Mail+ has published a harrowing piece by Harriet Sergeant about the terrible price young children are paying as a result of Britain’s three lockdowns. Five year-olds are arriving at school wearing nappies; some primary children are so week due to inactivity they still require pushchairs; and significant numbers of four and five-year-olds have speech and language problems. Here’s how it begins:
FROM the way she gently coaxes her little girl into smart new trainers, it’s clear that Chloe is a caring mother. And as someone who wants the best for her children, she has concerns about the development of both Jordon, six, and Mia, four.
Waving an exercise book at me, the pages covered in squiggles, Chloe, 24, a single mother who lives on the outskirts of Norwich, explains: “Jordon’s teacher wants him to write a poem. But he’s so far behind, he doesn’t even know what a full stop is!”
Then she glances down at her daughter, crouched at her feet, arms wrapped around her mother’s calves. “My youngest is so clingy, I’m having to send her to reception with her dummy to keep her calm.”
Once, dummies were the preserve of infants who would be weaned off them during the toddler years. But now they, along with nappies, bottles and other paraphernalia of babyhood, are increasingly a feature of the nation’s reception classes — and even beyond. It’s a vivid illustration of the disastrous impact the pandemic has had on the cohort of babies and young children born just before and during Covid — consequences only truly emerging as they enter education.
Certainly, teachers are in no doubt: children are arriving for school less prepared than they’ve ever been.
Once, most four-year-olds were toilet-trained and could, with help, get dressed, feed themselves and perhaps even make a fist of writing their name or basic numbers.
Now, says the Education Endowment Foundation, significant numbers of four and five-year-olds have speech and language problems, trouble with social interaction and confidence and delays in walking.
Before lockdown, about half the year group were not ready for school. “Now it’s more like 80 to 90 per cent arrive in a pushchair, dummy in mouth and wearing nappies, unable to take off their coat or eat with a spoon,” one head summarised.
Shockingly, one head teacher told a recent education commission of a mother who pushed her son to school in a shopping trolley. Locked up in a small flat during the pandemic, tablet no doubt firmly in hand, he had failed to develop the muscle tone to run about.
Some children have been so isolated that they adopt the funny voices of the cartoon characters they endlessly watch.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Michael Simmons has drawn attention in the Spectator a report by the IFS on the impact of lockdowns on the under-fives. The report’s authors conclude: “The COVID-19 pandemic is a further setback, with all signs pointing to the fact that it will have exacerbated early inequalities.“ You can read Michael’s summary of the report here.
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“Now it’s more like 80 to 90 per cent arrive in a pushchair, dummy in mouth and wearing nappies, unable to take off their coat or eat with a spoon,” Sorry, but although lockdowns were evil, these particular problems will have little, if anything, to do with lockdowns. Even the pushchair…we’ve had a long period now in which children have been able to walk outside with their parents quite freely. These problems are due to deficiencies in parenting and in fact had been observed before lockdown as well. The only thing that can be levelled at lockdown is that some parents will use anything as an excuse.
Was there ever a time when parents couldn’t walk outside with their children as much as they wanted to?
Not any time that I can remember. At least not in this universe.
I don’t know. I remember a tale of a woman on the Southbank out with her toddler being approached by the police and frantically doing star jumps to claim she was exercising (lockdown #1). It may have been utter bull, but others on reading this may think “I’m not chancing it”
Also, these things were never banned but people thought they were, which was enough to stop them. And some police thought they had the right to accost people too, which is shocking & outrageous & they should be fired immediately for horrendous overreach. Nazi scumbags like that are not fit for positions of responsibility of any kind.
Seriously some police should go to jail for this and other human rights abuses.
I do agree that it’s not at all uncommon for parents to seek to offload responsibility that should be within the remit of the parents to primary schools at every given opportunity. However, there is much more that can be levelled at lockdowns than this. It is empirically evident due to various assessments of mental and development health, and how it has deteriorated across the nation, that the intuition that locking children away in their homes, restricting access to their peers, etc, will harm their health in all sorts of ways, has been proven correct.
While these problems may have existed prior to lockdowns, on both sides of the proverbial pond I might add, alas they have clearly grown (what’s that word again? EXPONENTIALLY!) since then. Lockdowns were gasoline on the fire. The stricter and longer the lockdown, the worse it became. Truly stranger than fiction.
You may well be correct in your assertion but I don’t care. I am more than happy to add this child abuse to Bozo’s charge sheet. Any little scrap serves our cause.
I agree with perhaps 90 per cent of this article’s content, except for one glaring fallacy throughout. That is that the author tends to conflate the effects of lockdown with the effects of the pandemic, and refers to each as the causal agent of these harms interchangeably, thereby suggesting that “pandemic = lockdown”, i.e. there are no other alternatives.
It is suggested in several places, expressed in various ways, that the pandemic affected children’s education to the tune of putting them way behind academically and developmentally. The evidential truth, however, is that the pandemic, as in the impact of the virus, had negligible effect on children, but the lockdown, however, possibly affected children more so than any other demographic.
It is a very dangerous thing to suggest within wide-reaching media that it was the pandemic that had such a devastating effect on children, when in fact it was the lockdown and the restrictions on children’s education imposed by the government that was responsible for this: If the idea that an inevitable respiratory virus was the main causal agent for the suffering of children and their families is ingrained into the collective consciousness, it becomes a handy means for the state to dodge accountability for the mayhem they caused, when in fact any number of alternatives (eg. the strategies outlined in the Great Barrington Declaration) could have been proposed, other than the Xi Jinping model!
Indeed, that is true. And it doesn’t even require a full lockdown to do damage to children either. A combination of nonstop doom and panic mongering (which leads to some degree of “voluntary” lockdowns imposed by fearful parents) and/or prolonged school closures can be almost as bad as a full lockdown as well. Had they adopted the “flu strategy” from the get-go, and no panic mongering, that would have had the least-worst outcomes overall.
Yes, like the pre-pandemic preparedness documents that were honed to perfection over decades and then hastily thrown on the fire!
Exactly. Given how often this government has told us that they are following a new scientific method now understood to be ‘The Science’ you are not telling me that amongst the many doctors and professors enrolled in ‘The Science’ they do not have one or two who could have outlined the many dangers to our children of lockdowns?
Bu#lshyte!
The Mail should of course refer to the “shamdemic” and “government human rights abuse”. Being collaborators though (including printing that disgraceful Hancock piece) they will never do that.
If the coerced consensus was right, it would be naturally contagious (from Livestream #130)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zgr15VxtYg
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Lockdowns, the Trojan horse “gift” that keeps on giving, it seems. The ongoing long-term consequences, which were totally foreseeable by literally anyone with two brain cells to rub together, is truly a slow-moving tragedy in progress, and a travesty as well. Infancy and early childhood simply cannot be re-run, nor can any other stage of development for that matter, and the damage is done. While obviously we should all say “NEVER AGAIN!” and really mean it this time with regards to anything even remotely resembling lockdowns (and of course school closures too), to prevent further damage, I am sadly at a loss when trying to come up with solutions to repair the damage already done.
If you don’t feel absolutely outraged right now, check your pulse ’cause your might be dead! (Or brainwashed, which is basically the same thing for the soul.)
Don’t worry – I feel absolutely outraged.
Whilst I agree that the lockdowns were appalling for children, if your 4 yr old can’t speak properly; can’t walk anywhere and isn’t toilet trained, it’s YOUR fault.