What are the restrictions imposed by the pandemic actually doing to the youngest children? In this interview, special needs teacher Tanja Jungmann talks about orientation in everyday life, growing gaps in knowledge - and protective factors that can arm children for the crisis.
Friends and grandparents at a distance, lessons often still outside the classroom - what is the current situation doing to children?
Many children are confused by the fact that the closure of schools and daycare centres, for example, has removed a lot of things that used to structure their everyday lives and has also led to a certain lack of orientation. We adults also feel insecure. And although the threat of a pandemic may not reach children in detail, they do realise that their parents are worried. This can exacerbate their disorientation. How drastic something like this is depends on how well the children and their parents manage to maintain a daily structure together. Children really need routines. Emotionally, it can also help if you pass on the information they know in an age-appropriate way and also openly name the uncertainties.
What factors do the effects on children depend on?
For example, the exact constellation in which the family is currently trying to cope with everyday life. If both parents are now working from home, everyone is naturally more or less in a confined space and everyone has to concentrate as much as possible on their work or schoolwork. It doesn't have to be an advantage that both partners are there; the cramped conditions can also lead to more conflict. I hear different things from families, from "We've never got on as well as we do at the moment" to "This is absolute horror, we're fighting every day - even as a couple". Single parents, on the other hand, face completely different challenges. Where things escalate, children experience an increase in domestic violence. And of course, relative isolation also increases the risk of mental illness - for parents and children alike.
Are there personal factors that arm our children for these times, at least to a certain extent?
Personal factors play a major role. One protective factor for children is certainly being able to organise themselves well and concentrate. For children who have concentration problems, are easily distracted and have low intrinsic motivation, the restrictions caused by the pandemic are dramatic. Huge gaps in their knowledge have opened up in a relatively short space of time.
And what about the children's emotional and social development?
Contact with other children is immensely important for emotional and social development. Social behaviour can only be learned through contact with others. Social isolation means that children who already have problems in this area are less likely to get into social conflicts with their peers. We therefore naturally have fewer problems with violence in school playgrounds or bullying at school in these times. But the potential for aggression remains, and children are more likely to act it out at home. And internalised difficulties such as anxiety disorders or a tendency towards depression are likely to intensify in such a crisis situation. Basically, it can be said that the shorter the restrictions last, the less impact they will have on the social-emotional and cognitive development of children.
You mentioned protective factors that strengthen children for such a time of crisis. Can you elaborate on this?
An intact social network, a good parent-child bond, functioning bonds and relationships in general can stabilise children. These things promote development and are a protective factor during these times. This can also be the relationship with the teacher - simply good structures that support the children, whether at school or in other areas of life.
And what about risk factors?
Children who lack social skills and pro-social behaviour, who exhibit psychological problems and who do not grow up in a home that can reflect and absorb the current situation are certainly at a much greater risk of being set back. Even after the annual six-week summer holidays, teachers regularly report that previous progress made by pupils with emotional-social problems has completely evaporated. Although social contact is still possible during the holidays, this is now largely a thing of the past. If you see psychosocial development as a scale whose scales should be in balance, it is currently becoming unbalanced more quickly: if the children's social resources on the one hand cannot compensate for the stresses on the other.
To what extent can the all-important social contacts be maintained via the screen?
At least you can chat, at least you can see each other. Parents should certainly keep an eye on their children's screen time - and this also applies to teenagers. What communication via the screen cannot replace, however, is our need for physical closeness. That's why it's important for children to be hugged by their parents, to have the physical contact that they can't have with other children at the moment. As nice and helpful as digitalisation is, what children are missing is some form of physical interaction with each other, whether it's playing football in the school playground or roughhousing. All of this is important for motor skills, but also for social and emotional development. Testing and getting to know your own limits and those of others, finding out when you actually have to stop, that's not possible. It is possible that the current restrictions will lead many people - including young people who have been using their smartphones a lot since before coronavirus - to value the opportunity to see each other in person more again.
Apart from children with social problems, for example, who else should we keep a close eye on among the youngest members of our society?
Wearing masks in many public places is of course a massive problem for children who are still developing their language, and especially for those with language difficulties and hearing impairments. After all, 30 per cent of words are read from the mouth, non-verbal information helps with speech comprehension - and for these children this determines to a large extent whether they can communicate in everyday life or not. When it comes to hearing and pronunciation disorders, including in speech therapy, special masks are needed in which the mouth remains visible. Basically, children with special educational needs of any kind have not yet been systematically considered. There are position papers from associations, but the general public is not aware of this. So there is still a lot of catching up to do.
Interview: Deike Stolz
