Parents of 5th graders - let’s talk

[Anonymous]

Yes, something about not having 2nd grade in person really left an impact vs other grades. My kid is pretty chill but when they got back in person in 3rd, 4th, and now 5th grade all the kids they got along with pre-Covid have been horrible. The kids have chased off teachers and been monsters in general. The other kids younger and older have gotten back into the pre-Covid routine in school but not this age group.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a third grader, and I think it affected their age group the most. He was in Preschool and then kindergarten during the lockdowns. I think the most long-term damage is kids who are currently 9 and 10 years old.

We have a 5th and 8th grader and have friends with same age kids and friends with different ages and grades, younger and older. TBH, I think the pandemic significantly affected kids in all grades, academically, socially, and in maturity or growth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our public school got rid of timed math quizzes for addition/subtraction/multiplication/division facts because it was "too stressful" and "made kids feel bad" when they didn't know their math facts. I kid you not.

And here we are, with a whole generation of middle schoolers who don't know what 45 divided by 9 is.

I wonder if this response has less to do with schools needing to mitigate the emotoons and more to do with parents giving children such a platform to display and communicate their feelings and all that validating didn’t help them, but rather made them less resilient. Maybe the “suck it up”
Mentality that we were taught does have some merit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Socially/behaviorally, I think the issues are a result of the screen generation of parenting. Some kids are totally and completely screen addicted at shockingly young ages. Parents can't run into Target for 15 minutes without handing the kid a phone. The amount of kids using their computers at inappropriate school times is high. Defiance/ignoring of teachers is also high.

I work in an ES across multiple grades.

It’s sad to see babies or toddlers in a stroller out and about and they are watching a TV program. This has become so common. Then you see the ones with no screen and they are engaged with their surroundings, smiling at people, looking around. I just don’t get it.

I agree. And can’t go to a restaurant without a screen. My kids are 13 and 16 and no one did this when they were little even though we had the ability with our phones (esp with 13 yo). But 5 years after they were toddlers it was everywhere.

These kids are messed up from it - and then Covid screen deluge basically put the nail in the coffin bc at least before that, screens were minimally used in grade school so that was a brake to it all. No more.

[Anonymous]

The most vulnerable children suffer from the slightest negative change in their environment.

My autistic kid, who was asocial before Covid, did not make the hoped for progress during the pandemic.

Am I blaming Covid or school response to Covid?

Not at all.

My other kids's development was not affected in the least! I recognize that this autistic kid of mine is fragile and that ANYTHING going wrong would have affected him, and will affect him in the future. He's just wired that way: we provide as much support and mitigation as we can, and when we're no longer able to help, he'll have to deal with things with the tools he has.

OP and others need to stop whining.
You don't sound credible.
You don't have perspective.
You're really not that bright.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The most vulnerable children suffer from the slightest negative change in their environment.

My autistic kid, who was asocial before Covid, did not make the hoped for progress during the pandemic.

Am I blaming Covid or school response to Covid?

Not at all.

My other kids's development was not affected in the least! I recognize that this autistic kid of mine is fragile and that ANYTHING going wrong would have affected him, and will affect him in the future. He's just wired that way: we provide as much support and mitigation as we can, and when we're no longer able to help, he'll have to deal with things with the tools he has.

OP and others need to stop whining.
You don't sound credible.
You don't have perspective.
You're really not that bright.

How convincing...

The teachers who say they see the effects in many of their students don't have perspective and are dim? Can you hear yourself?

SMH

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Socially/behaviorally, I think the issues are a result of the screen generation of parenting. Some kids are totally and completely screen addicted at shockingly young ages. Parents can't run into Target for 15 minutes without handing the kid a phone. The amount of kids using their computers at inappropriate school times is high. Defiance/ignoring of teachers is also high.

I work in an ES across multiple grades.

It’s sad to see babies or toddlers in a stroller out and about and they are watching a TV program. This has become so common. Then you see the ones with no screen and they are engaged with their surroundings, smiling at people, looking around. I just don’t get it.

I agree. And can’t go to a restaurant without a screen. My kids are 13 and 16 and no one did this when they were little even though we had the ability with our phones (esp with 13 yo). But 5 years after they were toddlers it was everywhere.

These kids are messed up from it - and then Covid screen deluge basically put the nail in the coffin bc at least before that, screens were minimally used in grade school so that was a brake to it all. No more.

Yep, I'm the pp that works in an ES. The other place I see it is in 5th grade English. One of the things they focus on is "reading stamina" which is the ability to read for longer and longer periods of time, keeping focus and not needing breaks, etc. We start with 10 minutes and try to work up to 45 by the end of the year. It is SHOCKING how hard to even impossible this is for some kids. They literally can't/won't read a single page without staring off into space. And they get to choose the book! These are kids who know HOW to read, but literally can't focus long enough to do so. And these are NT kids that don't have IEPs or anything. It's really sad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a third grader, and I think it affected their age group the most. He was in Preschool and then kindergarten during the lockdowns. I think the most long-term damage is kids who are currently 9 and 10 years old.

My friends who had kids in this age group kept their kids in preschool. Many preschools also have kindergarten. Their kids seem mostly just fine.

I think parents who had resources turned out ok while parents who struggled with multiple kids at home while trying to juggle work may have suffered the most.

I have heard middle school kids who never finished algebra and not adequate math learning were poorly prepared for high school. Others will say their kids suffered social development for kids who were 4-5.

