Covid lockdown linked to rise in child developmental issues

Research conducted on 258,000 children between 2020 and 2021 has been published which informs us of significant developmental challenges as a direct result of the lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The restrictions put in place due to the spread of Covid-19 has been said to have caused significant issues with language development, speech, physical ability and emotional development. Social interaction is crucial for children to develop adequately and severely limiting interactions is said to be the cause of these developmental challenges.

Children were not experiencing the world how they normally would and even when they were exposed to some social interaction, people’s faces were hidden from the nose down.

Some children who would have had developmental challenges such as speech delay despite the pandemic also did not receive the help that they ordinarily would have due to the restrictions put in place around the health care settings.

The article calls for future pandemic planning to ensure that if we were, as a world, ever in this situation again, that measures are put in place to ensure that children are not disadvantaged developmentally.

Covid lockdown linked to rise in child developmental issues

Questions

1. Research shows that play opportunities are crucial for children to develop. What kind of play opportunities were children not able to experience during the pandemic?
2. How does play help to aid the development of children?
3. What could have been done during the pandemic to reduce the effects of the restrictions on children’s development?