About childhood and the virus that has changed our lives

Our lives have changed in the last two years; this virus has meant that we have all had to reorganize our ways of living, our rhythms and routines, our schedules and places of life...

In this new context, homes have been transformed into offices, teleconference centers, cinemas, gyms, and also schools. Adults have been engines of adaptation to the new threat and in a very short time we have begun, almost without assimilating it, to function differently. But... What about children and adolescents?

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A challenge to our ability to adapt

Citizen resilience has allowed society, as a whole, to move forward; Or at least not stop abruptly. As a society we have tried to leave no one behind: ensuring that all (or almost) people have a minimum source of income to survive; the measures to make work more flexible have helped curb the drop in production; compliance with the restrictions by the majority of citizens has helped to curb contagion, companies have stayed afloat thanks to state aid, etc.

Considering the above, it seems that we have been able to provide an effective response to the pandemic guaranteeing protection; however, taking the Gauss bell as a reference, it is obvious that we have been able to respond and protect the age groups that are in the central positions of the population, leaving the head and tail of the population in the background. curve. This is, heMinors and the elderly, who have not received the priority attention they deserve due to their high vulnerability.

Without downplaying the importance of the elderly group, in this article I would like to focus on care for minors, as it is the group with which I mostly work in my profession. And it is my intention to offer a reflection on aspects that, from my point of professional observation, I consider have been undervalued or not sufficiently taken into account due to the fact that other elements have monopolized the media attention and Social. In this way, drinking bottles, the increase in suicides or suicide attempts, regressions to previous evolutionary phases, or some variants of the agoraphobia Due to the risk of contagion, these are some examples of indirect effects of this virus that have been widely discussed in the media and also on a social level.

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The psychological impact of restrictions on the youngest

An element that affects adolescents and pre-adolescents, and that seems to have remained in the background, is that their psycho-social development has been abruptly interrupted due to sanitary measures and restrictions. From one day to the next, their -real- social networks (which in recent years have already been diminished by the massification of "smartphones") have almost completely disappeared.

The virtual world has become the space of sociability for this age group; training, sociability and leisure are thus developed in a virtual environment that lacks non-verbal communicative aspects, so important for an adequate development of the communication.

This digitization of the social experience not only impoverishes it, generating a feeling of loneliness and isolation that has already been detected by some research, but also negatively influences social development. Personal social experience has a wealth of stimuli (physical and emotional) that help us interpret the others, acquire new skills by imitation, explore new possibilities for better conflict management, etc.

In addition, physical contact in interpersonal relationships has favorable effects on mood and helps improve self esteem.

In the case of minors of school age between 6 and 11 years of age, there seems to have been underestimated the value that contact between boys and girls has in the evolutionary development of different ages. The advantages of a certain heterogeneity in childhood relationships have been widely documented by authors as prominent as Maria Montessori, whose studies have It has been shown that multi-level classes bring benefits to all children regardless of the age.

Well, in our schools, contact between minors of different ages is already scarce, and only occurs during breaks and leisure time; but now, after the pandemic, the methodology of the “bubble” groups has meant that this intergroup contact has been reduced or has completely disappeared.

In this way, the “bubble” effect generates areas of inbreeding sociability where children are deprived of the possibility of relating to other peers younger and older, which produces a crystallized sociability in which the role and status of each member of the group are difficult to modify; alliances also suffer from the poverty of alternatives, the possibility of learning by imitation disappears for the little ones, as well as the opportunity to experience care and responsibility is not offered for the greater.

With regard to children in the pre-school stage (0-5 years), some limitations that affect their development caused by the pandemic are also observable. And at this time I would like to focus on two aspects that have been treated somewhat superficial in the media, and that perhaps -because of its more technical aspect- have gone unnoticed by the society.

The first has to do with language development; Some scientific articles have already been published that warn of a possible delay in the appearance of the speaks in the "Covid generation", due to the loss of visual information that implies the use of masks. This effect not only occurs in deaf people, but also in children who a priori do not present other difficulties.

The second one has to do with visual ability. Our brain, properly exposed to external reality, generates a depth of field or three-dimensional vision; well, there is a critical phase, starting before the age of two, where this adaptive function develops due to exposure to the outside world.

The increase in the use of screens, due to the need for parents to telecommute, together with the obligation to Staying in our homes or limiting outings due to the risk of contagion affects the development of this brain function. in the child; since the images we receive through them are in two dimensions.

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Concluding...

In conclusion, I believe that as a society we are at a time when both education and health professionals, as well as families and public institutions, must pay special attention to minors designing and developing actions that can mitigate the negative effects that the pandemic is leaving on its development.

As a professional who works with minors on a day-to-day basis, I believe that our younger population is behaving, in general terms, in a responsible in complying with health restrictions, and has contributed with its powerful ability to adapt and its resignations, to control the situation sanitary. Now it is our turn to be responsible, empathetic and protective. We owe it to them.

Author: Ivan Zancolich, psychologist and psychotherapist at VALIA, a service specializing in intervention with minors and families in difficulty.