I may be the one completely out of sync here, but does anyone else find a complete over-egging of the effect of lockdowns on people on mumsnet? There’s a massive thread about the effects on children and so many people saying their children (who were babies in the pandemic) have speech and language issues, that they themselves are traumatised, that their children are irreparably damaged…
I accept I may well be biased as I lost a parent to Covid in lockdown 1, and wish we had gone harder faster so they wouldn’t have caught it. But all of this hand wringing over how horrendous the trauma of lockdown was and how they’ll never get over it seems ridiculous. Yes it was tough, but the way it gets talked about on mumsnet feels very overblown. I work with kids and it’s true there are learning gaps, and some year groups are noticeably less mature than they otherwise would have been, but most kids seem fairly normal. We’ve hardly got cohorts of kids sat at home rocking with parents needing therapy because they had to stay at home for a few months. It’s like competitive lockdown trauma comes out to play on those threads.
None of this is to say that there aren’t people with genuine trauma coming out of the lockdowns, and I don’t mean to minimise those experiences. I just find mumsnet’s response to discussions about it utterly over the top.
Edited to add an example of what I mean - someone’s replied to a post describing how hard it was to not be able to see family over those months with “reading that actually made my throat burn a bit”. Like what?! It made your throat burn? Are you serious? Also, what do you even mean? It burnt because you were a bit sick in your mouth? Or it burnt like it was on fire? It makes no sense and it’s so hyperbolic!
Apologies for the lengthy rant there. Really not my intention to offend anyone, so I hope it doesn’t diminish anyone’s actual struggles during that time.
I accept I may well be biased as I lost a parent to Covid in lockdown 1, and wish we had gone harder faster so they wouldn’t have caught it. But all of this hand wringing over how horrendous the trauma of lockdown was and how they’ll never get over it seems ridiculous. Yes it was tough, but the way it gets talked about on mumsnet feels very overblown. I work with kids and it’s true there are learning gaps, and some year groups are noticeably less mature than they otherwise would have been, but most kids seem fairly normal. We’ve hardly got cohorts of kids sat at home rocking with parents needing therapy because they had to stay at home for a few months. It’s like competitive lockdown trauma comes out to play on those threads.
None of this is to say that there aren’t people with genuine trauma coming out of the lockdowns, and I don’t mean to minimise those experiences. I just find mumsnet’s response to discussions about it utterly over the top.
Edited to add an example of what I mean - someone’s replied to a post describing how hard it was to not be able to see family over those months with “reading that actually made my throat burn a bit”. Like what?! It made your throat burn? Are you serious? Also, what do you even mean? It burnt because you were a bit sick in your mouth? Or it burnt like it was on fire? It makes no sense and it’s so hyperbolic!
Apologies for the lengthy rant there. Really not my intention to offend anyone, so I hope it doesn’t diminish anyone’s actual struggles during that time.
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