For children who at the beginning of the pandemic had about 3 years is like time has stopped for four months: this is the delay they have accrued in the development of motor, social and linguistic skills according to a study conducted by various Japanese institutions and published in Jama Pediatrics.
The pandemic, the researchers explain, has had an impact on all the systems that children are confronted with: the environments frequented, the routines, the relationships with adults and other children. However, “few studies have explored the association between the pandemic and development in infants and preschoolers.” The team attempted to do this by studying 447 one-year-olds and 440 three-year-olds at the start of the pandemic, following them for the next two years.
According to the study, while the younger children did not have any particular developmental delays, for the older ones the impact of Covid-19 was heavy. The average accumulated delay with respect to the usual development is 4.39 months. The skills on which the effects of the pandemic have been most felt are the ability to manage social relationships with adults (6.41 months late), discipline (5.69 months), language (5.64 months) .
Furthermore, these effects were more accentuated or attenuated depending on the characteristics of the context in which the children lived. The study does not reveal whether, at the end of the pandemic, children have caught up, however, “it is important to identify children who have been adversely affected by the pandemic and provide them with support for learning, socialisation, physical and mental health and family support,” write the researchers.
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