The damages of the pandemic and the lockdown are starting to be felt. The world of children, of development and growth, has been particularly exposed and has left significant footprints. For children who at the beginning of the pandemic had about 3 years it is as if 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 several Japanese institutions and posted on Jama Pediatrics.
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Research on the delays accumulated by three-year-olds during the pandemic
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».
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The team tried to do this by studying 447 children who were 1 year old and 440 three years old at the beginning 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 has been heavy. The average accumulated delay with respect to the usual development is 4.39 months.
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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), the discipline (5.69 months), the 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 allow us to know if, at the end of the pandemic, the children have recovered the accumulated delay, however, “it is important to identify children who have been harmfully affected by the pandemic and provide them learning support, socialisation, physical and mental health and family support», write the researchers.