THE full extent of the fallout and legacy of the first lockdown is only just beginning to reveal itself.
But one thing is clear: It has had a huge, detrimental impact on children in a way that is only becoming fully evident now they are back at school.
At the virtual Work and Pensions Committee meeting this week, MPs were told that pupils are having more fall-outs with fellow pupils since returning to school. And they have struggled to get back into routines, many having spent most of lockdown playing video games.
Headteachers said pupils had fallen behind in reading and maths and become physically unfit. I guess that is what nine months with a total loss of routine will do.
The truth is that lockdown has had a devastating effect on children of all ages. New research shows that more than half of parents feel lockdowns have had a detrimental effect on their children’s mental wellbeing.
A third say their children have shown a lack of energy and enthusiasm since March, and one in ten parents says youngsters are showing signs of anxiety.
All in all, this is a worrying picture.
So, my conclusion is that allowing children to be out of the school environment for as long as they were this year should never happen again.
KNOCK-ON EFFECTS
With schools out of the equation, it raised questions about how parents were managing without them.
The truth unfolding is that with schools closed and with the backdrop of fear about the pandemic and work and money, lots of parents really struggled. And of course that had a knock-on effect on their children.
Some people did brilliantly. But the degree to which people were able to properly support their children both educationally and emotionally through the most bonkers year we have ever known varied massively.
Nothing highlighted that fact more than when Joanne Ormond, head of Maryport Junior School in Cumbria, told MPs she had seen a rise in the number of children starting nursery and reception who were not potty trained.
She said that whereas there would normally be one or two children who were still in nappies when they started at her school, this year there were between 12 and 15.
How on earth can you send your child to school in a nappy? And why on earth would you expect a teacher to change the nappy of a school-age child?
Sending your child to school wearing a nappy just strikes me as lazy parenting.
I’d have thought lockdown would have helped parents to deal with things like potty training. After all, they had many weeks to work on it. But, staggeringly, it seems the opposite is true.
And it also makes me wonder, if kids aren’t being potty trained then what other major developmental milestones are not being met?
In this exceptional year, one of the most tragic things is that some parents have been struggling too much to properly support their children, or help them develop and grow.
Or are some simply too lazy to teach their child to use the potty?
In 2020 we have all learned many new things. One thing all parents came face to face with is just what a heroic job teachers do.
TEACHING IS A VOCATION
Many parents I know seriously struggled with home schooling, and that was just trying to teach one, two or three children.
Imagine being responsible not only for the crowd control aspect of looking after a class of 30 kids, but of actually trying to help them learn anything at all, let alone enough to pass tests and exams.
What we learned is that teaching is a vocation, and it is one most of us do not have.
The other thing I have concluded is that children should not be accepted into nursery or school if they are not fully potty trained and out of nappies.
This is the one thing that parents should be solely responsible for, not teachers.
Maya’s carb habit
lYOU’VE got to love Maya Jama, who admitted this week she likes to snack on a pasta and pizza sarnie.
You can’t go wrong with triple carbs. That said, though, it’s fine to do that when you’re in your twenties.
I am not so sure you can get away with it in your fifties.
