Pandemic babies late on communication at 2, but here’s the good news | Health

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The world changed for all of us when we were suddenly plunged into a pandemic in 2020. COVID sent us into a series of lockdowns in an effort to control the spread of the virus until a vaccine could be developed.

Pandemic babies had similar scores to those born before COVID in the other developmental domains we looked at, including motor skills and problem-solving ability. (Pixabay) {{^userSubscribe}} {{/userSubscribe}} {{^userSubscribe}} {{/userSubscribe}}

Most of us knew that a vaccine would be key to our post-pandemic life. But what about those of us who knew nothing about the world before COVID?

Our research group wanted to understand what life was like for babies born during the pandemic and what it might mean for their overall health and development.

In our last article, we found that at two years of age, with the important exception of communication, these pandemic babies were very similar to babies born before the pandemic in behavior and development.

We followed families of babies born in Ireland during the first three months of the pandemic, between March and May 2020. A total of 354 families and their babies visited us at the ages of six, 12 and 24 months.

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Visits, especially the oldest ones, were sometimes the only trips families made outside the home. We were struck by the distrust of some babies towards our experienced pediatric staff, which was often explained by comments from parents as if she hadn’t been out much.

At each of the visits, we asked the parents for a lot of information about the life and development of their baby by means of questionnaires.

Usually in a study like this, it’s best to compare babies to a control group of other babies born at the same time but without the same challenges. Since most of the world was in lockdown, we did the next best thing. We compared the confined babies to a similar group of babies born in Ireland before the pandemic. This is a limitation of our study, but there were no comparable groups of babies available at the same time.

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We discovered that these confined babies had tiny social circles. Due to COVID restrictions, activities such as parent and baby groups have been canceled and there have been no visits to other homes.

By six months, an average of just three people had kissed the babies, including their parents suggesting they hadn’t met many relatives or family friends. One in four babies had not met another child of their age by their first birthday.

We also asked parents what it was like raising a baby during the pandemic. Words such as solitary, isolating and nurturing came up repeatedly. Some positive themes also emerged, including parental bonding with the new baby and more family time due to lockdown restrictions.

We looked at ten developmental milestones on babies’ first birthdays. Of these, fewer pandemic babies had said their first word, could point or say goodbye, and slightly more babies could crawl.

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It makes sense when you think about it. The babies probably heard fewer words since they went out less often. Also, the pandemic babies probably knew their home very well, so there was little new to report. And since parents worked from home and visitors generally didn’t come to the house, there was perhaps less of a need to learn how to say goodbye. It’s possible that more pandemic babies were crawling because they were more likely to have spent more time exploring at home.

By age two, we wanted to see if these developmental differences had changed. We asked parents questions about communication at this stage, including whether the child could say two or three words together to express an idea, whether he could correctly point at something when asked (for example, point the ball) and if he could follow a simple command (for example, put the toy on the table).

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Children born during the pandemic again scored slightly lower on the communication part of the questionnaire, even after adjusting for factors such as the mother’s level of education and the child’s age at the time the questionnaire was taken. has been filled.

But reassuringly, the pandemic babies had similar scores to those born before COVID in the other developmental domains we looked at, including motor skills and problem-solving ability.

We were also relieved to see no difference in reported behavior between babies born during the pandemic and those born earlier. We asked parents nearly 100 questions about their child’s behavior, including sleep problems, anxious behavior, emotional reactivity and social withdrawal.

What can we do?

Research groups from other countries have also shown that babies born shortly before or during the pandemic had slightly lower developmental scores.

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Now that the pandemic measures are gone, it’s really important for all babies born during the pandemic to explore the exciting world. Families should meet with relatives and friends to expose their babies to a wider range of people, and babies should meet their peers at playgroups. We also know that talking to babies and reading to young children is very okay.

All babies should benefit from developmental screening, which is often provided by national programmes. If families have specific concerns, it is important that they contact their health care provider to discuss the child’s development in more detail. This allows early and targeted support to be provided to children who present with a specific developmental problem.

This story was published from a news feed with no text edits. Only the title has been changed.

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