Babies born during the Covid-19 pandemic met fewer communication milestones in their first year of live, according to new research.
But the news isn’t all bad, with the study revealing that ‘pandemic babies’ reached other milestones earlier.
The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) study looked at ten developmental outcomes for 309 ‘pandemic babies’ at 12 months of age. These babies were know as the CORAL group. All of these babies were born during the first three months of pandemic in Ireland.
Parents reported their baby’s developmental outcomes, including:
- crawling
- side step along furniture
- stand alone
- pick up tiny objects with thumb and index finger (pincer grip)
- stack bricks; finger feed
- know their own name
- express one definite and meaningful word
- point at objects
- wave ‘bye-bye’
These outcomes were compared a year after the babies’ births, with those of 1629 infants who were born before the pandemic, between 2008 and 2011 in Ireland. This group was known as the BASELINE group.
They found that the ‘pandemic’ babies:
- were born slightly earlier
- more were able to crawl by 12 months (97.5% vs 91%)
- fewer expressed one definite and meaningful word (77% vs just over 89%)
- fewer could point (84% vs 93%)
- fewer could wave bye bye (88% vs 94.5%)
“Our research showed that CORAL babies were more likely to be crawling at the age of 12 months than their BASELINE counterparts, which might be because they were more likely to have spent more time at home and on the ground, with siblings home from school and parents working from home or isolating, rather than out of the home in cars and strollers,” Head of the Department of Paediatrics at RCSI, Professor Hourihane, said.
“However, lockdown measures may have impacted the scope of language heard and sight of unmasked faces speaking to them, while also curtailing opportunities to encounter new items of interest which might prompt pointing, and the frequency of social contacts to enable them to learn to wave. However, due to the observational nature of this study, more research is required to determine cause and effect.”
The researchers say that social isolation during the pandemic appears to have impacted more on babies’ social communication skills, rather than motor skills. However, there’s further research being undertaken.
“Due to the pandemic there were limitations to this study including comparison to an historic cohort. We are currently analysing results from year 2 standardised developmental assessments in the CORAL cohort of children and this will give us a better assessment of communication in this group of children,” said Dr Susan Byrne, RCSI Department of Paediatrics and FutureNeuro, SFI Research Centre for Chronic and Rare Neurological Diseases, and lead author on the paper.
“Babies are resilient and inquisitive by nature, and it is very likely that with societal re-emergence and increase in social circles that their social communication skills will improve. However, this cohort and the global population of pandemic babies it represents will need to be followed up to school age to ensure that this is the case.”
Did you have a baby during the pandemic? Did you think their social communication was impacted? Let us know in the comments below.
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mom93821 replied
- 19 Jul 2023 , 6:47 am
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Ellen replied
- 19 Jul 2023 , 7:46 am
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