“Just being in the uterus during a highly stressful time had some effects in the development of babies,” Danny Dani, a pediatrician and a neurologist at the University of Colombia, and the president of an ongoing study of the pandemic newborns told NPR. “They were no big effects, but it was a very worrying sign, given that so many women gave birth during this period.”
Study of Dumitriu, Posted in 2022They find that 6-month-old babies born in the first months of the pandemic have slightly lower results when screening their gross motor, fine motor and personal social skills, compared to a historical group of babies born before the Covid-19 pandemic begins.
“We are talking about things like a baby who can sit, the baby can reach out to things, maybe a face -to -face interaction, many basic things,” she said, explaining that mothers have completed standard development Questionnaire Provide the study data.
But, said wordtiu, as they continue to track these children and expanded the study to involve more children born before the pandemic, they found that Kovid babies quickly got caught. “The good news is that the trend seems to be really limited to the early pandemic phase of 2020 and did not continue this year.”
“The child’s brain is extremely plastic or black,” she said. “One of the important things about the development of children is that what happens at 6 months does not predict what happens at 24 months and does not predict what happens at 5 years old.”
Eli’s journey
Susman said these discoveries parallel to her family’s experience. As working parents, Susman and her husband recorded Eli in daily care at 11 months. Since then, he has been enrolled in a nursery and Pre-K. He seemed to meet all the established indicators, but at about 2 years old, Susman realized that Eli did not speak at the level, that her applications for Mom told her she should be. “There were certainly a number of words that you need to know until a certain point and he did not know them,” she said.
A 2023 study Published in Epic research They find that children who have reached the age of 2 between October and December 2021 are about 32% more likely to have a diagnosis of speech delay than those who have reached the age of 2 in 2018. This percentage increased to nearly 88%, for children who have grown in January 2 and 2023. From the children in 2018 to nearly 17% in the first quarter of 2023.
Susman immediately sought help and recorded ELI in speech therapy, where she was relieved to hear that this was a common problem. “The hot man said they had observed an increase in the number of children coming to speech therapy. Probably due to the lack of exposure to the mouth and facial expressions, because this is a large part of how you learn to speak.”
By the time Eli was 3 years old, “he was so more verbally and really in a great place,” Susman said.
Pandemic behavior and habits that can create kindergarten problems
Other effects of pandemic and subsequent social distinction practices have led to a duration, potentially pernicious behavior in children who can occur in kindergarten or much later, according to Dumitri.
Among the most important is the parenting stress, said Dumitri. “Many studies around the world show that there is a very well -described effect of intergeneration of maternal stress during pregnancy on a developing child,” she said.
Children too spent more time on screens During the blocking than in the pre-apemic world and this can make them less ready for school, according to a study published in the magazine NatureS Michel Yang, a local doctor at the Orange Children’s Hospital, who studied the use of the screen in children, said there were many dangers related to television electronic devices for children aged 2 to 5 years. “Exposure to children of this age at two to three hours on screen showed an increased likelihood of behavioral problems, poor dictionary and delayed stages. This is especially true for children with special needs,” she wrote in an an an an a a a article Providing guidelines for parents.
Visiting schools and pre -school enrollment levels were also injured by the pandemic. US Department of Education The most survey In attendance, it found that the percentage of chronic absences-which is when students miss 10% or more of a 28% school-throughout the country during the school year 2022-2023.
The results of changes in behavior and habits are reflected in test results, Kristen Huff, Head of measurements at Cuchriculum Associates, a company that provides testing at national level at the NPR.
“As the school returned after the pandemic, even students who were not in school because they were too young to be in kindergarten during (blocked), they enter a kindergarten behind or less prepared and not in their peers from the pandemic,” Hulev said.
According to the company 2025 Status of Student Training ReportThe percentage of 5-year-olds who arrive for kindergarten in reading has declined by 8 points from 2019-from 89% to 81%. The decline is even greater in mathematics. Only 70% of kindergarten students test at an expected level compared to the 2019 cohort, which was 84% in 2019. The differences are deeper when they exploded from race and income. Since 2023, majority Spanish schools with majority people have continued to show a steady increase in test results in most stages, but their test results remain well below their white counterparts. The same applies to students whose families live on incomes less than $ 50,000 a year than those who live over $ 75,000 a year.
The good news, said Huff, is that students make progress. But as they grow at a comparable rate with pre-pinemaia, the improvement is not enough to compensate for the academic basis that is lost, she added.
“That is why we have to focus on this acceleration in the speed at which they are learning,” Huff said.
Like Dumitriu, Huff focuses on the insidious of the infant brain as well as on the expertise of teachers. They just need the right resources.
