & everything will be fine.

This thread is so sad but I'm glad I'm not alone. Any time I've tried to discuss DS's fragile mental health in real life I'm made to feel like it's my fault for not making him 'resilient' enough.

He is 7 and has been a social butterfly since birth! Always smiling, joking around, chatting to people wherever he goes. He's also super high energy and did lots of extra curricular activities. All gone now 😔

He won't sleep, follows me around the house, I rarely see him smile anymore, he cries all the time, begs me to let him go back to school...it's awful because I just don't know how to help him. My other children are coping ok so I don't think it's down to my terrible parenting!

It's such an awkward age because we're not allowed to meet up with another parent and child for a walk, but he's too young to go out by himself. And he struggles with zoom chats because it involves staying still and just chatting when he wants to be running around with his little friends!

We live on the same street as school so he sees them going in and out everyday, plus he can hear them all in the playground. School is heaving and the teachers are all still in so I'm not sure what the point was in 'closing' them 🤔 Funny how it was the ones screaming to shut the schools that have sent their kids back!

It's been a long time for them. As we approach the end of the first year of lockdown / restrictions, it means that a 10 year old has now spent a 10th of their life 'on pause'. For a 4 year old, it's a quarter of their life 😢

*Any time I've tried to discuss DS's fragile mental health in real life I'm made to feel like it's my fault for not making him 'resilient' enough.

That's awful - completely not your fault.

My 4 year old is still a pre schooler but he's become so emotional recently, has started wetting himself and is missing his friends and keyworker so much. He can't go to pre school and they've got staff shortage

Breaks my heart.

Fortunately here on zoom calls the children in school have their own devices. I would definitely be complaining about that.

Many of the same responses and emotions here. We do meet other dc. Ds is yr6 and able to socially distance, he and a friend walk ahead and the parents walk apart too. As no one in either household is out much the risk is reduced and it helps to keep hIm sane. He transforms seeing a friend into his normal chatty self.

I think under the circumstances I would probably do similar in an open space so you can watch with any child over 8 or 9. I know that doesn't help younger dc, I do think that those not in school should be able to meet one other outside with parental supervision as it has to be less of a risk than those still in school every day. The school could send home letters for the parents of those children who are not in school to produce for police if challenged. Or do as Scotland have done and disregard children under 12. It could still be just two adults and keeping moving not sitting picnicking.

We have tried zoom calls, where we set up an activity and both children do that while talking. It can work well but it is not the same as running around pretending to be vampires/unicorns/monsters or whatever in the playground. The calls we have set up for DD are becoming more subdued.

Mine are struggling too. DS1 is 7 (year 3) and is an anxious personality anyway but is clearly very stressed and anxious at the moment: he's having trouble sleeping and is permanently attached to his favourite cuddly. He's brilliant with home learning, and incredibly independent and motivated, but he really misses his friends. Some of his friends are into gaming and are interacting that way, and I feel a bit guilty that he isn't, but he isn't into gaming yet. He wants to be running around a playground with his friends pretending to be Jedis or Harry Potter.

DS2 is 4 and in YR. Really hates the live lessons and refuses to have the camera on, though he enjoys seeing his friends and teacher so who knows what's going on in his head. I think he's in a better place socially than DS1 because he hasn't formed solid/exclusive friendships yet, and his brother is great company for him. He's not himself though.

My 10 year old really struggled last time. He has always been what I would call “high maintenance”. He feels emotions stronger that others, if he is happy he is really happy and if he is angry he is really angry. We muddled through but it was hard going with lots of tests from both of us. I’m a TA in the same school so I knew what the expectations for home schooling were which I think made it harder. I worked on a rota last time so me and DH (who lost his job) took it in turns.
This time I’m in full time actually teaching my class while my teacher is working on Google Classroom so he has gone into school. Whilst it’s not normal in the sense non of his friends are there and he still can’t play football at weekends, it’s helped him hugely.

God, this is all so so sad. I'm so sorry that everyone is struggling so much.

I'm also very very worried. In one sense it's not half as bad as others experiences as DS doesn't really know what he's missing but I'm getting increasingly worried about how long this is going on.

