Preschoolers- Post COVID

[ClinicalABA]

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Any of you who work with the younger kiddos (3-5yo) noticing an uptick in symptoms of things like anxiety, depression, and general MH (as opposed to developmental) concerns? I've seen a string of 3.5-4.5 year olds who, if i hadn't know there history, I would wonder why I was assessing them. They do well on measure of language and motor development, score well on cognitive measures (curiously, often with High-Average or above FSIQ), and get zeroes or near-zeros on the ADOS-2 (where 0= no symptom of ASD is present). Most tend to be doing okay in preschool and play well with peers when they have had the chance to do so. However, parents report difficulties with sleep and eating, behavioral self-control, and often some plateau or downslide in things like toilet training. Also quite a bit of compulsive behaviors (focus on arranging toys and objects at home; insistence on routines), as well as over-reaction to sensory inputs (noises; hands/face/clothes getting dirty). It's this last piece that gets them to me for an autism eval. I typically don't see any of it during the assessment session.

In the past, I may have seen at most 1-2 of these types of kiddos. I've seen 3-4 in the past few weeks, with similar reports from my co-workers at our other clinics. I'm concerned that we might be seeing some of the effects of the pandemic on these children. When they should have been at play groups, day care, play dates, etc., they were home with their families, hearing about bad things like germs and disease. They had extra time to drive their parents crazy and in turn get driven crazy by their parents (who, in their defense have not had the privacy to discuss "adult stuff" without little ears hearing, even as they were going through the chaos and uncertainty themselves. I think were are going to be uncovering some of the effects of the past few years for quite some time.

 

[R. Matey]

I can only offer a testimonial: my kiddo is around this age and had some recent struggles readjusting to preschool, but is doing much better now especially since play dates have started again in our state where restrictions have been lifted. It has caused a bit of a social split because so folks we know aren't vaccinated and we won't be around them. That was a bit tricky to explain.

 

[futureapppsy2]

Any of you who work with the younger kiddos (3-5yo) noticing an uptick in symptoms of things like anxiety, depression, and general MH (as opposed to developmental) concerns? I've seen a string of 3.5-4.5 year olds who, if i hadn't know there history, I would wonder why I was assessing them. They do well on measure of language and motor development, score well on cognitive measures (curiously, often with High-Average or above FSIQ), and get zeroes or near-zeros on the ADOS-2 (where 0= no symptom of ASD is present). Most tend to be doing okay in preschool and play well with peers when they have had the chance to do so. However, parents report difficulties with sleep and eating, behavioral self-control, and often some plateau or downslide in things like toilet training. Also quite a bit of compulsive behaviors (focus on arranging toys and objects at home; insistence on routines), as well as over-reaction to sensory inputs (noises; hands/face/clothes getting dirty). It's this last piece that gets them to me for an autism eval. I typically don't see any of it during the assessment session.

In the past, I may have seen at most 1-2 of these types of kiddos. I've seen 3-4 in the past few weeks, with similar reports from my co-workers at our other clinics. I'm concerned that we might be seeing some of the effects of the pandemic on these children. When they should have been at play groups, day care, play dates, etc., they were home with their families, hearing about bad things like germs and disease. They had extra time to drive their parents crazy and in turn get driven crazy by their parents (who, in their defense have not had the privacy to discuss "adult stuff" without little ears hearing, even as they were going through the chaos and uncertainty themselves. I think were are going to be uncovering some of the effects of the past few years for quite some time.

I'm zero percent surprised by this--play, especially play with others, is a critical, universal. and necessary part of child development (see why Sesame Street and related parent-child and child-child activities remain popular even among refugee families from war-torn areas, for example), and we have a cohort of young children who were unable to access many opportunities for play for over a year while simultaneously often experiencing things like illness/loss of family members and family economic stress. Tbh, I'd be very surprised if we *weren't* seeing a considerable uptick in EBD behaviors among this cohort. Time will tell to what degree these remediate naturally versus persist.

 

[borne_before]

This is my life at work.