Our second topic is on the stresses and strains that families went through during lockdown.
Can you tell me a little bit about some of the difficulties your child had during lockdown
and some of the pressures you as a family were under? So him being at home was very
difficult for him separate from his education and just having you know everybody in the house
not being able to go outside. He's he was definitely out of routine so that in itself
caused a lot of anxiety and difficulty within our household and then placing the education on top
you know at one stage it almost became impossible. We still needed to work so what was happening is
we were you know doing the work with the the kids which which took us about four or five hours a day
which was ridiculous and then after we'd put them to bed seven eight o'clock at night then jump on.
So we're pulling double shifts it was exhausting absolutely exhausting. But the negatives were
I was trying to hard. I was trying to push him too much and he just couldn't handle it so then
there was you know conflict between me and him. Of come on you've got to work and he didn't want
to do it. But after I think about a week maybe of that I went right let's look at this again.
But I think he did just miss that peer interaction anyway and he was getting quite bored of that
and and not going to the park and that kind of thing when you know when we were in real lockdown
but he understood we did lots of social stories there were lots of fantastic videos on there. The
equipment and the aids and the intervention that our son has from school and activities we don't
have in the house and that was really difficult. On occasions we ended up filling the bath
full had in the bath with towels up on the floor so that he could submerge himself under the water
because he would normally do that twice a week at swimming. It's not just the education she gets
from school so I mean she she goes to swimming lessons she goes well she was in Brownies then
it's it's the other areas it's not just the straight school school she didn't miss at all
but we as a family miss the opportunities to do other things she gets so much socially from
Brownies and so much independence because she has to go on around without us
so suddenly without those things there's that fear that she's going to revert back she's going to
struggle when suddenly we're allowed back out into the world. During the lockdown his anxiety
levels were higher not excessively but he would articulate to me that he was feeling more anxious
and I don't know if that was because he was getting less social interaction because after
the lockdown he wouldn't play with his friends so much but he's gradually returned to where he was.
She did miss her friendships so she has three really close friends and she missed them a lot
um and she did say she was quite lonely. His mental health did decline because
it was not knowing what where he was going to in September. My oldest did keep saying I hate
this year I hate this pandemic. I think for him it was particularly difficult he'd been out of school
previously for a very long time nearly two years and gone through that whole transition back in
to a new school and was finally settled and then for this to happen we did see a decline
in his self's care skills and his life skills and wanted to stay in his room more and more and more
my daughter's mental health really struggled we had to put referral into the mental health
support team and unfortunately we still haven't seen anybody and her mental health has just
deteriorated and deteriorated since then so we are at a bit of a crisis point with her at the moment.
The fact that he wasn't accessing the curriculum that that was a key
point for him because he as I said he was just he in his head if I'm not learning
I'm not progressing and I'm going to get back in my studies so what happens if when
I get back into year eight I'm in bottom set for everything. My son has gone into year 11
so he was very very aware all through lockdown that he he was missing the knowledge from the
teacher that he needed for the exam and he was very anxious about that and with will they go
back into lockdown won't they will exams happen won't they um is a continuing source of stress.