anxious child school
© Phil Boorman/Cultura RFChildren feel a lot of pressure not to put their families' lives at risk due to Covid.
When a child at school tested positive for Covid, one mother did not foresee the emotional toll the incident would have on her son

The text message arrived at 9.30am last Friday: "A child in the class has tested positive for Covid-19. Please come and collect your own child immediately."

Six days into the start of term, it was the news every parent at the North London primary school had been dreading. But one of them, a mother-of-four whose son was among those sent home when his Year Four "bubble" shut down, did not foresee the emotional toll the incident would take on him.

"He had been sitting next to the infected child on Monday and Tuesday, until the school sent [the child] home coughing. My son was sobbing when he came out of school, and saying 'you're all going to die because I'm going to catch coronavirus and pass it to you and daddy, and it will all be my fault!'

"He's worried about infecting everyone in our house. He'd just got back into the routine of being at school and seeing his friends, and now he's back out again."

Anecdotal evidence suggests the parent, who asked to remain anonymous lest her child felt more stigmatised, is one of many who have watched in dismay as their child has become newly traumatised since schools have reopened. In place is a strict new system designed to protect public health. But many fear it could be doing untold damage to school pupils as they struggle to make sense of what is going on.

In the case of the Year Four boy, he wasn't the only child in his family impacted by the rapid shutdown of his class for 14 days. His older sister, who was supposed to return to secondary school yesterday, was so scared of catching coronavirus from her (as yet asymptomatic) brother and spreading it around her own year group, that she ended up staying home.

"She's been worrying all weekend that she's going to be the kid that closes her school down," says her mother. "I contacted her school and explained the situation and the headteacher said it would be sensible to wait [for my son to receive a negative Covid test result]. It's causing so much anxiety for people."

That lockdown affected our children's mental health has already been fairly well-documented. But now, it seems, some are also struggling to cope with the challenge of stop-start schooling - and the increasing atmosphere of fear that now accompanies it. At home, they felt safe. Watching classes close down because of Covid, some are newly terrified.

"My six-year-old started to come through it during the summer as things got back to normal and he was looked after by grandparents a few days on his own," says another mother from North London. "Now he's back at school, he's aware kids are getting ill and we have to socially distance from the grandparents. 'I can't hug them now?' he asked. 'Can they come inside?'

"To him it feels like we are going backwards. It's very confusing and I'm really worried for what it's doing to all our children."

A mother from South West London meanwhile reports that her three primary school-aged sons have started having nightmares. "They're having really bad dreams where either we die, or they die," she says. "We're trying to carry on with life as it was before, but school has become weird and different. I've got a friend with a 13-year-old daughter who has started having panic attacks."

She believes it's likely these responses have resulted from the strange and unsettling environment children now find themselves in. The idea that they will be responsible for a parent or sibling's death looms large in their colourful imaginations.

There are, after all, few parents who won't have yelped a little too hysterically to their children at some point about the need for vigorous hand-washing. And sanitising. And social distancing. Inevitably they will have absorbed the message. The question is how profound an effect it is having on them.

New Public Health England data indicates more than half of parents have worried about their children's mental wellbeing during the pandemic. The agency, which has launched a new Every Mind Matters campaign to support young people and their parents, says that as we adapt to a "new normal," many parents and carers anticipate their children will experience new stresses.

"We're hearing of children who are upset because they've been split up from their friendship groups," says Molly Kingsley, co-founder of UsForThem, a parents' group that campaigns for the welfare of children and has criticised social distancing measures. "You're layering on top of that the rule of six, which is pretty disastrous for families. On top of that you've got classes being sent home if there's a positive Covid test. We know children very rarely get physically affected by this disease, but parents are telling us they think some children are being severely depressed [by all this]."

So how well-founded are these fears?

Ellen Townsend, a professor of psychology at the University of Nottingham, is unequivocal. "I think the uncertainty for [children] is likely to be really catastrophic because they just don't know what the future looks like or could look like," she warns. "I think the messaging around children spreading coronavirus is quite frankly unethical [and] placing the blame on young people is unforgivable, given they're going to carry the burden of this for the rest of their lives. I can't understand why adults aren't prioritising children."

That the blame has indeed been placed on young people is hard to argue with now.

"Don't kill your gran by catching coronavirus and then passing it on," warned Health Secretary Matt Hancock, rather starkly, last week.

That, suggests Kingsley, was "morally reprehensible and incredibly irresponsible."

The Government would argue it is trying to halt the rising spread of infections before students return to universities. But parents say it is hard to stop younger children picking up on this and taking it too much to heart.

"The news is constantly about how many people die from coronavirus," says the North London mother-of-four. "At school they're being told they can't hug or get too close. They think if they do we are all going to die.'"

For Sam Wass, a child psychologist, it's the pervasive uncertainty and lack of a sense of control that will take its toll on children the most. Adults are only just getting to grips with it, but "for the first time our children are having to grapple with the idea that nobody knows the answers."