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COVID 19 Impact on Children’s Social and Emotional Development

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COVID 19 Impact on Children’s Social and Emotional Development

Introduction

The full extent of the influence Covid-19 is having on people's lives is still not fully comprehensible. The pandemic has dramatically influenced people and nations alike. According to Shahriar et al. (2021), the pandemic's ravaging effects have impacted its victims' economic standing, mental status, and social lives. The pandemic has also affected children in multiple ways. Aside from orphaning some children, the pandemic has also affected the children's emotional and social development (Panda et al., 2021). The pandemic has negatively influenced play, upbringing, and social gatherings, which are essential factors in developing a child socially and emotionally (Jack, 2000). Therefore, this paper explores the pandemic's influence on children's social and emotional development and how to mitigate it.

According to Gagnon and Nagle (2004), one of the critical factors contributing significantly to a child's social and emotional development is playing. Playing is one of the things that children enjoy. However, apart from enjoying its contribution to the child's development is immense. Baines and Blatchford (2011) indicate that guardians should encourage children to play more games since apart from entertaining the children, the games also contribute to the development of social-emotional, academic, language, and cognitive skills. Therefore, they ought to buy children more toys to motivate them to participate in more games (Yang et al., 2021). Most of such games involve social interaction and constant physical touch between children.

Covid-19 is spread through social proximity with an infected person (Liu et al., (2020). Therefore, one of the first measures implemented after the pandemic became global was the social distancing rule (Surya & Yarlagadda, 2020: Okabe-Miyamoto et al., 2021). This rule requires that people always maintain a distance of a meter or more with one another. With such a rule, then playing among children became virtually impossible.

The situation was further compounded by introducing lockdowns in some states and the lack of enough information. The lockdown meant that the child movement was limited, and even playing outside had to be under strict supervision. Additionally, since people did not have sufficient information on what to do or not, most parents limited their children from playing, especially games involving other children (Moore et al., 2020). Therefore, the lack of enough playtime for the children meant their development was compromised to some extent.

The other way to ensure that a child develops well socially and emotionally is to provide a conducive nurturing environment. Benetti and Costa-Giomi (2020) state that children learn primarily by imitating their closest adults. Therefore, it is imperative to ensure a positive environment for them to grow and learn to ensure positive child development. However, the Covid-19 period has witnessed a surge in marital conflicts and divorces. According to Smith (2021), such an environment with constant quarrels and fights between couples is not conducive to a child's upbringing and negatively influences the child's social and emotional development. Therefore, since the COVID-19 period witnessed a massive surge in such negativity in families, it negatively affected the children's social and emotional development.

To ensure that a child develops as a socially and emotionally astute person, each parent should play their role in the child's upbringing. Klingberg et al. (2020) indicate that though there are some instances where children brought up by single parents develop as typical children, it weighs heavily on the parent. Therefore, to reduce the burden and ensure the child develops well emotionally and socially, each parent should take up their responsibility and work as a team to ensure proper development (Sear, 2021; Hart et al.,2020). However, the COVID-19 period instead of offering such an environment it turned into a field of conflict for most families (Carnevale & Hatak 2020). Therefore, such a hostile environment negatively affected the children's social and emotional development.

When COVID-19 started spreading rapidly, the government suspended all social gatherings. Social engagements, such as going to school, are one-way children are exposed to a favorable environment that helps develop (Darling-Hammond & Cook-Harvey, (2018); Minh et al.,2018. When children go to school, they learn from each other and teachers. However, with the pandemic, all academic institutions were closed down (Sapiets, 2020). Similarly, all social gatherings were closed, leading most children to spend more time enclosed at home (Bagdi & Vacca, 2005). Consequently, this affected the general development of children and, more specifically, their social and emotional development.

In conclusion, every parent desires to ensure that their children develop socially and emotionally. However, Covid-19 influenced the growth negatively. First, it led to introducing a social distancing rule that means that children would not play with other children since they were required to maintain social distance. Further, the lockdown was enforced, essentially confining children to their homes. Moreover, the more time people spent confined resulted in more conflicts and divorces among parents. Finally, banning all social gatherings only meant the children would only be confined only with their family's comfort, which is not enough. Therefore, Covid-19 has influenced today's children's social and emotional development to a great extent.

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