SCHOOLS have been closed in England for about two months amid a national lockdown, and I have lost count of the number of times my daughter has cried. She is normally cheerful, but throughout this time, she has dissolved into tears most days. She misses her friends and finds Zoom lessons stressful.
In England, schools will reopen next week, but that isn’t the case everywhere: in some US states, such as California, schools have been closed for almost a full year. At the start of this pandemic, many parents had a sense of solidarity, even adventure. Now many of us are grumpy and tired, and feel close to burnout. What effect has all this had on our kids?
Advertisement
“We need to consider children in all of this, and we’re just not,” says at the University of Cambridge.
and Northern Ireland in the latest UK lockdown on 5 January, with schools in England closing after many children had gone back for one day. has since announced that schools in England will reopen for all pupils on 8 March. The rest of the UK will have a staggered return to school, depending on age. But schools in some US states look set to remain closed for the foreseeable future and they are currently in 26 countries. So far, there is little data on how the closures are affecting children. But there is a lot of information about the impact the first lockdown had.
On 11 January, Ford and her colleagues published , who have been as part of . They assessed the children on their emotions, behaviour and relationships, and used that to estimate how many would be classed as having a mental health problem if they were seen by a clinician.
“Some kids in the US have to go sit in a parking lot in a big supermarket to get Wi-Fi for homeschooling”
The researchers found that the incidence of probable mental health problems rose from 10.8 per cent in 2017 to 16 per cent in July 2020. Many children experienced disrupted sleep and loneliness in July, and they were more likely to have a problem if a parent was in psychological distress.
These impacts don’t fall equally on everyone, says Ford. “Young women look like they’re doing particularly badly, as do children in poverty.”
There are clear inequalities, says , who has been tracking families month by month throughout the coronavirus pandemic in her . “We consistently see elevated levels of mental health difficulties among young people living in low-income families, as well as among children with special educational needs.”
No safety net
The in nations with limited social safety nets, says at Oregon State University. In her state, she knows of “kids who have to go sit in a parking lot in a big supermarket in order to get Wi-Fi in order to get homeschooled”.
There is also evidence that the impacts vary by age. For instance, children in the UK of primary school age, typically between 5 and 10 years old, seem to have experienced more loneliness than teenagers during lockdown, perhaps because fewer have their own phones or social media accounts. But among teenagers, there is evidence that the oldest ones have had it worse.
A study called OxWell, co-led by at the University of Oxford, surveyed 19,000 children and young people in England aged from 8 to 18. and lower life satisfaction, among the oldest teenagers.
Our understanding of the situation of schoolchildren and teenagers is incomplete, says Ford. But for preschool children, it is almost non-existent – even though because they are missing out on the transition into school and are too young to understand why.
What we do know is troubling. In May 2020, Co-SPYCE, a sister study to Co-SPACE, reported that said they couldn’t balance work and their children’s needs. Their biggest worry was that their kids were missing out on socialising.
Lockdown habits
In the middle of 2020, at the University of Bristol in the UK and her team with 3 to 5-year-old children due to start school in September. During the first lockdown in March, many of the children were reported to be snacking more, being less physically active, spending more time on screens and having difficulty getting to sleep – at a time when they are forming their habits.
“They lost a huge amount of their early years education,” says Langford. Now they have been taken out of school just months after starting. “They’ve had the double whammy, because they have been particularly affected by both of those lockdowns.” Children who are turning 4 have lived a quarter of their lives in the pandemic.
There is evidence that the easing of the first UK lockdown helped children. Creswell and her colleagues found that during the lockdown, but , emotion and attention began decreasing in July, when restrictions were easing. “Things did improve,” she says.
Now, however, the UK is locked down again. Anecdotally, it feels worse this time.
The new lockdown may have been particularly upsetting because it came after vaccinations began, says Creswell. “Before Christmas, everyone was excited that we were nearly at the end, and then everything’s gone backwards a bit, so those things have had an impact on people and increased the uncertainty.”
It will be some time before we know whether factors like these have influenced children’s reactions. But there is evidence that . On 13 January, an online survey by Ipsos MORI revealed that from day to day. The UK Office for National Statistics regularly surveys , and for – people’s anxiety levels were the worst since April 2020.
Similarly, Creswell’s team says that . Those with children under 10 reported more stress, particularly related to their kids’ behaviour. Those with older children reported more depression.
This is critical because children’s mental health is impacted by that of the adults they live with. “There is a known link between parental mental health and challenging behaviour – particularly in young boys, but also in young girls – and a strong link between parental mental health and child mental health,” says Ford.
For children who are anxious, in which parents can access a specially designed website and get weekly telephone sessions with a therapist. She and her team have also developed , which they are gearing up to test.
Children’s mental health was declining in the UK even before the pandemic. In 2017, Ford revealed that between 1995 and 2014. “That was almost entirely explained by an increase in anxiety and depression disorders that seemed to be particularly marked in teenagers,” says Ford.
“Our children were not doing well before the pandemic,” says Ford, “and the pandemic is almost certainly not going to help for the vast majority of them.”
This may be why a significant proportion of UK teenagers report that lockdown improved their lives. during it.
It isn’t just the UK where children’s mental health has been declining for years. In the US, between 2007 and 2016, for mental health conditions rose 60 per cent. A 2019 study estimated that has a mental health condition such as depression.
Need a listening ear? UK Samaritans: 116123 (). Visit for hotlines and websites for other countries
Parental Guidance newsletter
Our evidence-based guide to pandemic parenting
newscientist.com/sign-up/parental-guidance
