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(CNN) – For young children, the pandemic comes at a crucial time for developing skills important for empathy, safety and more – a phase that some parents believe will be altered by wearing the mask.
“There are sensitive periods in early childhood development when language development and emotional development develop very rapidly during the early years of life,” said Ashley Ruba, postdoctoral researcher at Child Emotion Lab of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Being able to use the verbal or facial cues of others to understand how someone is feeling or perceive safe or dangerous aspects of environments and people is an essential task for young children, Ruba added.
Concerns that wearing masks could interfere with these natural learning experiences and communication skills were investigated before the pandemic.
When children aged 3 to 8 saw faces covered with face masks, they showed no difficulty classifying the expressions, according to a 2012 study published in the journal Cognition. This suggested that children under the age of 9 preferred to study the eye area even when they could see full faces, the researchers wrote.
During the pandemic, Ruba also investigated whether masks affected children’s abilities to understand facial expressions.
Ruba and her co-author showed more than 80 children between the ages of 7 and 13 with photos of uncluttered faces, covered in surgical masks or wearing sunglasses. The faces displayed sadness, anger or fear.
When asked to attribute one of six emotions to each face, children were right about exposed faces 66% of the time, the researchers found. When faces were covered with masks, children had difficulty but were able to correctly identify sadness about 28% of the time, anger 27%, and fear 18%, which was more than the odds (about 17%) correctly guess one emotion from the six labels.
Given these findings and children’s innate flexibility to adapt to challenges or catch up, some experts suspect no long-term effect of mask wear on children’s development.
“I think once the masks are gone or almost gone, no matter what impact it will have, we will recover quickly,” said Dr Hugh Bases, clinical associate professor of pediatrics at Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital. by NYU Langone Health.
If “children’s social and linguistic development is a bit slower, which could be the case, balancing that with the risk of someone dying from the coronavirus – then all the evidence we have indicates they will catch up. late and they’ll be fine – just doesn’t seem worth it to me, ”said Amy Learmonth, professor of psychology at William Paterson University in New Jersey.
“I look at the number of people who have died in this country, and it is horrible.”
Differences between ages and learning styles
From birth, babies learn to communicate by observing the faces, mouths and voices of loved ones and trying to respond, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“What your 6 year old learns is about things like sarcasm and meaning. What your 1 year old learns is, for example, this crawling thing running around the house is called” dog, “” Learmonth said.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not recommended that children under the age of 2 wear masks. For children under 18 months, learning to communicate using visual cues is “probably more important because learning a new word when you don’t have one is complicated,” Learmonth added.
If you are concerned about your child’s language and social development during the pandemic, just be sure to set aside time to talk with your child face-to-face when you are at home and not wearing a mask, suggested. Learmonth.
“For most of our children, as long as they have interactions with their parents in the morning and evening, everything will be fine.” These interactions can take place during baths, games or meals.
Plus, “conversation is often more than just verbal content,” Bases said.
Other elements such as vocal inflection or physical gestures not masked by masks can add to the context that helps children develop their communication skills. Young children, including those with visual impairments, will use other cues or senses to understand and learn language, according to the AAP.
One concern, however, is with children whose linguistic or social development is atypical, Learmonth said.
“Anyone who is just a little behind in language development or a little behind in understanding social cues – what worries me is that they will fall even further behind,” she added. .
“Because unlike a typically developing child who is probably doing well with only four or five hours of facial interaction a day, a struggling child will need all they can get and more,” said said Learmonth.
When parents can help
To better communicate with a child while wearing a mask, the AAP recommends that adults draw the child’s attention before speaking, face the child directly without physical or noise barriers, and speak slowly and louder, but without shouting, if necessary.
You can add contextual information to your words using your hands, body language, and tone of voice. Depending on the answer, ask if your child understood and repeat if necessary.
If you have concerns about your child’s language development skills now or in the future, seek assessment from certified speech-language pathologists. Some of them still practice in person while wearing see-through masks or virtually, according to the AAP.
“As speech-language pathologists working with children with communication disabilities, our transition to the new standard of communication with face masks has been swift and smooth,” Indian speech-language pathologists Divya Swaminathan and Shoba Meera wrote in an article by ‘October 2020.
The “greater good” of protecting each other, teachers and families “far outweighs any potential theoretical problem that could arise from wearing face masks,” Bases said.
“Children adapt, they adapt, and when they don’t have to wear them, they adapt again.… It’s a very fluid and dynamic type of learning. And development is. obviously not linear. There are ups and downs, even days before face masks. “
Another encouragement is that children living in cultures where face coverings are the norm are still learning to communicate, Learmonth said. “There are many ways around the world of talking to young children, and they all work.”
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