“Just being in the duration of the uterus, a very stressful moment had some development effects on babies,” Dani Dumitriu, pediatrician and neuroscientist from the University of Columbia and president of the newborns in Pandemias told NPR. “They rush the great effects, but that was a very worrying sign, making so many women cool that period.”
Dumitriu research, Posted in 2022He discovered that 6-month-old babies born during the first months of the pandemic had slightly lower scores in a RAM for their gross engine, fine motor and personal social personnel, compared to a historical cohort of babies born before the start of the COVID-19.
“We are talking about things like Baby Bee capable of sitting, Baby Bee capable of achieving things, perhaps participating in a face -to -face interaction, very basic things,” he said, explaining that mothers completed a standard development Questionnaire Providing the data for the study.
But, Dumitriu said, since they continue to track these children and expand the study to include more pre-pandemic children, they have discovered that Covid babies quickly put themselves up to date. “The good news is that it seems that this trend is really restricted to the 2020 Early Pandemic phase and it was not constant that year.”
“A child’s brain is extraordinarily plastic or malleable,” he said. “One of the important things about child development is that what happens at 6 months is not predictive of what happens at 24 months and is not predictive of what happens at 5 years.”
Eli’s trip
Sossman said that these findings are parallel to the experience of his family. As parents who work, Sussman and her husband enrolled Eli in the nursery at 11 months. From the leg is enrolled in the nursery and pre-k. He seemed to be finding all the established metrics, but at 2 years, Sussman realized that Eli was talking at the level that his mother applies to overcome it. “Surely there were several words that you should know for some time and he met them,” he said.
TO Study 2023 Posted in Epic research They discovered that the children who turned 2 between October and December 2021 had approximately 32% more likely to have a diagnosis of speech delay than those who turned 2 in 2018. That rate increased dramatically, to almost 88%, for children who were on January 2 and twins. Speech delay diagnoses increased from an average or 9% of children in 2018 to almost 17% in the first quarter of 2023.
Sussman sought immediately helps and enrolled Eli in speech therapy, where she felt relieved to hear that this was a common problem. “The speech therapist said they had seen an increase in the number of children who arrive at speech therapy. Probably due to the lack of exposure to mouths and facial expressions, because it is a large part of how you learn to speak.”
When Eli turned 3 “he was much more verbal and really in a great place,” said Sossman.
Pandemic behaviors and habits that can mean problems for Kindergarten children
Other effects of pandemic and subferental practices of social distancing have led to peremptory and potential behavior in children, which may appear in the kindergarten or much later, according to Dumitriu.
Among the most important is parental stress, said Dumitriu. “Many studies worldwide show that there is a very well described intergenerational effect of the pregnancy of the duration of maternal stress in the development child,” he said.
Children too I spent more time on screens Duration block that in a pre-pandemic world and that can make them less ready for school, according to a study published in the magazine Nature. Michelle Yang, a resident of the Orange County Children’s Hospital who studied the use of screen time in children, said there are many dangers associated with electronic television devices for children from 2 to 5 years. “Exposing children at this age at two or three hours of screen screen showed a greater probability of behavioral problems, deficient vocabulary and delayed milestones. This is true for Childen with special needs.” article Provide guidelines for parents.
School assistance and preschool registration levels have also suffered from the pandemic. The United States Department of Education Most recent study The assistance discovered that the chronic absenteeism rate, which is when students lose 10% or 28% averaged by school throughout the country that the 2022-2023 school year.
The results of changes in behavior and habits are reflected in the test scores, Kristen Huff, head of measurement of curriculum associates, a company that provides national level tests of grade, to NPR, told NPR.
“Since the school returned after the pandemic, even the students who were not in school because they were too young to be in the kindergarten of the duration of the kindergarten [lockdowns] They are arriving at the garden of infants or less prepared instead of their pre-pondemic companions, “said Huff.
Compliance with the company 2025 state learning status reportThe percentage of 5 -year -old solos who come to the reading of children who arrive at reading have decreased by 8 points since 2019, from 89% to 81%. The decreases are even greater in mathematics. Only 70% of infant garden students are testing at the expected degree level, compared to the 2019 cohort, which was 84% in 2019. The disparities are even deeper even when wearing up for race and income. Since 2023, most Black and Hispanic Hispanic schools continue to show a constant increase in test scores in most grades, but their exam scores remain well below their white counterparts. The same is true for students whose families live in income below $ 50,000 per year versus those who live above $ 75,000 annually.
The good news, said Huff, is that students are moving forward. But while they grow at rates comparable to pre-pandemic, improvement is not enough to compensate for the academic land that has legs, he added.
“That is why we must focus on that acceleration in the rate they are learning,” said Huff.
Like Dumitriu, Huff focuses on the malleability of children’s brains, as well as the experience of educators. They only need the correct resources.
