Some of the babies born right before and in the early days of the pandemic are starting school this year. But did being born in a world where are social isolation and mask-wearing were the norm impact our children’s development?
CBS12 News is looking into new research that may answer that question.
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Morgan Firestein was part of a team of researchers who wanted to learn more about the development of children born during a global pandemic. Firestein is an Associate Research Scientist with the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center.
Firestein and her team of researchers followed many babies born around March 2020 in New York City.
"We wanted to ask the question are there any neurodevelopmental differences between those babies that were and were not exposed during pregnancy?"Firestein told CBS12 News.
Here’s what this team of researchers found when comparing babies exposed to COVID-19 in the womb versus those who were not exposed: "There absolutely no differences in any of the domains that we measure,"Firestein explained.
However, there was an unexpected discovery.
Firestein says there were differences in the first 6 months of life, between children born right before the pandemic, compared to those born during. Those children born during, scored slightly lower when it came to gross and fine motor development, as well as social development.
"Gross motor that includes things like a baby rolling from their back to their belly," Firestein told CBS12 News. "Fine motor are smaller movements. So is an infant reaching for a smaller item, like a Cheerio. Then personal social skills, some of the earliest ones we might see is do they look at themselves in the mirror and 'coo,' or produce those sorts of early sounds."
Firestein explains that while developmentally, it was only slightly off, it shows that the pandemic did impact at least the group of children they studied.
She also pointed CBS12 News to a study led by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital, that looked at more than 18,000 babies. This study uncovered a trend between boys around 12 months of age born to mothers diagnosed with COVID-19 during pregnancy.
"They were actually more likely to be diagnosed with a speech disorder. It’s a very early age to be diagnosed, so it was not really a true diagnosis, but [more so] an early indicator to keep an eye on that child’s language development and intervene if necessary," Firestein told CBS12 News. "What’s really encouraging is by 18 months, even among the boys, there were no differences."
Firestein explains they are still tracking this group of kids as they enter the school system, so the research is ongoing. However, she is confident that their little brains will soak in all the new experiences of school, the new environment and learning without a problem.
She does say that it is important that parents keep open lines of communication with teachers and counselors.
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