I had a child in preschool and two in elementary. I don’t work so it was relatively easy to juggle elementary kids’ virtual learning. I ordered a lot of books and toys online. My kids played a lot of outside sports. Most people we know were out and about at least outdoors. It isn’t like we were all locked inside our homes for 2 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DS is in 5th and for him I think his handwriting is the only thing that has suffered. He wouldn’t have otherwise been using a laptop to do work in 2nd grade when that skill was really developing. We supplemented from the summer after 1st through the middle of 3rd with small group tutoring, I think that made a huge difference and has paid off in his math and reading.

I think a lot of the issues, regardless of grade, is that parents and adults were greatly affected more than we realize and it’s trickled down to kids.

+1 to the bolded. So many other threads about road rage and adults behaving terribly since the start of the pandemic, as well as countless threads bashing teachers and saying public school is useless. Of course kids hear/see that at home and bring those attitudes to school.

[Anonymous]

While the virtual year had impacts, I wonder if COVID has had effects on these kids’ brains that we just don’t understand yet.

You’ve got the virtual year, possible COVID effects, and parents who gave their kids iPads to keep them occupied back when everyone was stuck at home and then just… kept doing it. How do you unpick the threads to figure out causes?

We all thought this year’s kindergarten class would be easier. They were two when the pandemic hit! They didn’t even have to miss preschool! And yet at least at our school, this kinder group has been higher needs than any group post COVID. Insane amounts of extreme behaviors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The most vulnerable children suffer from the slightest negative change in their environment.

My autistic kid, who was asocial before Covid, did not make the hoped for progress during the pandemic.

Am I blaming Covid or school response to Covid?

Not at all.

My other kids's development was not affected in the least! I recognize that this autistic kid of mine is fragile and that ANYTHING going wrong would have affected him, and will affect him in the future. He's just wired that way: we provide as much support and mitigation as we can, and when we're no longer able to help, he'll have to deal with things with the tools he has.

OP and others need to stop whining.
You don't sound credible.
You don't have perspective.
You're really not that bright.

How convincing...

The teachers who say they see the effects in many of their students don't have perspective and are dim? Can you hear yourself?

SMH

Then that teacher is unintelligent as well.

Times change and not everything can be attributed to Covid. Screentime and the incredible development of media content for children was going to snowball into a huge problem regardless of Covid. It's because of excess screentime that you're seeing developmental issues in the social realm. The pandemic and the social isolation it created for a while, combined with screens used to occupy and educate kids, revealed that problem earlier than if Covid hadn't shown up, but it would have happened anyway, and crucially, *is still happening* because more kids use screentime excessively.

The point is that many kids experience trauma during their childhood. My kid, for example, might not be as autistic and learning disabled if he hadn't had a traumatic birth event. If you consider the pandemic a trauma, then instead of wringing your hands and whining about it, you have to provide more support and training to your kid to mitigate the issues you observe.

This is what I've always done, and this is why I appear callous. I'm not. But as the parent of a kid with actual special needs, who has had years and years of special ed, speech/occupational/physical therapy and expensive tutors...

... I've had to figure things out for my family. Pull myself up by my bootstraps, so to speak, to get my kid a shot at a normal life. We didn't have the benefit of a society who suffered the same trauma along with us. We were all alone in our corner.

Your kids are going to be fine. Provide whatever support you think they need, but come on. Don't pretend that this is a huge deal. It's not. They will end up as functioning adults. I seriously hope you won't be pulling out the Covid card in 20 years! Focus on the solution, not the issue of origin.

[Anonymous]

Well educated parents with resources were able to navigate through Covid whether it was sending their kids to private schools that opened, forming study pods, getting online tutors, teaching kids themselves, etc.

I thought it was pretty easy to pivot and have them keep up with schoolwork. My kids told me they learned more during their 2-3 hours of school with me and online than during all day at school. I enrolled my kids in an online math site. The school had many resources online for various subjects and we took full advantage. We already had a lot of books and I bought more. We got kiwi crates, legos, puzzles, board games.

[Anonymous]

The 5th graders at our school are known as absolute monsters. Everyone knows it and can't wait to get rid of them. They've been that way ever since Covid, so I do think Covid really did a number on that particular cohort.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The 5th graders at our school are known as absolute monsters. Everyone knows it and can't wait to get rid of them. They've been that way ever since Covid, so I do think Covid really did a number on that particular cohort.

I feel like every year, by this point, the entire school is DONE with 5th grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Socially/behaviorally, I think the issues are a result of the screen generation of parenting. Some kids are totally and completely screen addicted at shockingly young ages. Parents can't run into Target for 15 minutes without handing the kid a phone. The amount of kids using their computers at inappropriate school times is high. Defiance/ignoring of teachers is also high.

I work in an ES across multiple grades.

It’s sad to see babies or toddlers in a stroller out and about and they are watching a TV program. This has become so common. Then you see the ones with no screen and they are engaged with their surroundings, smiling at people, looking around. I just don’t get it.

I agree. And can’t go to a restaurant without a screen. My kids are 13 and 16 and no one did this when they were little even though we had the ability with our phones (esp with 13 yo). But 5 years after they were toddlers it was everywhere.

These kids are messed up from it - and then Covid screen deluge basically put the nail in the coffin bc at least before that, screens were minimally used in grade school so that was a brake to it all. No more.

Little kids had phones and iPads before Covid. Big kids being glued to their phones is also not a new phenomenon. We have a no screens during meals rule. We have friends whose kids carry their iPads around everywhere. The parents plop the iPad at the table so the kid can concentrate to eat. I don’t think this has anything to do with Covid and everything to do with their parenting style.