Are the reported rise in speech-delays due to masked daycare caregivers making you rethink daycare?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Sorry, the children most at risk from covid are ages 0-4. I would take a minor speech delay over this any day.

My child had a speech delay 15 years ago. He didn't speak till he was 2.5. Not only did he "survive," he thrived. He is on the debate team and Model UN now.

People acting like speech delays are worse than illness remind me of the folks who don't vaccinate because they are afraid of autism. Nonsensical and offensive.

2.5 years old isn't even that late for talking. My 4 year old barely talks.

And yes, I absolutely think the risk of various developmental delays tied to COVID restrictions is worse for young kids than COVID itself. Not the least because those restrictions aren't even going to be effective in preventing infections- they're just slowing down how quickly they occur. Regardless, the severity of COVID cases in kids is roughly the same as the severity of the flu in kids. Yet the policies act like it is much, much worse.

How is it tied to covid? Are you getting speech therapy? Do you realize that many of us had kids who didn't talk till after four before covid?

It’s also been documented that children’s IQ has dropped since covid.

Cite?

Google "covid baby IQ" then look up Emily Oster's blog post on why you shouldn't take that study very seriously

[Anonymous]

Now she's pivoting to fearmongering. Masks will make your kids stupid!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Now she's pivoting to fearmongering. Masks will make your kids stupid!

So the IQ study is questionable, but there are a lot of valid reasons why masks might be harmful to kids that are very difficult to study, and we will probably never have answers on. It's not fearmongering to say that children learn about emotions from looking at people's faces, and if they can't do that, they might not learn as well. It's not fearmongering to state that one of the strategies for treating speech delays is to point to your mouth while overarticulating to help the child understand how to say words, which is more difficult even with a clear mask. At the same time, over the past two years there has been zero effort to understand exactly how helpful masks on young children are in a child care setting when the children take the masks off half the day despite there being clear reasons why masking young children might be harmful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Now she's pivoting to fearmongering. Masks will make your kids stupid!

So the IQ study is questionable, but there are a lot of valid reasons why masks might be harmful to kids that are very difficult to study, and we will probably never have answers on. It's not fearmongering to say that children learn about emotions from looking at people's faces, and if they can't do that, they might not learn as well. It's not fearmongering to state that one of the strategies for treating speech delays is to point to your mouth while overarticulating to help the child understand how to say words, which is more difficult even with a clear mask. At the same time, over the past two years there has been zero effort to understand exactly how helpful masks on young children are in a child care setting when the children take the masks off half the day despite there being clear reasons why masking young children might be harmful.

You're doing it again, Melanie. "So the study I linked is bogus. But it's not fearmongering to say that you're doing your children irreparable harm by not forcing the women who are paid minimum wage to expose themselves to the COVID you gave your child from your last CrossFit class. And it's not fearmongering to say that I never said the caregivers had to take off THEIR masks, I only said that the children would be irreparably harmed if the people caring for them didn't show their faces! I'm really just advocating for children not to wear masks. That's not fear mongering, I just don't want your children to have low iqs. For lots of reasons!"

Considering your education, I'd expect you to be better at this.

[Anonymous]

There have also been plenty of studies that show how much kids spread and carry covid, mostly driven by the debunked myth that they did not that was disseminated early in the outbreak by people like you, remember? When you were on the "it's no worse than the flu" kick?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Now she's pivoting to fearmongering. Masks will make your kids stupid!

So the IQ study is questionable, but there are a lot of valid reasons why masks might be harmful to kids that are very difficult to study, and we will probably never have answers on. It's not fearmongering to say that children learn about emotions from looking at people's faces, and if they can't do that, they might not learn as well. It's not fearmongering to state that one of the strategies for treating speech delays is to point to your mouth while overarticulating to help the child understand how to say words, which is more difficult even with a clear mask. At the same time, over the past two years there has been zero effort to understand exactly how helpful masks on young children are in a child care setting when the children take the masks off half the day despite there being clear reasons why masking young children might be harmful.

