- As we learn about the mental and physical impact COVID-19 has had on children, parents differ in their opinions about lifting restrictions.
- The need for in-person learning and desire to eliminate mask mandates in schools brings contention across the U.S.
- Children continue to show lower risk of severe symptoms from COVID-19 compared to adults.
Amelia is a 16-year-old junior at a high school in suburban Chicago. She only had one “normal” semester during her high school years, in which she learned in school without a mask or physical distancing.
缺乏正常情况是她最难处理的，尤其是当她的学校在伊利诺伊州州长J.B. Pritzker的前两年中大部分高中的大部分时间遥遥无期的时候ordersand efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19.
“不必起床并为学校做好准备，这使得在学校期间很难真正集中精力，”阿米莉亚告诉Healthline。雷竞技app官网“坐在家里，不必注意我们所学的知识已经影响了我今年（现在我们回到学校），因此很难重新调整正常的学习和工作。”
她喜欢校园的学习比远程学习更好，但说必须在学校里戴口罩使她很难保持联系并与老师和同龄人进行交流，“当我们看不到彼此的脸上表情时。”
During sports, she says that the communication between coaches and teammates — as well as simple breathing — is a challenge.
“我们缺少经验,青少年和young adults: concerts, dances at school, sporting events, going to restaurants, seeing our family,” Amelia said.
她的经验是全国许多儿童和青少年的经验，这使专家和父母关注美国青年的心理健康。
In October 2021, the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Children’s Hospital Association declared a国家紧急情况在儿童和青少年的心理健康中，命名为Covid-19和种族不公正的命名压力是原因。
Dr. Willough JenkinsRady儿童医院迭戈和儿童心理学家的住院医学主任和儿童心理学家说，在大流行之前，儿童心理健康问题的发生率正在上升，并且大流行的扩增和恶化了已经存在的问题。
“Children’s mental health needs to be prioritized at all levels, but particularly on a national level with more funding and legislation to support mental health initiatives,” she told Healthline.
During the pandemic, she said mental health professionals have seen rates of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and suicidal ideation increase.
“More children are accessing tertiary and emergency care for mental health. We have had record numbers of children seeking mental health care at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego,” said Jenkins.
数据由报告儿童中的COVID-19案件的各州收集：
- 0.00–0.02 percent of all child COVID-19 cases resulted in death
- 在所有儿童Covid-19案件中，0.1–1.5％导致住院治疗
Parker L. Huston, PhD, pediatric psychologist and owner of Central Ohio Pediatric Behavioral Health, said that there are two ways to look at this data.
“By percentage, children continue to show lower risk of severe symptoms. It is logical to think that they can relax some of the restrictions with the intention of helping their mental well-being,” Huston told Healthline.
“However, from a population level view, even 1 percent suffering severe complications is a huge number of children, and the healthcare system is not equipped for a significant increase in patient need for intensive services.”
There’s also the concern that children spread viruses more than adults do. “Anything that children catch tends to spread in the home to siblings and parents,” he said.
Still, the debate on how the country should prioritize normalcy for children as it balances the safety of the general public and the operation of hospitals is a heated one with much to consider. In-person learning and unmasking kids are hot topics among parents.
2022年1月28日，美国儿科学会在updated guidance应当遵守安全措施，例如疫苗接种，普遍掩盖和身体距离，应优先考虑学校的学习。
休斯顿说，对于那些无法始终获得教育或同伴互动的儿童来说，有负面的结果。
休斯顿对Healthline表示：“虚拟教育比完全关闭更可取，但是该国大部分地区很难获得稳定的访问所需的技术，并且学生需要取得成功。”雷竞技app官网
“Having children physically present in the building is really important. For some students, these are the best meals, the safest places, and the most support they get in their lives.
Jenkins agreed and noted the importance of academic catch-up.
根据reportby Curriculum Associates, fewer elementary and middle school students started the 2021 school year reading and doing math on grade level than in the 3 years before the pandemic.
However, not all students were affected in the same way. The report also found:
- 大流行之前阅读和数学落后的学生经历了最未完成的学习。
- 年级高年级的4至8年级学生的百分比接近流行前的水平。
- 在阅读和数学方面，黑人和拉丁裔学生的学习要比对白人学生更大。
詹金斯说：“所有学生都受到某种方式受到影响，因此，学术追赶将有些普遍，尽管影响不利的家庭，这些家庭可能没有资源来支持远程学习。”
劳拉·法根（Laura Fagan）一直对旧金山的减轻责任-19的负担，他的三个孩子（6岁，5岁和5岁）都在她的三个孩子身上，她相信学校对面对面的学习是安全的学习远远超过了Covid-19向他们带来的风险。
From the beginning of the pandemic in early March 2020, she never worried about keeping her kids physically safe from COVID-19. She continued to ride the bus to work and daycare with her kids until the city went into lockdown.
