I have been saying for quite some time the Pandemic will affect Children in ways to come for at least the next decade. That would be the full cycle of seven years in standard marking with three added years to accommodate the three years of paranoia and hysteria that resulted from the years 2019-2022, the equivalent of how school years are determined. I am early in yet but the loss of Teachers, the need of Aids and the overall confusion in many districts over books, curriculum and what a Teacher can or more importantly cannot say to Students will take another three years or in some cases 5 to parallel the K-5 elementary passage. Yes folks it is how schools are organized that will demonstrate how fucked up these kids are. Kids that will do well will come out at 5th grade at normal margins for performance academically and with that socially as well. But that will be a small minority of kids who actually began in Kindergarten now or are in years 1-2. That the kids in 4th grade and beyond, you know the ones tested we are already seeing the decline. What parallels academically is also a reflection of how they are doing socially/emotionally, aka SEL, and there are no tests for that.
As for Middle and High School kids this too is again a larger reflection on where they stood prior to the pandemic and school closures. I think that too is a crapshoot but for the poverty/free lunch kids they are the ones who truly are at a great risk in many ways. Again, we are seeing shooters come down in age to now in the teens and with the rising flush of guns and the States eliminating what few gun restrictions they have I suspect more hands on triggers to come. The elemental factor in all cases when Children are found with guns is the response, “It was for protection.” Okay so FEAR. And here is where we are, we are AFRAID very AFRAID.
I read about a family that refuses to allow anyone contact with their Daughter who was born during the pandemic and with that are still very afraid of Covid and now have extended that paranoia to the point where they are not living a normal, if not adapted, life. In other words being cautious, wearing masks, maintaining a healthy lifestyle and protocol that discourages long term indoor contact with those whom they don’t know well and in turn watching their own health for any symptoms that could be Covid, even if they seem benign. This is not Smallpox or Typhoid or even Measles, which for years has been the crie de cour of the anti vaxx set. As for Chicken Pox I hope they enjoy the later years when that manifests itself as Shingles. My God if you can actually prevent something DO IT. As for Covid, like Flu, if I can offset its most insidious symptoms and stay out of a hospital then DO IT. But this is what we have become in America, hysterical, over politicized and negligent about facts and the sources of which to find them. And as the Adults go so do the children. And it will fall into two adaptations: Paranoid or High Tolerance to risk taking.
And now we are seeing the results of all this social isolation has done to Infants, made the developmentally delayed. We are already discussing the issues of how Boys are not ready for Kindergarten and in some cases already being “redshirted” and entering school later and now we have what ostensibly means an entire generation being delayed as well. Do we divide and segregate by Race, Gender, Class or All of the Above?
I read this and thought how glad I am no longer full time Teaching. I struggle with Substituting and while it had its challenges I managed until last year. The reality is that I have no way of knowing what the schools here in Jersey City were like prior to the pandemic but 30 years under State Control speaks volumes and then to return it just recently was as if to say, “Hey we never actually gave a shit but we even give less of one now, good luck!” The schools from my understanding have always been an abomination but that with the rise of the high rise and high rents that the new class is not like the old class and have not yet had an opportunity or need to integrate with the dump buckets that they call schools here. Nashville schools were full on dumpsters and that said I am sure Jersey City is not quite as massive as a trash collector but they may well be on its way as so few schools seem to have any decent reputation and respect other than one. And that is not all that and a bag of chips.
So now we are simply just lowering the bar – to crawling. Wow that is one fucking low bar.
Lockdown babies may be slower to communicate but faster to crawl, study says
By Annabelle Timsit The Washington Post October 28, 2022
Early in the pandemic, when much of the world was in lockdown, many parents and other caregivers expressed fears about how a historic period of prolonged isolation could impact their children.
Now, a study out of Ireland has shed some light on this question. Its results suggestthat babies born during Ireland’s first covid-19 lockdown were likely to be slower to develop some social communication skills than their pre-pandemic peers. They were less likely to be able to wave goodbye, point at things and know one “definite and meaningful word” by the time they turn one. On the other hand, they were more likely to be able to crawl.
Experts say children’s early years of life are their most formative — their brains soak up every interaction and experience, positive and negative, to build the neural connections that will serve them for the rest of their lives.
For the cohort of so-called “lockdown babies,” the “first year of life was very different to the pre-pandemic babies,” Susan Byrne, a pediatric neurologist at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and lead author of the study, told The Washington Post.
