Under this COVID-19 epidemic, young children are at risk of delay in social development.
Wearing masks make social interaction more difficult
First, when you can only see less than half of the face, reading emotions become harder. Understanding emotion is not an easy task for kids. For adults, we could still guess other emotions by what they say, how they say it, and what the situation is like. For children, the facial expression is the most straightforward way for them to read emotion.
Second, when children are learning how to express your emotion, they learn by imitation. It is important for children to observe how different people express their emotion differently. Now, children likely have only a few restricted role-models, that is, their parents and siblings only.
Third, children are learning how to speak. Not seeing the mouth and not hearing clearly make learning how to speak more difficult too.
Social distancing make social interaction more difficult
Obvious right? We, adults, can “interact” using various online platforms. But not kids. Maybe we can set up the online platform for kids, but it is not advisable to let children using…
