Dear people who were parents of toddlers in lockdown

[jallopeno]

How on earth did you manage?!!

I'm so sorry. I don't think I realised how much of a struggle it must have been. Hope you're doing OK.

I had a two year old that turned three in Lockdown 1, a 6 year old that had to be home schooled and I had to switch to WFH full time. Husband still had to go out to work so I flew solo and honestly I think I have PTSD from that time. I still feel so guilty for not giving my best to anything... my kids, my work, my home, my health. Everything and everyone suffered. We had to watch others furloughed and enjoying the great weather whilst I pretty much had them in front of screens all day with a constant stream of snacks to keep them quiet. I would log on at 5am and try and take frequent breaks to give them some time but I found it so hard. Honestly looking back I don't know how (or why with bloody hindsight of Boris and the partying) we did it.

I had just a few weeks before returned to work as a district nurse from my second maternity leave. Children were just turned one and 3.5. My husband started WFH and hasn't been back to the office since. He looked after the kids while I worked and worked first thing in the morning and then from when I got home until 1/2am to get his own full time hours in. We were lucky though as we had a garden and the children don't remember it. I did nearly have DC 3 all alone during the second lockdown though as DH wasn't allowed in until I was measuring 4cm dilated and I was last measured at 3cm and then half an hour later gave birth without being measured again in between, so I was lucky the midwife decided to let him in anyway.

DD turned 2 at the beginning of lockdown. She did really well all things considered. She appeared in a lot of DH's work calls but it was all understood at that time. However she definitely watches a lot more TV than her big brother and has been to a lot fewer museums.

I had a 1 year old and it was lovely tbh. We used our one exercise a day to do a super long walk. He was really good. Partner got work from home so he saw him pretty much all day.

I had a toddler and then a newborn with health problems who was classed as CEV which meant my toddler was out of nursery for over a year to protect him. There were some “Trapped toddler parents” (puddlesuits) threads on here which really saved me some days. Just a bit of solidarity made so much difference. Still flinch away from looking at photos of that time which is pretty much all of my sons first year, which is pretty sad really. Equally I still feel grateful to take them on the bus to the library, its given normal life a deeper joy for me.

The lack of formula was frightening. I literally spent hours and hours trying to source some. It was sold out everywhere and online trusted outlets were saying several weeks for delivery.

For me long covid is a billion times worse than lockdown though.

I had a 2 year old. She's super chilled though and was absolutely fine. She did have speech delay though and I wonder if that was made worse by the lockdowns as she was showing signs of it prior to that. She's absolutely fine now though.

My poor year 6 leaver /new year 7 had it the hardest as very academic school and she was at the laptop most of the day when in year 7 lockdowns.

My middle child aged 6/7 was the one I struggled with the most .

I think by comparison the toddlers had it the easiest tbh!

I've just read more messages from working parents and they are hard hitting . I'm sorry you had to go through that and I didn't mean my post to sound flippant - I was a sahm so it's a different perspective to a working parent through the pandemic.

What a lovely post. I had 18 month old twins when the first lockdown started, hardest thing we've ever done 💐

Had a four year old and 20 month old when the first lockdown started, and we were both working from home with few allowances made (I asked to be furloughed and was turned down because we were so busy). It was awful. As others have said, we did shifts - I used to get up at 5am to work every day and was constantly exhausted and stressed. There seemed to be zero acknowledgment at work of how difficult it was for parents of small children. Instead, we were expected to be on loads of team bonding calls where people discussed their latest baking adventures and box set recommendations. FFS.

At 20 months you can’t even use screens that much because they don’t concentrate for long enough, and DC2 (now 5) still asks for a snack if he ever sees me putting on my headset for a work call - a Pavlovian response because as a toddler during lockdown he knew the price of his silence! Of course we also had to fit in queuing up at the supermarket because no online delivery slots for weeks. The only thing that would have been worse would have been having to homeschool DC1 had he been a few months older and in Reception (we ended up having to do that in the winter lockdown instead). Luckily their private nursery re-opened in the summer which was an absolute godsend.

All that being said, the children were absolutely fine - toddlers only really need their parents, whereas older kids missed out on so much more. For us as parents it was fucking dreadful, but I can see that for the children themselves it would be much worse to have been a teenager during lockdown.

