Scared of son starting nursery due to covid

[Bongbangbing]

I acknowledge that I've been incredibly lucky and due to this and quite a bit of sacrifice my family has been able to mostly stay at home during COVID. We still go to as many events as we can that are completely outside and did go to some inside things over summer when cases were low. However we haven't been at any indoor events or families houses since Oct last year.

I live with my very elderly mother, I have a son too young to be vaccinated, and I am cev with ongoing extreme shortness of breath.

My son is 3 and due to start the nursery attached to the local school in September. I don't need him to attend (I will be on maternity leave) but I really feel like the social aspect is something he has most missed out on. He's very advanced in every area but I can't provide the experience of socialisation with others his age. He's a great kid and happily wears a mask when we have to go somewhere indoors but I can't expect him to be the only kid at nursery with a mask on. I'm super worried about myself/my mother and the chance of long COVID in general for the whole family. Please don't tell me that we just 'need to learn to live with it', this is something still killing hundreds a day and affecting so many lives with long COVID. I guess I want to hear from people with similar worries to me?

I would actually be more worried about children's health to be honest....there's a certain age group which have missed out on regular exposure to the normal bugs that do the rounds and which is actually crucial to the normal development of the immune system. I'm worried that kids who have been isolated are then subject to a bombardment of infections within a short space of time to which they have had no exposure ....we certainly saw this phenomenon in the waves of RSV that caused increased children's hospital admissions last summer after so called "freedom day" and during the last winter period. Stacking of infections is likely to cause more problems than catching colds/D&V/chicken pox/hand,foot and mouth and having decent recovery time in between. I don't think its essential for kids to attend a nursery setting in their youngest years, this is a relatively new social development as women have been encouraged/financially needed to go back to work quickly but young kids will normally have plenty of social exposure to a range of family members and family friends kids .Its the lack of exposure to unmasked faces and people crossing the street rather than interacting with each other that's been the abnormal part.

There's been an unusual "wave" of hepititis in young children thought to be an immune response from other "normal infections" because 3-5 yo's haven't had the normal levels of pre-school exposure to a normal micro-biome. It's been identified in Scotland but also similar patterns in other European and North American countries.
Our immune systems work by regular exposure to microbes, and if we don't expose them, the microbes effectively are "novel" to our immune systems.

I'm seeing a difference in social skills in my youth groups which are around junior school age. It's subtle things like following group instructions, understanding how to organise/ arrange themselves and separation anxiety because of reduced experiences and roughly 18m of contradictory social values (e.g. social distancing) Many new starters who moved up are socially 2 years younger and that's no co-incidence. The more established children in the cohort who were new in 19/20 and our oldest are less affected because they've retained the pre-pandemic default of our groups and managed to return to it. There are always low-confidence children, but the ratio is different to usual and they are taking longer to catch-up.
And these are children who have attended school for large chunks of time since Sept 20, but have lost experiences like lining up and being arranged for assembly, then sitting in a large group for 20 mins (bubbles).

My groups are different organisations and operated differently in 20/21 but the pattern is there regardless of how much zoom/ remote/ outdoors was done in that time.

Indoor and outdoor play tend to be different and use social skills differently in sharing equipment, taking turns, listening, sitting still, following instructions etc. Too much dominance of one or the other is likely to create a skills gap which might not be obvious in a lone 3yo but would be apparent in a group setting and the different levels of interactions and expectations there.

Children need their peers and to interact in a normal, natural way. My two "forgot" how to play as 2020 dragged on and they didn't get fresh inspiration from other children. Now they've finally had the combination of a decent run of normality and decent weather, their play over Easter has become more creative again, more energetic and they've had more desire to play and the stamina to keep at it. Sometimes you really can't see the effect of measures until they've had a good stint of normal, natural interactions.

Hi OP one option is to forget nursery and go to toddler groups at Forest Schools so it's all outdoors but lots of little ones to interact with. The local one here runs play sessions for under 5s every day of the week, all weather apart from snow!

I can understand your concern and I know it's not what you want to hear, but covid won't be going anywhere anytime soon and I think that nursery will have a massive benefit on your son socially. I was quite advanced as a young child apparently in other areas apart from social skills, but my mother chose not to send my to pre-school or nursery before compulsory school started (obviously not due to covid as it was a long time ago) and I've struggled socially all my life, could have struggled regardless but who knows. Is he off to school in September 2023? Nursery also prepares them somewhat for school life especially as it's built onto the school!

but yes, back to covid it doesn't seem to spread a huge deal in the little ones that age, so even if it was in his class there's a chance he would not even get it anyway.

Most elderly people I know are getting on with their lives now and socialising as usual. What's the point of the jabs if they can't? Most older people I've known to get covid have been totally fine! I have an CEV friend who shielded and spent 2 years worrying about getting it - she ended up catching it and had no symptoms at all, not a single one, only detected on a routine lft. She has respiratory issues!

Plus I think your son wearing a mask is likely pointless. They aren't overly effective and it seems a bit off to me to expect him to wear one!

As you say it'll be learning to live with it.

I just wanted to add that your openness to examining your anxiety around this is really
Impressive.

I don't believe you're being irrational, especially given your situation. Pregnancy and breathless do mean that you really do want to avoid putting yourself at risk of further complications with Covid ❤️

We've spent years being told to avoid certain things to keep ourselves safe, and despite the virus still being there we're now expected to expose ourselves to it. Yes the vaccinations have been groundbreaking in terms of reducing deaths but you can still get very ill / many complicated complications from it. Mild actually only means not requiring hospitalisation and oxygen so think the media have really misrepresented that. So I really understand the confusion between wanting to send him but knowing the risk that increases in your household.

