Collaborative ECHO research led by Sara Nozadi, PhD and Johnnye Lewis, PhD of the University of New Mexico, investigates whether the negative developmental effects observed in school-aged children over the course of the pandemic could also be seen in infants and toddlers. In this study, up to 15% of infants and toddlers who were developmentally on track prior to the COVID-19 pandemic showed signs of developmental delays during the pandemic. Male children showed more delays than female children, and language domain was the most affected developmental area. Additionally, families from minority communities and those with lower socioeconomic status were more likely to experience pandemic-related hardships. However, financial and social pandemic-related hardships were not associated with the individual changes observed in children’s developmental progress. This research, titled “Effects of COVID-19 financial and social hardships on infants’ and toddlers’ development in the ECHO program,” is published in International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
This study included 684 children between the ages of 2 months and 4 years from eight ECHO cohort research sites across the United States. During this study, the researchers included children whose parents had filled out the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ), which uses parent-reported information to pinpoint a child’s developmental progress, within the 18-month periods before and after March 2020. Parents of participating children were also asked about financial hardship, defined as at least one parent experiencing job loss or change, or social hardships, defined as families’ quarantining from household members or extended family and friends, during the pandemic.
“This study highlights the importance of early developmental screening during times of adversity, such as pandemics, in order to identify delays and connect children to supportive services,” said Dr. Nozadi. “Previous studies have shown negative impacts of the pandemic on overall child development but have not looked at the effects of the pandemic on individual children’s development over time.”
In the future, we can follow the developmental progress of these children over time to determine whether COVID-19 hardships had an effect on children’s development over a longer period of time. Studies may also focus on pandemic-related stressors that could particularly effect infants and toddlers, such as family dynamics, parent-child interactions, and parental stress.