I lost my job of 2 weeks so that helped. I did loads of busy books for her to keep her occupied. Bought a tree swing and a trampoline for outdoor play. If I’d been working as well she would have had to go to nursery as they were naively very clear we weren’t at home to look after DC but to work. Just for a few weeks mind you. H worked for the same company and ended up being home for a year. That was harder than having a toddler and 2 other DC learning from home tbh.

I loved this meme at the time!

Thanks OP for the lovely post!

Also really felt for the teenagers and especially the new mums, don't think I'd have coped well with maternity in lockdown or being a teenager in it.

Hope everyone heals and recovers soon.

I had a 1.5 year old and a 3.5 year old at the start of lockdown, and my mum died then too.

I have vague PTSD symptoms every time I think of it.

Toddlers are all different but I was used to taking mine out every day and spending time with friends with kids the same age. Like many I struggled after a bad birth but I went out and found what worked for us and my mental health drastically improved. Losing all my coping strategies in one go just floored me.

It was awful (kids 18m and 3) but in retrospect I'm glad they were young as the long term impact was less than it would be for older kids.

That's nice of you, op. Mine were 3 and 9 months when it started. I do remember going upstairs to scream into a pillow a few times. There was literally no downtime between childcare and work, then I was put on furlough and there was nothing but childcare.

The pictures of that time look very wholesome but there were times it was hell. We did a lot of visiting nature reserves and creative games at home with not much, like playing with veg peelings, making salt dough etc.

The shortages were scary, I remember not being able to get nappies, and only being able to get random food the kids didn't like.

It did underline for me how motherhood is the one non-delegable thing in my life. You might think you have a balanced life with kids, job, family, friends etc arranged how you like but when it comes down to it, all the rest can fall away and the only constant is having to provide for your children, whatever the circumstances.

In Wales hard lock down was longer and we had the first one from March, the second one after the Autumn half term and the truly horrific new year one.

Both working full time remotely in tough busy jobs with lots of meetings, crap bosses who had their owns views on company flexibility with a 3 yr old and a 7 yr old who was meant to be home schooled but mostly looked after the 3yo.

I found out much later many of my colleagues in other team areas, and all civil service dropped to around 20% hours still on full pay. Makes me so cross and sad :(

First one great weather so paddling pool out and hope no one drowns, far too much screen time and constant snacks and we had to tag team 5:30am start/ late evening finishes to try and squeeze some respite, queue for loo roll and a bit school in for the 7yo.

By the later ones I was so over it and so angry at the repeated reluctance of the Welsh government to reopen anything.

Kids look back on it as good times though as that’s all I ever remind them of, and they were still young enough to want us and be ok with that at the time. Youngest still grazes all the time though and is same size as her now 10yo sister.

Even when we weren't officially locked down there were a lot of periods where there wasn't really anywhere you could take kids and the weather was bloody terrible. It's all just merged into one hideous period to me

Toddler and a newborn in the lockdowns. At least I was on mat leave so didn't have to contend with work, and we have a garden. Small mercies.

I was thinking the same the other day

My daughter was born during the last lockdown, she's now 2.5 and I cannot imagine how hard it must have been for people with kids this age during the whole of covid. I definitely didn't appreciate how hard it must have been. I remember sympathising with a few parents but I didn't get it.

Also people with kids who were 4/5 my partners niece was this age at the beginning of lockdown, it really messed with her confidence going to school for the first time. All the starting and stopping and being told they couldn't go out or they could kill their grandparents if they caught this disease, they live in a city so I feel it was more severe there than what we experienced in the middle of nowhere, poor little girl and all the others like her and the poor parents.

This is when my mental health went down the pan. Had a one and five year old, both working from home the whole time and homeschooling five year old. No furlough etc. I have been super anxious ever since.

It can be hard enough settling a reception child into school during normal times so that must have been frustrating for the people who had to effectively do it twice.

We were lucky in that nursery never closed (attached to hospital where DH works) so they had their three days there as normal throughout. Would have been infinitely harder without that.

I never saw any chained off playgrounds though. There was some half-hearted yellow tape appeared in the village one but people still used it

Single parents to four young boys ranging from toddler to pre-teen....I remember waking them all up at 5am one Sunday morning, getting them dressed and in the car and driving to the little local park petrified the police would pull us over! We jumped the (low) fence to the children's play area and I, armed with a bottle of dettol and some sani wipes and gel, had an hour of letting them be children again even though the swings had been removed and they were petrified whenever a dog walker passed.
This was the first lockdown, I am still to this day disgusted that they closed the parks the way they did. And left them closed longer than things like local betting shops etc.