DS is 3 and was supposed to be starting preschool in January. We moved to a new area just a couple months or so before this all started and I don't know anyone here. We couldn't afford nursery before he became eligible for his hours. We're a long way from family, he has one cousin who is a similar age who we saw briefly over the summer but he was a bit frightened of, they haven't had a chance to have a relationship at all. Other than that he has barely played with another child since March. He's also emotional with missing all the places he loved to go and is clearly bored. We used to love exploring all over (and it got slightly better between lockdowns) but not he's almost scared to go anywhere other than our local park. He doesn't run around much, I have to really cajole him to get any exercise. He wants me to play make-believe games but gets so frustrated that I do it wrong. Some weeks ago we bumped into a family with a little girl the same age in our park and for about 10 minutes he played just like he should be, all running around and excited and happy. But then we haven't seen her again. There aren't many children out and about round here, I think because lots of them are still at the school. The few people that I had met pre lockdown at a toddler group are being very cautious and not meeting up, or as far as I'm aware.

I just feel so guilty because if I was a more sociable person myself maybe I'd have made a friend to meet up with, and because we moved further from family and also because we chose to live in a flat. It's been so hard. We know that DS loves cats and felt that it was ok to wait until we could manage to afford a house in a few years, but I think it would make a bit of a difference to him now, but we're top floor and we couldn't do that.

I'm just so worried. How long is it ok to be completely isolated from his peers? I mean, it's been a year and I could cope with it if it was going to be half term but if it drags on and on? I don't believe it will be September but if it was...my child would go from being a bit over 2 to nearly 4 with absolutely no socialisation.

We have also been having videos from his preschool, every morning they video their morning song and calender time. It's actually been nice for DS to have a bit of structure and see other faces but I agree it's just truly awful for those children stuck at home to see their friends waving at them every day. Horrible. We live on a small estate too, and from one end to the other you can hear the children playing out at break time. It's just cruel.

This thread is breaking my heart. A bit of relief that my children aren't the only ones struggling, mixed with immense sadness for all the children who have been affected so profoundly.

I wish I knew what the solution was. I don't think that it is safe (epidemiologically speaking) for schools to go back yet, but I also don't think we can let this continue either.

This is exactly why I took a school place this time. I didn't last time even though we were entitled to one but the effect it had on DD (only child) was awful and I knew this would go on for months.

@TellerTuesday4EVA

This is exactly why I took a school place this time. I didn't last time even though we were entitled to one but the effect it had on DD (only child) was awful and I knew this would go on for months.

Many would but can’t, they also know it’s likely a term

So hard when it’s never an option

I am so angry that children have been disregarded so: how can it be ok for two adults or teens to meet up for a SD walk but not for younger children to do the same? It’s hard work ensuring SD with younger children - and I’m sure it messes with their play to a normally unacceptable extent - but it is possible, and mitigations like meeting in beeezier parks would help too.

I’m so sorry for all the children affected by this. We home educate anyway, so already one of us is always available to our kids, we only have two, we have it easy compared to most, and this is STILL really, really hard. They miss their friends so much. One has some social delays he was overcoming with regular social contact with other children - of course he has slipped back and now has that massive hill to climb all over again. The other shows signs of depression at times, finds it hard to get motivated for his academic work, usually he learns in small groups with his friends. He can manage one zoom class a week but it’s rubbish compared to real life contact.

I am reassured reading this that my DD is behaving in the same way as lots of other children, particularly those of a similar age - she’s nearly 8. I am beaten down by her at the moment and feel like exploding with the stress of it. My DSs (10 and 14) are getting on with it, with the odd moment of being a bit low or stressed but generally getting on ok. DD is a ball of rage. The slightest thing going wrong with her work sends her screaming and ripping things up or running upstairs to hit her brother! It usually happens when I have to take my attention off her to have a work meeting. She wants me to be with her helping her all the time but I have to work too. I’ve already tried cutting my hours but the work still needs doing and this week I have ended up doing my usual hours for less pay because I can’t find a way to make it work. I don’t know how to help her get through this and feel like I’m letting her down. It’s so rubbish. She struggled in the first lockdown too then was absolutely fine when she went back to school. I just want her to be happy.

Hi OP, I just wanted to say how helpful this thread has been in recognising and realising the impact and cause on my DS. I just thought he was being awkward about sleep and online lesson work, but in actuality I realise it's a reaction to lockdown. I didn't really put the connection together before, although I realised it was a difficult time I didn't realise the impact. So, it's been great and helped me reconsider how we home school and think about how I can better support my DS through this tough time. Things have improved at home already this morning!!