Children Aren’t Lab Rats

It was an oddly political and unscientific tweet for the hoary medical organization. The language was telling: It’s not that a study found there was nothing to worry about; it’s that no studies “support this concern” — the attempt at spin giving away the game. Indeed, the link included in the tweet provides no evidence for the theory that children don’t actually need to see expressions for their development, and some evidence against it.

There is plenty of evidence that children develop cognitively by studying the faces of those around them. Children start reading lips as early as 8 months old, according to studies. Speech therapists currently report an uptick in cases among children due to masking.

And there are, actually, studies that have found masking is a problem for developing children. One study, from the College of Health and Medicine at the University of Tasmania, published in October 2020 found that “a mask covering the face may affect the infant’s ability to develop facial processing and orientating to or focusing on another person’s face” and that a lack of “emotional cues via facial expression” can leave a child feeling “anxious and unsure of their environment.”

All of this seems obvious. The AAP tweet caused such a stir precisely because anyone who has ever spent time with small children knows how much they learn by watching the mouths of the people around them. Parents looked at the AAP like it had gone crazy. But it was deliberate: A PDF now scrubbed from the AAP’s website told new parents to “make time for face time” and that when babies are 6 to 8 weeks old, they smile back when they see a face, an exchange the AAP had described as “both fun and important.”

The absurd tweet was just the latest in a pattern of behavior by politicians, media, and formerly trusted institutions that have treated children as passive guinea pigs for half-baked theories and ideas for the past two years.

We used to understand that we had to protect children and their development. But more recently, and particularly since the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve been pushed to disregard everything that we have ever known about youthful development, as well as what is actually happening to the children on whom we impose compliance with these policies.

COVID-19 largely did not affect children. As of Aug. 11, 2021, there were 354 COVID deaths among people ages 0-17 in the United States over the duration of the pandemic thus far, according to the CDC. During the 2018-2019 flu season, there were 477 flu-related deaths in that age bracket.

Despite these numbers, and despite the overwhelming evidence espoused even by Dr. Anthony Fauci that children are not competent spreaders of the virus, pandemic restrictions took aim specifically at them. A recent study found that children born during the pandemic have markedly lower IQs. The study notes that the pandemic included “stay-at-home orders that closed businesses, daycares, schools, playgrounds, and limited child learning and typical activities.”

This makes sense. Children have been needlessly stripped of so much that we used to understand was important to childhood.

As we head into a third abnormal school year, some areas still may have schools that won’t open for in-person learning. Other regions will continue to mask children despite no evidence that it makes a difference in the spread of COVID-19. In much of Europe, children under 12 were not masked in school, or anywhere, ever. In many areas across the U.S., masks came off in spring 2021 for everyone except children.

New York has been particularly terrible when it comes to children. The original reopening plan released by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the spring of 2020 put “schools” in “phase 4,” alongside concerts.

At least he remembered children exist. Earlier this month, when Mayor Bill de Blasio introduced his “Key to New York City pass,” which will require proof of vaccination to enter many city attractions including indoor dining, the announcement didn’t even mention children, or the fact that those under 12 can’t get vaccinated. When Dr. Dave Chokshi, the city’s health commissioner, was asked about children following the mayor’s announcement, he had no answer.

City public school students had extremely limited in-person learning, wore masks even during outdoor recess, and had no sports at their schools. A New York State Education Department guide released earlier this month makes sports unlikely for this school year either. “High-risk sports and extracurricular activities should be virtual or canceled in areas of high community transmission unless all participants are fully vaccinated.” Wrestling, hockey, and football are all listed as risky sports.

It was once understood that organized sports were beneficial to children. In addition to fostering social and motor skills, playing sports is a way to fight obesity, one of the main comorbidity factors in poor COVID outcomes. We’re taking a demographic with low COVID risk and raising that risk for them with the restrictions meant to protect them. The well-being of the children is an afterthought.

It’s not just happening in New York. Cities across the country are taking the same measures. And it’s not just pandemic restrictions that are breaking down childhood and stripping children of the brief, idyllic time before they become adults.

We are teaching ever more complicated concepts to ever younger children, in ways that will have repercussions for years to come.

Since the George Floyd killing in late May 2020, critical race theory has exploded into our schools. Administrators wanted to “do something” to show that they care about racism, and they let woke concepts take over entire curriculums. They spent money on workshops and books by grifters pushing a racist agenda. Math is racist now.

Children as young as 5 are taught they are either oppressors or the oppressed, and kindergartners are told violent stories about police killings. What were once recognized as adult ideas are now explored by young children with no concern about the toll it will take. Studies have shown for years that exposing children to violent images can lead to stress, desensitization, and aggressive behavior. Yet, now we regularly scare young children without worrying about the fallout.

It’s not just CRT either. Schools have made terrifying children a part of the standard curriculum. Students are made to fear climate change as a matter of course, to such an extent that “eco-anxiety” among children is a rising phenomenon. In September 2019, Greta Thunberg was a media darling, and her words were taught in schools around the country. Thunberg had stopped going to school in Sweden and had dedicated her life to the cause of fighting climate change. Educators pushed the idea that Americans should join her in that fight and held a “climate strike” in which students walked out of class in protest of the changing climate. With signs like “If Earth dies, we die” (the sign my then-6-year-old son made in school), it’s not hard to understand where that “eco-anxiety” would come from.

A parent’s role involves shielding his or her children from the scary and inappropriate, but that’s increasingly hard to do when so much is being done to them outside a parent’s view. What we’re facing is more than an end to childhood; it’s an end to parents’ control over not only what their children learn but also how they move through the world. The most dedicated parents couldn’t force their children’s schools to open or to have them stop wearing pointless face coverings. They can have them opt out of a climate strike, but it’s much harder to opt them out of a science curriculum designed to terrify them or a discussion of innate racial biases before a child can define any of those words.

The benefit of the “new normal” is that parents are far more aware of what is happening with their children and can start to fight back. It’s not an easy call, to speak up at school board meetings or challenge what we know to be backward guidance, whether from government or institutions. But now it’s clear that if parents aren’t preserving childhood for them, no one will.

Karol Markowicz is a New York Post columnist and a Washington Examiner contributing writer.