I don't have any advice, just that I really respect your approach to this situation. You clearly care a lot about many people and I hope you find a solution that you can all find some peace with. Let us know how you get on :)

Hi OP I hope everything goes well with your pregnancy.

Tbh with a little one starting nursery covid would be the least of my worries.

They catch so so many bugs when they start nursery. And I assume if they don’t catch them then it’s when they go to school.

If you have the option not to send him around the same time as you have a newborn I wouldn’t. Our baby started nursery in January and I’m not sure we’ve had more than a few days without illness. He’s old enough just about to bounce back from it now but with a much younger baby I’d be really worried. It’s also crap as a parent being I’ll literally all the time.

I understand you saying you’re more worried about covid because of the potentially unknown long term effects but I think the other other bugs are really not to be down played.

Maybe the bugs won’t be as bad in the summer? Who knows.

I was going to suggest something similar.

I'm still being cautious because of worries about long Covid, which is more prevalent than I'm comfortable with. Quite likely my view is affected by my eldest child having had a similar illness (ME/CFS) which has blighted their life for seven years, since the age of 15. I really really don't want anyone else in the family to suffer like that.

We also have the luxury of being able to be cautious without it affecting our lives excessively. DP works outdoors and I home educate our youngest. She and I are still sticking with all outdoor activities, which is not much of a hardship. She plays with friends every day, just as she always has. Through the winter we carried on with bushcraft, tennis, hockey, climbing, and constant playing in the park. She sees friends in their garden or hers or in the nearby woods. She does do a few things indoors which she loves enough that I think the risk is worthwhile.

I only know a few people who are home educating primarily to avoid Covid or other illness, but there have always been a few in the home ed community. For example, one little girl with cystic fibrosis would land in hospital for a couple of weeks every time she caught anything at all, so her parents found it best to withdraw her from school. She usually played outdoors, or saw just one or two friends at a time indoors rather than being crowded in with dozens of other children every day. Sure, she still got ill, but the odds weren't so bad that way and she didn't get ill so often.

Playing with other children is great for kids' social development, but that doesn't have to be indoors in large groups. It is quite possible to avoid such environments indefinitely and to have a good social life if you are happy to home educate.

I'm not entirely convinced by the view that kids will catch lots of bugs and be constantly ill at some stage in their lives, so you may as well get it over with when they're tiny. That hasn't been the case for my eldest (who went to school for a while in Y5 and later to uni) or the other home ed kids I know, many of whom started college at 16 having never previously been in crowded environments on a daily basis. Mixing with smaller numbers of people doesn't seem to have stunted their immune systems as people fear it will.

Hi op, I feel very similarly to yiu and am in the same situ as you with nursery. I have emetophobia which covid really triggered something with it and I’m really not coping well with the anxiety. I actually took my elder dc out of school to home ed them (they’re returning in September).

I’m thinking of looking at a forest school for my 3yo because that mentally feels easier to cope with (apart from cooking and sharing food around the campfire and hand washing facilities in the woods). Happy to chat if you want to pm me if you’re looking for someone to share thoughts and being of similar concerns

Once your kid starts school, he is going to catch everything going unless you allow him to socialise indoors, attend nursery. Why should he miss out on normal things just because of covid - it's hardly his fault what year he was born in? Sure you have let him experience things outside, but what if a friend invites him to play at his house - you gonna stop him going or send him in a mask? That's laughable if so!

I always find these replies odd because in my experience kids catch absolutely everything once at school, regardless of how much socialising they did before starting school. It's the same as fresher's flu, just loads of new people sharing germs. Building up some phantom immunity isn't the best reason to send kids to nursery so don't feel forced OP.

Thank you this is a really useful suggestion that I hadn't even considered. I have already started contacting local ones, although it's not as good here. They only offer an hour a week and it's an hour's round trip to get there! Still, better than nothing and I wouldn't have thought of it without this suggestion.

I haven't checked this thread in a few days but it was so lovely to come back and read something so understanding and kind. ❤
Honestly just reading something that made me feel not completely crazy has helped me a lot. I can't even look after my son on my own ATM due to the breathlessness of my lung condition which has then been worsened by pregnancy. It's hard reading some of the posts above about how this temp lack of socialising is so very damaging when you are very pregnant and already worried on a daily basis about breathing.
Another poster recommended forest school, so we are trying that, and then I've really made a push on trying to find local parents for playdates etc outside as well as a few more classes for him to go to. He'll be starting nursery in September, and I'm hoping that a lot of my fear goes away when I can breathe a bit more again once my little girl is out.
Thanks for being kind

I think you're right to be considering nurseries, even with your Covid concerns.

DD has really struggled to settled into school and I partially put that down to the lack of socialising with other children throughout the few months she couldn't attend nursery as it was closed due to Covid.

I was very concerned about catching Covid earlier in the pandemic as I am asthmatic and have an autoimmune disease, plus parents who are both classed as vulnerable. As time has gone on though I have had to relax as otherwise DD's social development and my work would both have been affected. With each month that passes that we haven't caught Covid I feel gradually more confident. We have both had ample opportunity to catch it. There were cases at nursery and recently there were so many cases at school that I couldn't see how we'd avoid it, but we have.

There are some longstanding medical conditions that seem to offer some protection to Covid. For example, I read somewhere that atopic people (asthma/eczema/allergies) are 36% less likely to get Covid.

You have understandable reasons to be nervous about Covid but I absolutely think you are doing the right thing to start making your DC's social development a priority. Quite apart from anything else, he needs a good phase of building up his immune system before starting school and the only way to do this is to socialise in close quarters and catch lots of colds and bugs. It's really important for a child's health that they are exposed to these things in their early years.