First-Grade Teacher Asks Why Parents Keep Describing Their Kids As ‘Covid Babies’ — ‘Seems Like An Excuse’
The question is, were babies old enough to have really been affected by the pandemic?
Jacob Lund | Shutterstock The Covid pandemic was a traumatic experience for all of us. People were cut off from the rest of the world and barely leaving the house in most cases. It’s certainly not a time anyone would want to relive.
It was a particularly difficult time for kids, who had to adjust to at-home school and miss milestones like graduations. Even little kids struggled as they weren’t introduced to the world in the same way they would have been otherwise. Parents are quick to cite this as the reason their kids might not be well-adjusted, but one teacher is fed up with it.
A teacher said she is tired of parents calling their kids ‘Covid babies.’
She shared her thoughts and frustration on Reddit in the r/Teachers forum. “I’m a first-grade teacher in my 18th year,” she explained. “Every year at open house, I send home a ‘parent homework’ assignment with my little welcome packet for the parents/guardians to complete. The assignment is to send me a letter or email describing their child and their strengths/weaknesses/interests, etc.”
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For this school year, she hasn’t been nearly as happy with the notes she’s received. She said, “I have had three parents so far (out of 22 students total) mention their child being a ‘Covid baby.’ The parents describe these kids as ‘attached,’ ‘timid’ or ‘socially behind.’"
She can’t help but wonder if these parents are being a tad overdramatic. “Now, I try to take their comments into account while working with their child in my classroom, but at this point, the ‘Covid baby’ thing just seems like an excuse,” she stated.
“These kids have zero recollection of Covid lockdowns or masks or sheltering in place or anything like that,” she argued. “To me, it seems like a cop out. I feel like it’s the parents projecting their own fears and hesitancy onto their kids.”
Despite this teacher’s argument that kids so young wouldn’t be affected by the pandemic, experts say otherwise.
Children’s health specialists explained that they saw a marked difference in children after the Covid pandemic. For example, Heather Huszti, the chief psychologist at Children’s Health of Orange County, observed, “We’re seeing more mental and behavioral health concerns, and it’s far more acute. Clinicians like myself who have been practicing for decades are saying they’ve never seen anything like this.”
Jill Haak Bohnenkamp, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the National Center for School Mental Health, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, noted, “We need to make sure we’re doing things to support strong teacher-student-caregiver relationships. We have not had as much of those things because of the pandemic, and they are critical pieces that build a student’s academic, social and emotional competencies.”
If this teacher was looking for support from fellow educators, she got the opposite.
The teacher who made the original post on Reddit likely thought many people would agree with her, but that wasn’t the case. Instead, most commenters took the parents’ side. As one person summarized, “The world didn’t go back to normal after Covid. These kids are growing up in a less social world regardless of if they were born in Covid or grew up during it.”
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Another argued that it didn’t really matter whether the kids could be considered “Covid babies” or not. “Either way, the key information stays the same,” they said. “The child is shy or timid or attached and the cause isn’t super important. The parents are giving you information about what they think may have caused that but you don’t have to agree to work with the child.”
And, ultimately, that may be the whole point. Whether kids were deeply affected by Covid or not, something is causing their parents to worry about them, and it’s their teacher’s job to acknowledge that and do what they can to help.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