You're doing it again, Melanie. "So the study I linked is bogus. But it's not fearmongering to say that you're doing your children irreparable harm by not forcing the women who are paid minimum wage to expose themselves to the COVID you gave your child from your last CrossFit class. And it's not fearmongering to say that I never said the caregivers had to take off THEIR masks, I only said that the children would be irreparably harmed if the people caring for them didn't show their faces! I'm really just advocating for children not to wear masks. That's not fear mongering, I just don't want your children to have low iqs. For lots of reasons!"

Considering your education, I'd expect you to be better at this.

Who is Melanie? Is that the person posting all the advocacy toolkits that call for people to ask policymakers to make masking of CHILDREN optional? Good for her. You sound unhinged.

All you've shown is you have no actual rebuttal to the things I said above. You're embarrassing yourself. Shame on you for dismissing valid concerns about the impact of the pandemic on early

[Anonymous]

Also, I did not link the study about IQ, nobody actually linked it. I told your lazy ass to google it yourself as well as a blog post debunking it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Now she's pivoting to fearmongering. Masks will make your kids stupid!

So the IQ study is questionable, but there are a lot of valid reasons why masks might be harmful to kids that are very difficult to study, and we will probably never have answers on. It's not fearmongering to say that children learn about emotions from looking at people's faces, and if they can't do that, they might not learn as well. It's not fearmongering to state that one of the strategies for treating speech delays is to point to your mouth while overarticulating to help the child understand how to say words, which is more difficult even with a clear mask. At the same time, over the past two years there has been zero effort to understand exactly how helpful masks on young children are in a child care setting when the children take the masks off half the day despite there being clear reasons why masking young children might be harmful.

Whether or not it's not fearmongering to say the bolded, it's a terrible practice, it's harmful. Kids learn to talk by talking. When we stop and correct articulation, outside of speech therapy, we discourage talking, they talk less and their skills grow more slowly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Now she's pivoting to fearmongering. Masks will make your kids stupid!

So the IQ study is questionable, but there are a lot of valid reasons why masks might be harmful to kids that are very difficult to study, and we will probably never have answers on. It's not fearmongering to say that children learn about emotions from looking at people's faces, and if they can't do that, they might not learn as well. It's not fearmongering to state that one of the strategies for treating speech delays is to point to your mouth while overarticulating to help the child understand how to say words, which is more difficult even with a clear mask. At the same time, over the past two years there has been zero effort to understand exactly how helpful masks on young children are in a child care setting when the children take the masks off half the day despite there being clear reasons why masking young children might be harmful.

Whether or not it's not fearmongering to say the bolded, it's a terrible practice, it's harmful. Kids learn to talk by talking. When we stop and correct articulation, outside of speech therapy, we discourage talking, they talk less and their skills grow more slowly.

I never said anyone was correcting articulation, JFC. At least what our SLP recommended was as a way of showing a young, non-verbal or barely verbal, toddler (18 months) how to say words. But I'll give her a call and tell her to stop recommending this since an anonymous person online decided it is bad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Now she's pivoting to fearmongering. Masks will make your kids stupid!

So the IQ study is questionable, but there are a lot of valid reasons why masks might be harmful to kids that are very difficult to study, and we will probably never have answers on. It's not fearmongering to say that children learn about emotions from looking at people's faces, and if they can't do that, they might not learn as well. It's not fearmongering to state that one of the strategies for treating speech delays is to point to your mouth while overarticulating to help the child understand how to say words, which is more difficult even with a clear mask. At the same time, over the past two years there has been zero effort to understand exactly how helpful masks on young children are in a child care setting when the children take the masks off half the day despite there being clear reasons why masking young children might be harmful.

Whether or not it's not fearmongering to say the bolded, it's a terrible practice, it's harmful. Kids learn to talk by talking. When we stop and correct articulation, outside of speech therapy, we discourage talking, they talk less and their skills grow more slowly.

