How are the COVID babies doing 5 years on?
Some children born during the pandemic need extra support
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Learning Variability Network Exchange
The Learning Variability Network Exchange (LEVANTE) seeks to understand how children grow, learn, and develop across different times, places, and contexts so that they can be supported to thrive in the multitude of experiences they will encounter throughout life. It brings together researchers from around the world to create the first cross-cultural, multidisciplinary open dataset aiming to capture the richness and diversity of child development and learning. By including data collection of common measures on these different areas longitudinally and at a global level, LEVANTE will help researchers, educators, and policy-makers understand learning and developmental variability, thus improving future outcomes for diverse groups of children worldwide.
The disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented levels of stress in pregnant individuals, leading to worries about the long-term effect on babies. Since March 2020, we have been studying the effects of pandemic-related stress on children across Canada. Our ‘Pregnancy During the COVID-19 Pandemic’ study follows more than 7000 children who were born early in the pandemic, in 2020 and 2021. What do we know 5 years later about these children and their development?
Most COVID babies are developing typically
First, prenatal exposure to the COVID virus does not, in itself, seem to have lasting effects. Children whose mothers were infected with COVID-19 during pregnancy show very similar development to children whose mothers were not infected. There were no differences in developmental milestones or socioemotional outcomes at 1 or 2 years old, suggesting few to no lasting effects of prenatal viral exposure.
“Most babies born during the pandemic are developing as expected.”
Second, most babies born during the pandemic are developing as expected. We compared babies born during the pandemic with babies born before the pandemic on key developmental milestones at 1 year old. The vast majority of children were hitting their milestones on time and showing typical motor, social, and communication development. At 2 years old, most children born during the pandemic had normal vocabularies and appropriate language development.
Lastly, we looked at the functional brain networks of pandemic-born children. One study found no association between the development of these networks from 3 months to 4 years of age and mothers’ prenatal distress. In other words, even children exposed to high levels of prenatal anxiety and/or depression appear to have typical development in brain function across the first 3 to 4 years of life.
Some COVID babies are struggling
Although most children have developed normally, there was a small increase of 1-2% in the number of kids screening “at risk” for delay in the communication, gross motor, and personal-social domains at 1 year old. “At risk” means that the children are scoring lower than expected for their age and would benefit from further assessment to identify any developmental delays.
“Although most children have developed normally, there was a small increase of 1-2% in the number of kids screening “at risk” for delay.”
Also, 13% of the children in our study who were born during the first wave of the pandemic were classified as “late-talkers” at age 2, which is 3 percentage points higher than the rates found in typical samples of 2-year-olds. Girls were especially at risk.
These slight increases in behavioural and learning challenges are directly associated with higher prenatal stress. Mothers who experienced more COVID-19-related hardship in pregnancy were more stressed and their children, in turn, were more likely to experience negative moods and emotions. Interestingly, COVID-related hardship was also associated with more positive emotions, suggesting that prenatal maternal stress may make children more emotional in general.
Children’s outcomes appear to be influenced at least in part by changes in brain development induced by prenatal stress. For example, babies exposed to higher levels of COVID-19-related prenatal stress had weaker brain networks than babies exposed to less stress.
These Canadian results are consistent with the findings of a study of over 50,000 children in the US, which showed small increases of 2-3% in children screening at-risk, with most children doing fine.
Some children need extra support at school
The fact that most children are developing normally shows the impressive resilience of children and their families to the disruptions caused by the pandemic. This should reassure families, clinicians, educators, and society more broadly that most children are doing well. However, as a society we need to support the children who are struggling. While a 1-3% increase in challenges is small, this translates to thousands of children in Canada who may need special supports as they enter school now and in the coming years. Governments must be prepared to support these children through the education and health care systems to ensure they get the required support to succeed in their education, and ultimately in their lives.
“The fact that most children are developing normally shows the impressive resilience of children and their families.”
We will continue studying these children to identify the factors that promote resilience against disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic and the children who may need extra supports, so that we can intervene early. In our next phase of research, we will follow these pandemic-born children as they enter school, to monitor their learning development and identify any potential challenges at an early stage.
Footnotes
This article is part of a series in partnership with LEVANTE, the Learning Variability Network Exchange. LEVANTE is a global research network that is improving our understanding of variability through large scale coordinated data collection. Each article features the latest scientific thinking from one of the research sites of LEVANTE. LEVANTE is an initiative of the Jacobs Foundation.
Authors
Partner
Learning Variability Network Exchange
The Learning Variability Network Exchange (LEVANTE) seeks to understand how children grow, learn, and develop across different times, places, and contexts so that they can be supported to thrive in the multitude of experiences they will encounter throughout life. It brings together researchers from around the world to create the first cross-cultural, multidisciplinary open dataset aiming to capture the richness and diversity of child development and learning. By including data collection of common measures on these different areas longitudinally and at a global level, LEVANTE will help researchers, educators, and policy-makers understand learning and developmental variability, thus improving future outcomes for diverse groups of children worldwide.