Fagan告诉Healthline：“现在，我们知道孩子的风险远低于我们一直接受的风险，而没有使孩子恐惧，例如汽车事故，流感，溺水和心脏病。”雷竞技app官网“直到今天，在旧金山20岁以下还没有一次死亡，只有少数小儿住院。”
她优先考虑自己的孩子在心理上保持良好的态度，避免在家中的广播新闻，并向他们保证他们健康并且不需要害怕，从而毫不畏惧。
“[Two] of my kids recently had an asymptomatic positive because of required testing, and as a result, they all had to stay home from school for the required period of time. In hindsight, I’m not even sure if they realized they ‘had COVID.’ We just didn’t make a big deal out of it,” said Fagan.
利兹·比弗（Liz Beaver），主持人大坝更好播客和两个少年的母亲和一个在犹他州的10岁孩子采取了另一种方法。她优先考虑使孩子和社区在试图平衡他们的心理福祉的同时，使自己的孩子和社区免受Covid-19的安全。
“我们一直对孩子们对世界非常诚实，并抚养我们的孩子意识到科学，”海狸告诉Healthline。雷竞技app官网
“我们一直在每个阶段都与他们谈论时事，并就其他人做出的选择（当然是适合年龄的方式）进行了讨论。命名。”
Because of this, she believes that her kids have the capacity to understand that the public won’t always behave in a way they agree with.
In Utah, there’s a battle between health experts and the legislature to implement safety protocols. But Beaver explained to her kids her and husband’s choices, such as why they chose to participate in the 2020–2021 school year online, why they felt it was OK for them to go back in 2022, and why they pulled them back out for a week during the latest surge that ended up shutting down a few school districts.
“We presented the evidence. I honestly think my kids feel empathy towards all the kids whose parents refuse masks and vaccination. They are very confident and knowledgeable.”
尽管如此，她还是为是否让孩子们与某些不采取安全预防措施的家人生活的朋友闲逛。
“Because out here, people aren’t being measured in their approach. This creates a need for more safety on the part of the people who must compensate for the recklessness,” she said.
While not many people would argue that masks are fun for kids to wear, the
“There is no evidence showing that wearing masks has impacted kids’ mental health. There are a small minority of children that might struggle with mask-wearing, and these are typically children with sensory sensitivities or developmental differences,” Jenkins said.
Huston added that the risk to mental health for children isn’t likely to be lessened simply by telling them they don’t need masks anymore.
“There are many other factors in the world that are negatively impacting children’s mental health, such as the mental well-being of the adults around them, expectations placed on them, and how we teach children (or not) to understand and manage their emotions,” he said.
海狸同意了，指出她孩子最痛苦的部分不是戴口罩或面部表情被面具覆盖，而是成年人无法应付。
当她的孩子在大流行期间挣扎时，她说他们对美国政府内部的战斗，杂货店的拳战，尖叫的妈妈，男人挥舞着攻击步枪，人们说：可以继续前进。”
“We were out there telling our kids, and everybody else, that it is essentially okay to lose old people, overweight people, disabled people, and people with underlying conditions,” said Beaver.
“我的一个孩子真的很担心她患有糖尿病的朋友，因为没有人会确保她的安全。我所有的孩子都非常担心祖父，因为他的心脏状况超过80岁。”
She believed that if there were a consistent mask mandate in schools, society could be more confident that it could also protect the teachers, who bear the brunt of the risk.
Huston pointed out that the greatest impact on mental health is likely the feeling that mitigation measures are inconsistent, out of control, or that safety can’t be guaranteed.
他说：“这会增加心理健康症状，因为对于美国大多数儿童而言，学校传统上是稳定且安全的地方。”
Fagan sees it differently, though. She’s a proponent of eliminating masks from schools and points to Britain’s approach with masking. In the spring/summer of 2021, the British government didn’t require elementary school students or teachers to wear masks in classrooms and instead focused on widespread quarantining and rapid testing.
In an专栏she wrote, she also cited a not yet peer-reviewedstudythat explored individual and population-level trends in infant and early child neurodevelopment and the developmental impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Comparing yearly mean scores since 2011, and controlling for age, gender, demographic, and socioeconomic indicators, the researchers found “striking evidence of declining overall cognitive functioning in children beginning in 2020 and continuing through 2021.”
“数据始终存在，孩子应该一直是优先事项。Fagan说：“从学校关闭到由于面具引起的言论延误，孩子对自己或对他人的危险或对他人的危险的错误前提。”
She calls for the prioritization of children’s mental health. “I’m so tired of people debating it while kids continue to suffer every single day. Where is the urgency? The harms are piling up. At this point, even if kids were lethal weapons, it’s still their turn to be put first,” she said.
She hopes that soon the country will return to pre-pandemic normal. However, she believes that parents who want their kids to still wear masks should have that choice.
从休斯顿的角度来看，目前不应引起争议的习惯来防止细菌的传播。“ [孩子]看到这些做法越正常，他们看上去就越不那么侵入。他说：
詹金斯说，由于儿童是韧性的，大多数儿童将从这一大流行的影响中恢复过来。她指出的一个原因是，这种情况是普遍的共同逆境，这与经常疏远的个人创伤经历不同。
“我们可以公开谈论大流行，而不是其他不利的童年事件，这些事件仍然受到污名。我确实相信，由于继续关注这个问题并为需要它的人提供支持，我们的孩子将能够克服这一时期。”詹金斯说。