I HOPE I’m not alone in declaring this lockdown is playing havoc with my mood. In a single day I can find myself eating strawberries and yoghurt in my tiny back yard, thinking life couldn’t be any more perfect, to thinking how is this happening? How are we going to get out of it and will anything ever be the same again?

And I’m a grown-up. In a Zoom video call with family recently I noted how my young niece and nephew, respectively four and nine years old, sat listening to family virus-related chat with an air of bemused gravity, and wondered what on earth children were making of it all.

Most have been wrenched from their friends, classrooms and activities and thrust indoors with anxious parents, for what must seem an eternal age for them. Certainties have become uncertain, socialising has become social distancing and a hug has become a hazard.

It’s their friends they miss. For years we’ve been encouraging them to make friends, form relationships, express themselves, and suddenly, almost overnight, we are warning them of the associated dangers. It’s no wonder that at the very start of social distancing, just before lockdown, my four-year-old niece decided to stage an early rebellion. Having spotted her friend from school in the park and sensing her friend’s dad’s anxiety and knowing her own mother’s message that she must keep two metres away, my niece pulled away and ran towards her friend, ignoring the dad’s look of terror.

The two grasped hands and giggled defiantly as they made a desperate bid for freedom, expertly dodging past both the parents. Government guidelines were not really designed for four-year-olds.

For this age group even the wonders of Zoom have been little help in the socialising with others process. Because interactive play is such a big part of how they socialise, plonking two friends in front of a Zoom call just leads to a thumb-sucking fest where both stare at each other through the internet, smiling and hair twiddling.

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Still, I’m pleased to say that some of the parental messaging does seem to be getting through as the last time I FaceTimed my niece she spent a large portion of the call wandering around the living room dressed as a lion saying, “I am actually very for-tune-ate” before we had to end the call because it was phonics and maths time.

For other children it has been a unique time where they have been able to spend time with parents who are usually working during the week. The usual frantic and sometimes stressful drill to get everyone out of the door on time has been replaced with a simpler, slower pace.

Imaginative parents have been combining working from home with home-schooling, exercise and a variety of activities from crafting to baking. With the unusually clement weather this has made the lockdown bearable or even, dare I say it, preferable to the usual routines.

As one work colleague told me, “My elder daughter asked if we can do this every year”.

Sadly, not all children will be experiencing the lockdown in such a positive way. Figures from the NSPCC this week show an almost 20% rise in calls since the start of the lockdown to their helpline from adults concerned about children. For some home is not the sanctuary we like to imagine it is. It’s confusing and stressful and sometimes even violent.

A cousin who is a head of year at a secondary school worries for those of her children who dread holidays and see school as a safe haven from the melée of home life, from a mother who can’t get out of bed to encourage home schooling or mum’s partner who’s stressed and sometimes angry because of money issues.

She says when she delivers a live lesson online, she’s just relieved to hear their voices when she unmutes the students’ microphones, because with lockdown brings invisibility and few, if not no, opportunities to ask for help. For these children, alongside fears of the virus itself and its impact on family and friends, the lockdown has heralded a new set of worries and anxieties with which to burden their futures.

And more big change lies ahead. Watching the tentative steps of Spanish children venturing out into the open air this week for the first time in six weeks reminds us that the end of lockdown – when it comes – will be another huge adjustment to be faced. For some children it’s about being pulled away from what seems like a permanent summer vacation, and for others it’s the chance to be seen and protected once more.

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