But she and the other authors of the study have one message for parents: Don’t be too worried. “Babies are resilient and inquisitive by nature,” they note, and are likely to bounce back given the right support
While the pandemic is not over, and experts say it could be years before they have a fuller picture of its effects on children, parents around the world have already begun to report noticing differences in their lockdown babies.
When Chi Lam, 33, had her first child, Adriana, in April 2020, England was in lockdown. Most people were not permitted to leave their homes without a “reasonable excuse.”Her parents and in-laws, who were in Hong Kong, were also unable to visit, as Hong Kong had closed its border.
As a result,for the first few months of Adriana’s life, it was “just us three,” Lam told The Post. There were no play dates or visits from family and friends, and Adriana wasn’t regularly exposed to children her own age until she turned one.
Lam thinks the prolonged isolation had some impact on her daughter Adriana. At her two-year checkup, doctors told Lam that Adriana had “weak” gross motor skills — actions like jumping and walking that engage the whole body. “I guess it’s because we only let her play in the park when she turned one ish because we thought it’s not safe” because of the pandemic, Lam said. Adriana was also easily startled by loud noises, such as motorcycle exhausts.
It’s difficult, Lam says, to disentangle how much of this is inherent to who Adriana is, and how much is tied to the unusual circumstances of her first year of life. But her observations echo the findings of studies that are beginning to suggest that lockdowns and the pandemic did affect children — though how much and through what mechanisms remains a largely open question.
The Irish study, published this month in the British Medical Journal, asked parents of 309 babies born between March and May 2020 to report on their child’s ability to meet 10 developmental milestones at age one — including the ability to crawl, stack bricks and point at objects. The researchers compared those parents’ responses to data collected on over 1,600 babies as part of a large-scale study that followed babies born in Ireland between 2008 and 2011 and assessed their development over time.
There were some small but significant differences between the two groups. Fewer babies in the study could wave goodbye — 87.7 percent compared to 94.4 percent, point at objects around them — 83.8 percent compared with 92.8 percent, or say at least one “definite and meaningful word” — 76.6 percent compared to 89.3 percent — at their 12-month assessment, according to their parents. They were more likely than their pre-pandemic peers to be able to crawl at age one, however. In the other six categories, the researchers found no meaningful differences.
Studies that rely on observations can identify differences but not shed light on the reason for the difference. However, the authors of the Irish study have some theories.
They believe that the babies in the lockdown cohort may have had fewer visitors, and so fewer occasions to learn to wave goodbye. With limited trips outside of the house, babies may have seen fewer few objects they’d want to point to. And they may have “heard a narrower repertoire of language and saw fewer unmasked faces speaking to them,” due to lockdown measures.
Conversely, lockdown babies may have learned to crawl faster because they spent more time at home, playing on the floor, “rather than out of the home in cars and strollers.”
“The jury is still very much out in terms of what the effects of this pandemic are going to be on this generation,” Dani Dumitriu, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Columbia University who was not involved in the Irish study, told The Post.
Dumitriu, who is a co-author of a separate study on babies born in 2020, characterized the findings as reassuring. “They’re not finding major developmental delays, just like we didn’t.
The study, which was peer-reviewed, has some limitations. It relies on parents’ observations of their own children, which can be flawed or incomplete. There were demographic differences between the population of pre- and post-pandemic babies, and in each case, the parents were asked to assess their children’s development “in a slightly different way.”
What is needed, the authors and other experts say, is a large-scale study that follows babies over time and measures their development in standardized ways — what’s known as a longitudinal cohort study. The authors of this study assessed the cohort of lockdown babies when they turned two with a standardized set of developmental questionnaires, and hope to publish their findings, which are under review, in a follow-up paper.
In the meantime, the authors of the study believe most babies can overcome any delay caused by the pandemic with the right support
Researchers who have studied this cohort of babies have called on governments to provide more resources to families of lockdown babies — particularly those most at risk — and to follow those babies over time to ensure there are no long-term delays. “If we do notice a delay, then we can quickly intervene and set that child back onto a correct trajectory,” Dumitriu explains.’
Ultimately, Byrne is hopeful that “with the reopening … babies will really thrive.”
“There is such scope for plasticity in the brains of babies and children,” she told The Post.
Lam is alsooptimistic that Adriana will catch up with any delays as she gets older. “People around me are telling me, once they go back to study in a school, then they’ll be fine,” she told The Post. “I believe that as well.”
Off the Rack Publishing 