Did COVID 19 Precautions Put My Kid Behind? Everyday Health
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Getty ImagesA couple of months ago, my partner and I took our then 14-month-old son into a bookstore café for the first time. The place was packed with unmasked customers, and we waited anxiously for our order, N-95s tethered to our faces. Our toddler, on the other hand, was quite thrilled to roam a new indoor space amid new people to run around. Limited mostly to outdoor social gatherings for much of the pandemic, he squealed while teetering by strangers’ legs and pulling at wrapping paper tubes and picture books of trucks. My partner and I nervously hovered over his newfound explorations, but we also felt pangs of joy at these novel opportunities for socialization. We took this detour from our usual pandemic-parenting playbook (the theme was cautious) to take advantage of fewer COVID-19 cases during the early spring. But as counts started going up just weeks later, our precautions did, too. As two physicians in training, my partner and I have been in constant fear of bringing COVID-19 home and infecting our son — a scare we experienced when I contracted the virus during my partner’s third trimester. While we worry primarily about the health consequences of him catching the virus, the threat of day-care closures and missed work also drive our safety practices. Though our son hasn’t caught the virus to this point, we both have stayed home from work with him while awaiting PCR tests or symptoms to resolve — an all too common national occurrence that more drastically affects low-income households. Like many fellow COVID-era parents of children under 5 years old, we have had a lot of concern over the fact that our children have been ineligible for a vaccine until very recently. Our son is among 19 million kids under 5 living in the United States (according to Kids Count Data Book). Thankfully, after many months of delayed promises and repeated disappointments, vaccinations for this age group were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in mid-June. My partner and I were among the many parents racing online to schedule our son for an appointment as soon as they became available. Less than a week after the vaccine was available for his age group, he finally got his first shot — more than seven months after 5- to 11-year-olds became eligible, more than a year after vaccines were approved for 12-year-olds and up, and one-and-a-half years after they became first available for adults in the United States. While we are grateful that our child finally has some level of immunity against the virus, the time it took to get here — his whole life — feels alarming to my partner and I. We wonder how our efforts to continuously protect him, his relative social isolation in the pandemic era, and the never-ending anxieties wrought by COVID vigilance have hurt our son’s cognitive development during this impressionable early period.
Did COVID-19 Precautions Hurt My Young Kid s Cognitive and Emotional Growth
A psychiatry resident’s take on the long wait for vaccines for those under 5. By Sandhira Wijayaratne, MDMedically Reviewed by Allison Young, MDReviewed: July 29, 2022Everyday Health BlogsMedically ReviewedSome research suggests that kids born during the pandemic may experience developmental delays — but that doesn’t mean parents should panic.Getty ImagesA couple of months ago, my partner and I took our then 14-month-old son into a bookstore café for the first time. The place was packed with unmasked customers, and we waited anxiously for our order, N-95s tethered to our faces. Our toddler, on the other hand, was quite thrilled to roam a new indoor space amid new people to run around. Limited mostly to outdoor social gatherings for much of the pandemic, he squealed while teetering by strangers’ legs and pulling at wrapping paper tubes and picture books of trucks. My partner and I nervously hovered over his newfound explorations, but we also felt pangs of joy at these novel opportunities for socialization. We took this detour from our usual pandemic-parenting playbook (the theme was cautious) to take advantage of fewer COVID-19 cases during the early spring. But as counts started going up just weeks later, our precautions did, too. As two physicians in training, my partner and I have been in constant fear of bringing COVID-19 home and infecting our son — a scare we experienced when I contracted the virus during my partner’s third trimester. While we worry primarily about the health consequences of him catching the virus, the threat of day-care closures and missed work also drive our safety practices. Though our son hasn’t caught the virus to this point, we both have stayed home from work with him while awaiting PCR tests or symptoms to resolve — an all too common national occurrence that more drastically affects low-income households. Like many fellow COVID-era parents of children under 5 years old, we have had a lot of concern over the fact that our children have been ineligible for a vaccine until very recently. Our son is among 19 million kids under 5 living in the United States (according to Kids Count Data Book). Thankfully, after many months of delayed promises and repeated disappointments, vaccinations for this age group were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in mid-June. My partner and I were among the many parents racing online to schedule our son for an appointment as soon as they became available. Less than a week after the vaccine was available for his age group, he finally got his first shot — more than seven months after 5- to 11-year-olds became eligible, more than a year after vaccines were approved for 12-year-olds and up, and one-and-a-half years after they became first available for adults in the United States. While we are grateful that our child finally has some level of immunity against the virus, the time it took to get here — his whole life — feels alarming to my partner and I. We wonder how our efforts to continuously protect him, his relative social isolation in the pandemic era, and the never-ending anxieties wrought by COVID vigilance have hurt our son’s cognitive development during this impressionable early period.