I never said anyone was correcting articulation, JFC. At least what our SLP recommended was as a way of showing a young, non-verbal or barely verbal, toddler (18 months) how to say words. But I'll give her a call and tell her to stop recommending this since an anonymous person online decided it is bad.

DP. Stop engaging these people. They obviously don’t have speech delayed kids nor have they ever done speech therapy with kids. They are weirdly getting off on requiring 2 year olds to mask. It’s sad, but not worth engaging.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just don’t understand why people are jumping to dismiss this possibility. You are masking two year olds without any clear data that it is reducing cases in daycares, so why are you so quick to dismiss other concerns without concrete data.

It makes me really sad that if you even raise the topic of masking two year olds, you’re jumped all over as a dramatic, terrible parent. Parents seeking assistance for speech- delayed toddlers has risen during the pandemic. That is a fact. Jury is still out on what is causing it (masks, isolation, attachment parenting, whatever). Why are you dismissing masks in daycare as one possible cause for some children? Because it’s easy to dismiss these kids when its not you kid?

Parents may just have more time to deal with it. I know many families that just ignored it to hope their kids caught up. Others even delayed school a year vs getting them help.

School and daycare closures make this more possible.

I think anyone faced with this decision needs to factor in that if you're not sending your child to daycare and you're not socializing in person much, is your child only interacting with their parents or nanny? That's not normal. A daycare with masked caregivers is probably better than no socialization at all. If the nanny can do playgroups that's different.

It's actually pretty normal. Playgrounds are a recent phenomenon.

The amount of spam this Melanie person has been doing on different listerves is raising a lot of alarm bells for me. There's a petition she's circulating to *demand* that various jurisdictions take away the rights of daycare workers to be masked at work. Obviously, such a demand is completely unenforceable as well as being absurd... But it's the scope of her extremism that makes me suspect there's no Melanie behind this at all. Just another bot argument, meant to sow division.

I don't know, I think there is a real need for advocacy on behalf of daycare/preschool parents, and I appreciate the effort. I completely disagree with changing masking requirements for caregivers - those should be at the discretion of the individual or the daycare center, if not required by public health agencies. But making masks on the under 5 crowd optional (maybe after this surge dies down) seems like something of a no-brainer. using Test to Stay also seems sensible.

Who is advocating for changing mask requirements for caregivers? All I see is stuff about making masks optional for kids.

The PP before me accuses the petition of doing so. It does not. It does talk about "developmental harms", and this thread here is about harms from masked caregivers. There is arguably (but really no data either way!) more harm from masked caregivers, but it is unreasonable to argue for them to be unmasked at this stage of things (unless they and public health wants them to be).

Anyway, just trying to say I'm happy there are people like melanie advocating for daycare kids. I'm more interested in test to stay, with off ramps for masks after omicron wave, but really, just want public health to be thinking about the <5s.

"There is arguably more harm from masked caregivers...."

What the petition does is open a door, I think quite deliberately, to an anti-mask mandate. Rather cold-bloodedly, children are just the excuse. It reminds me a lot of the reopening people last year, who also used the spectre of their kids and their speech delays to advocate for complete school reopening. (Funny, how it's the same argument, isn't it?)

You'll notice that every time, in every thread (and Melanie has been busy, there are a lot of them) that this issue of kids and their speech delays are raised, she says things like, "I'm not saying caregivers shouldn't be masked although of course the research..." or, "if you wanted to make that argument that would be your choice, and it is true that.... " Within such circular arguments, she dances like the cleverly trained seal she is.

Is it terrible for kids in daycare, this COVID? Yes. Also terrible for their caregivers who don't have health insurance, are often mothers themselves, or who live in multigenerational families. It wasn't great for these working families who send their kids to daycare before covid, either. Nothing like working a nine hour day, spending a mortgage payment on daycare, and never seeing your kid. I mean, literally, in most of the world, there is nothing like it... although I've known a lot of nannies from Nepal and the Philippines whose kids are still back there who do have it worse.

But this isn't a contest.

