by Gretchen Perhamus M.A., University at Buffalo
A growing literature has highlighted the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on academic, social, and emotional development of children and adolescents. From a life course theory perspective, COVID-19 disruptions in early childhood (i.e., younger than age 8) may be particularly impactful and have both immediate and longstanding effects with important clinical implications (Benner & Mistry, 2020; Elder, 1998). Specifically, COVID-19 disruptions to the school environment, parenting stress, and broader contextual factors directly interact with a number of important normative developmental transitions particularly likely to impact long-term trajectories during this developmental period (Benner & Mistry, 2020).
Early childhood is a critical period for the development of social-emotional learning skills (SEL), such as self-awareness, relationships skills, self-management, and responsible decision-making (Chen & Adams, 2022). During school closures and hybrid learning, early childhood teachers reported significant disruptions to their ability to teach SEL (Chen & Adams, 2022) and both parents and teachers noted concerns in these domains related to children’s lack of peer interactions (e.g., Chen & Adams, 2022; Egan et al., 2021). Given known importance of the preschool period for SEL development and effects of preschool SEL on later adjustment and academic readiness, these interruptions likely place children at greater risk across domains (Chen & Adams, 2022).
Young children’s reliance on a number of inter-related contexts and the individuals within those contexts to scaffold the development of SEL skills may compound these effects (Benner & Mistry, 2020; Chen & Adams, 2022). For instance, the pandemic resulted in increased parenting stress and strain on parent-child relationships (e.g., Di Giorgio et al., 2020; Egan et al., 2021), which may make it difficult for parents to meet the greater reliance on parents for meeting children’s SEL needs when they were not attending in-person schooling. Indeed, harsh/inconsistent parenting was associated with increases in anger for preschoolers at biological risk (i.e., high basal cortisol pre-pandemic) during the early pandemic (Ostrov et al., 2022). This suggests that the pandemic’s effects on parents may have impacted their children’s emotional development, potentially through changes in the parent-child relationship. Additionally, preschool teachers reported significant increases in financial strain and psychological distress during the pandemic (Swigonski et al., 2021), and teachers’ wellbeing and stress levels are known to directly impact SEL outcomes among students (Schonert-Reichl, 2017). Therefore, the negative impacts of the pandemic on both teachers and parents may have jointly negatively impacted children’s SEL development. Importantly, the effects of the pandemic are also known to be distributed unevenly based on children’s and families’ positions within macro-contextual factors, including socioeconomic status, race, immigration status, and school and neighborhood characteristics (Benner & Mistry, 2020).
Overall, the challenges brought by the pandemic are likely to have significant current and future effects on children’s functioning (Benner & Mistry, 2020) which will be present in our clinics for years to come. Anecdotally, our in-house training clinic has seen several cases of preschoolers who have had limited contact with peers to date, and are exhibiting significant SEL delays (e.g., difficulties with perspective taking, self-awareness, self-regulation, and peer relations), which are both exacerbated by and contributing to strains on the parent-child relationship and broader family context. Furthermore, in speaking directly with preschool teachers both in clinical and research settings, it is clear that these issues are widespread and are placing strain on early childhood education settings. As clinical scientists, we will need to appreciate these effects and communicate them clearly to families, children, and teachers. Although the field will need to continue to work to understand and contend with the downstream effects of the pandemic for years to come, there are several factors that clinicians should consider now when assessing and conceptualizing presenting problems among young children who have grown up almost exclusively within the COVID-19 context. Here are some of my recommendations based on this emerging literature and recent clinical experiences:
- During intake interviews, make sure to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the child, parents, school system, and family unit. If using a standardized interview, consider formally adding these types of questions to your procedure.
- Consider each child’s unique experience and interactions with non-pandemic risk factors (i.e., take a diathesis-stress perspective) to understand and target which specific areas have been impacted the most. For example, a child who is temperamentally emotionally reactive and then had limited exposure to peer interactions over the course of the pandemic may show heightened aggression and anger relative both to others in their class and to their own expected levels had they had adequate opportunity to learn to navigate and regulate the frustration inherent to early childhood peer relationships.
- When using normed, formal assessments of socioemotional adjustment or academic achievement, it may be helpful to qualitatively consider whether the age or grade equivalent at which the child is performing is reflective of the age at which they had decreased contact with peers or school due to the pandemic. For example, if a 4-year-old child is demonstrating social skills at a 2-year-old age equivalent level, and they have had extremely limited contact with peers since that age, current skills deficits may reflect a lack of growth opportunity in the environment.
- Parental behavioral management skills and parental support may be particularly important and impactful at this time given the increased reliance on the home context and evidence of impact of the parent-child relationship to changes in child adjustment over the course of the pandemic. A thorough assessment of current parenting stress and self-efficacy are important, and extra time may need to be spent providing problem-solving and emotional support to parents than would otherwise be needed.
- Consider the role of the broader social context within which the child and family are embedded, and how those factors may have mitigated or exacerbated the impact of the pandemic. For instance, heightened racism and violence toward individuals of Asian descent during the pandemic may have placed increased strain on Asian families (Benner & Mistry, 2020). Any intervention efforts should be validating of and responsive to these contextual risk factors.
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References
Benner, A. D. & Mistry, R. S. (2020). Child development during the COVID-19 pandemic through a life course theory lens. Child Development Perspectives, 14(4) 236-243. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12387
Chen, J. J. & Adams, C. B. (2022). Drawing from and expanding their toolboxes: Preschool teachers’ traditional strategies, unconventional opportunities, and novel challenges in scaffolding young children’s social and emotional learning during remote instruction amidst COVID-19. Early Childhood Education Journal, online first article. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-022-01359-6
Di Giorgio, E., Di Riso, D., Mioni, G. & Cellini, N. (2021). The interplay between mothers’ and children behavioral and psychological factors during COVID-19: an Italian study. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 30, 1401-1412. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-020-01631-3
Egan, S. M., Pope, J., Moloney, M., Hoyne, C. & Beatty, C. (2021). Missing early education and care during the pandemic: The socio-emotional impact of the COVID-19 crisis on young children. Early Childhood Education Journal, 49, 925-934. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-021-01193-2
Elder, G. H., Jr. (1998). The life course as developmental theory. Child Development, 69, 1-12. https://doi.org/ /10.1111/j.1467-8624.1998.tb06128.x
Ostrov, J. M., Murray-Close, D., Perry, K. J., Perhamus, G. R., Memba, G. V., Rice, D. R. & Nowalis, S. (2022). Parenting and adjustment problems among preschoolers during COVID-19. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 1 – 17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826- 022-02439-2
Schonert-Reichl, K. A. (2017). Social and emotional learning and teachers. The Future of Children, 27(1), 137 – 155.
Sroufe, L. A. (2013). The promise of developmental psychopathology: Past and present. Development and Psychopathology, 25, 1215–1224. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579413000576.
Swigonski, N. L., James, B., Wynns, W., & Casavan, K. (2021). Physical, mental, and financial stress impacts of COVID-19 on early childhood educators. Early Childhood Education Journal, 49, 799-806. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-021-01223-z
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