Lockdowns, masks, reduced social contacts are all children born in the last two years know. Now researchers want to find out how it affected child development. After completing two years, the Covid-19 pandemic has reached the endemic stage.
In the beginning, the great concern of many parents was the new disease itself. With the advancement of research and the discovery of vaccines, a new reason for concern arises: the impacts of the restrictive measures imposed to contain the advance of the coronavirus in children.
The pandemic is everything children up to 2 years old know. Even 4-year-olds have spent half their lives with masks, social distancing, and at least some sort of lockdown or quarantine. For them, this is all quite normal.
New research has shed light on how restrictive measures have affected families and, especially, children.
worrying trend
Sean Deoni is a biophysicist and associate professor of pediatrics at the Advanced Baby Imaging Laboratory at Brown University in the United States. The lab studies early child development or, as he puts it, “how we make healthy children.”
In addition to using images such as those obtained by MRI, the researchers also test infants and young children on their motor, cognitive and language skills. Research with face-to-face assessment in the laboratory continued even after the start of the pandemic.
“I was hearing from our research assistants and psychologists that younger children were having a much harder time getting through these games and puzzles. And these observations were increasing, so we decided to look at this more rigorously,” Deoni tells DW. .
In a study soon to be published in the Journal of Pediatrics, Deoni and colleagues compared cognitive assessments of nearly 700 children ages 3 months to 3 years from 2011 to 2019 against the period 2020 to 2021.
In these “IQ tests for babies,” the results typically fluctuated between 85 and 115. But after the start of the pandemic, researchers observed that the results dropped to the range of 60 to 70. According to Deoni, children are, depending on the age, “with a delay of one to six months” in expected developmental levels.
At first, the researchers thought that wearing masks could be related to the results. But other research based on parental reports ruled out this possibility.
“It’s probably not the masks, just as it’s probably not the environment in which children are being evaluated. It’s a more fundamental change as a result of the pandemic,” says Deoni.
Deoni’s team hypothesizes that delays in child development are the result of a reduction in children’s stimulation.
less well-being
In addition to the potential effects on child development, other research has also examined the psychological impact of restrictive measures. In a study done during the first lockdown in Germany in March 2020, more than 2,500 parents of children aged 3 to 10 answered a questionnaire from researchers at the Social Development Laboratory at the University of Munich.
Parents rated their own stress levels as well as their children’s, as well as reporting mood and whether their children were displaying emotional or behavioral problems.
According to Natalie Christner, a postdoctoral fellow in child psychology at the lab, children seemed less happy during periods of isolation. “There was a big impact on their well-being. Parents report a reduction in positive emotions in children,” she points out.
The factor that most contributed to this reduction in psychological well-being was the decrease in social contact, he added. “We saw that particularly only children report more emotional problems and also more hyperactivity compared to children with siblings,” Christner tells DW. This change was interpreted by the researchers as evidence of the importance of contact with other children.
In addition, she described a kind of “feedback loop” in which parental stress affects children’s well-being, which in turn influences parents’ well-being. However, she also describes a positive side of the lockdown. “We also saw that some parents reported an increase in family well-being; this time was seen as an opportunity for some families to spend more time together.”
Side effects
Deoni emphasizes the importance of a child’s early formative years. “The first 1,000 days of it, from conception to about age 2, are widely recognized as playing a key role in shaping lifelong developmental patterns.” What happens in that time affects virtually every aspect of health, he continues.
We are reaching the 1,000-day mark for children born when the pandemic began, the researcher points out.
However, predicting the long-term outcome for a child whose pandemic restraint measures began when he was 3 months or even 1 year old is complicated by the wide diversity among babies, he adds.
“We kind of think of children as being incredibly resilient, yet there are still examples of very acute events of high adversity and high stress that have long-term implications for child development,” says Deoni.
For Christner, not all the effects of this period will be very lasting. Based on the continuation of the study she was involved in, for example, well-being improved once the isolation measures were lifted.
The researcher points out, however, that it is important to pay attention to any possible delay in development. “Equally important is actually encouraging social contacts,” she adds.
To parents, Deoni says the best thing they can do for their children is simply to act like parents. The brain is like a muscle that gets stronger with stimulation. Playing, reading, tickling, engaging, talking, hugging, being present — it all helps build fundamental skills, he says. “The best thing you can do is just love your child,” he points out.
