Nursery World - Coronavirus Pandemic - 6 things you need to know about… Parent Anxieties

The strangeness of settings in ‘the new normal’ is just one concern that parents have about sending their children back to nursery or school – but keeping them at home is not worry-free either. Caroline Vollans reports

Parents report having mixed feelings about their children returning to nursery and school

One of the consistent messages during the past few months has been that children and young people are least affected by the Covid-19 virus. Fatalities have been extremely low. David Spiegelhalter from the University of Cambridge points out that, ‘Healthy children and young adults have been exposed to an extremely small risk during the peak of the epidemic, which would normally be deemed an acceptable part of life.’ In other words, under normal circumstances, the Covid-19 pandemic, even at its height, would have gone unnoticed as a concern for this age group.

This has not prevented parents and carers from experiencing anxiety about their children returning to nursery and school. There are several facets to this anxiety – some induced by children going back, and others by them not.

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