I wouldn't be involved but the sheer amount of spam I've seen about this "petition" in the last week has alarmed me and my kids are past the daycare age, so I'm not sure why I'm seeing it at all... Except it's everywhere. And not in a grassroots wag, although that's the obvious intent.

I think that is a pretty ridiculous leap, a slippery slope logical fallacy. The request is to have the CDC/US masking guidelines be more in line with those from the WHO and other countries. This isn't wild.

No one is going to request caregives be prohibited (or even ALLOWED NOT TO, isn't it still mandated?) wear a mask in a licensed daycare setting. If a parent thinks it is absolutely critical that their kid sees mouths all day, they need to pay for childcare (nanny, or other arrangement) that is offering that.

I don't recall people citing speech delays as reasons for schools needing to be opened. But the open schools parents were right - school is essential for many many reasons. I think this is clear now. Especially once vaccines were available to teachers/staff, there was really no debate.

[Anonymous]

Yes. For now anyway. I want my baby to see her caregiver smiling at her and words formed when she talks to her. We found a lovely nanny who lives alone and is very covid-cautious and will keep her for the foreseeable future. We’ll replenish our savings and buy a house a few years later than we’d hoped but it’s okay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

"There is arguably more harm from masked caregivers...."

What the petition does is open a door, I think quite deliberately, to an anti-mask mandate. Rather cold-bloodedly, children are just the excuse. It reminds me a lot of the reopening people last year, who also used the spectre of their kids and their speech delays to advocate for complete school reopening. (Funny, how it's the same argument, isn't it?)

You'll notice that every time, in every thread (and Melanie has been busy, there are a lot of them) that this issue of kids and their speech delays are raised, she says things like, "I'm not saying caregivers shouldn't be masked although of course the research..." or, "if you wanted to make that argument that would be your choice, and it is true that.... " Within such circular arguments, she dances like the cleverly trained seal she is.

Is it terrible for kids in daycare, this COVID? Yes. Also terrible for their caregivers who don't have health insurance, are often mothers themselves, or who live in multigenerational families. It wasn't great for these working families who send their kids to daycare before covid, either. Nothing like working a nine hour day, spending a mortgage payment on daycare, and never seeing your kid. I mean, literally, in most of the world, there is nothing like it... although I've known a lot of nannies from Nepal and the Philippines whose kids are still back there who do have it worse.

But this isn't a contest.

I wouldn't be involved but the sheer amount of spam I've seen about this "petition" in the last week has alarmed me and my kids are past the daycare age, so I'm not sure why I'm seeing it at all... Except it's everywhere. And not in a grassroots wag, although that's the obvious intent.

I think that is a pretty ridiculous leap, a slippery slope logical fallacy. The request is to have the CDC/US masking guidelines be more in line with those from the WHO and other countries. This isn't wild.

No one is going to request caregives be prohibited (or even ALLOWED NOT TO, isn't it still mandated?) wear a mask in a licensed daycare setting. If a parent thinks it is absolutely critical that their kid sees mouths all day, they need to pay for childcare (nanny, or other arrangement) that is offering that.

I don't recall people citing speech delays as reasons for schools needing to be opened. But the open schools parents were right - school is essential for many many reasons. I think this is clear now. Especially once vaccines were available to teachers/staff, there was really no debate.

Amen, that PP is bonkers

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes. For now anyway. I want my baby to see her caregiver smiling at her and words formed when she talks to her. We found a lovely nanny who lives alone and is very covid-cautious and will keep her for the foreseeable future. We’ll replenish our savings and buy a house a few years later than we’d hoped but it’s okay.

You are wise parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes. For now anyway. I want my baby to see her caregiver smiling at her and words formed when she talks to her. We found a lovely nanny who lives alone and is very covid-cautious and will keep her for the foreseeable future. We’ll replenish our savings and buy a house a few years later than we’d hoped but it’s okay.

You are wise parents.

Melanie will now remind us all that it's important for caregivers not to wear masks right after she insisted that's not what she's saying.

I expect she's supposed to be working, but maybe her subcommittee appointment isn't very taxing.