Academic, social impacts of the pandemic on children may be felt for decades, Hamilton doctor says – CBC

Parent whose family is in Egypt says main social interactions for her daughter ‘are in school’

Jan 20, 2022

The return of in-person learning in Ontario this week is bringing some sense of relief to Yara Soliman and other parents.

Soliman said her six-year-old daughter Khadija, a senior kindergarten student in Hamilton, has struggled with remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Last year was her first year in school and, of course, with lots of shifting between online learning and in-person … it was very hard for her, especially by the end of the year, she [started] to experience anger management issues.”

Soliman said her daughter’s mental health worsened toward the end of the school year. It got better when she started interacting with other kids again, but even that was a difficult transition.

“She was quiet at first … and that was not her. Before, she would always engage, she would go up to anyone, but [during lockdown] she spent two or three months without interacting with anybody else.”

Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/children-mental-health-during-pandemic-1.6320568