According to the government's program, the national lockdown will end on the 2nd of December and will be replaced by a tiered system of restrictions.
Recent reports have also suggested that there may be a special flexibility of restrictions during the holiday period to allow families to get together and celebrate the holidays.
Meanwhile, the first fast test centre for people with no symptoms was opened and the goal is to identify all positive cases using a test that provides a result in about half an hour without sending the sample to a laboratory.
People who test positive will also receive a traditional swab test, which has a higher degree of accuracy, and will have to self-quarantine in the meantime.
We often hear talking (at least here in the United Kingdom), actually pretty much all the time, about how this virus is affecting our health, our lives, our productivity and our economy but most of the times we are referring to the lives of the adults.
Very few times I hear talking about how this virus is affecting the lives of our children and even less often I hear children speaking directly about this topic and expressing their opinion about this topic.
Therefore for the sake of conducting a small research on this topic for this blog and to confirm my hypothesis (which is that children are suffering greatly from this lack of social interaction) I asked around a few friends of mine how their children are doing and how their kids are reacting to this new reality (and reacted to the closure of schools back in the Spring).
As the new national restrictions came into effect on Thursday the 5th of November, in schools it is mandatory for all pupils the use of face coverings and physical education activities were cancelled.
It continues to be the goal for all pupils to remain in school full-time throughout the term to avoid distance learning though and this is a good thing.
Children aged six to ten years old, reported the greatest difficulties with distance learning on a tablet or a PC and according to their parents they needed the presence of their parents at all times to have online lessons.
Back in the Spring when the schools were briefly closed the video calls helped making eye contact to understand part of the non-verbal language but the struggles were many.
Young children are closely attached to the school context, so the lack of regularity in attendance, not being able to see their classmates and their teachers, is the first difficulty they encountered.
We assume that for teenagers the situation would be easier but it’s not always the case.
A couple of people I work with told me that their teenage sons struggled with distance-learning so there is no rule.
They struggled because they felt alienated and they couldn’t relate with their peers which is totally understandable, I think.
I guess it depends very much on everyone's personal resources too.
It is true that teenagers are usually very often connected to the Web, surfing on social networks and playing video games so for obvious reasons we tend to think that using the Web for school shouldn’t be a huge change in their daily life, however I personally think that could disconnect them even further from ‘reality’.
For all those teenagers who fortunately had a more active social life, perhaps thanks to extra-curricular activities such as sports, or other hobbies, the change was certainly felt more.
Those parents (both of children and teens) reported to me states of anxiety, insomnia and a lot of restlessness.
We must take into account that especially children do not have the ability to verbalize their emotions, so it is necessary to accept and allow a child to manifest this discomfort.
Children generally have better adaptability than adults but nevertheless it is important to understand their needs and offer them support during these hard times.
Children should play outside especially during the holidays when there are activities organized for them such as the Nutcrackers plays in the parks
