COVID-19 and Our Children's Future

The ongoing pandemic and even the solutions to it are negatively impacting caregivers and kids. The impact threatens both the short-term and lifelong wellness of children. However, we know what works! Our call-to-action and the moral imperative to support children and families is more critical now than before this pandemic began. For their sake, we must not miss this opportunity.

Nadine Burke Harris, M.D., and current Surgeon General of California, is widely known for her work in building awareness and programs based on the paradigm-shifting research on Adverse Childhood Experiences (see her popular Ted Talk and her book, The Deepest Well). Here, we share an article she has authored addressing the short-term and long-term impacts of COVID-19 on child development as well as what is needed to mitigate those impacts: "Children will pay long-term stress-related costs of Covid-19 unless we follow the science." The Nurture Place is committed to being a part of the solution for families when adversity and stress threaten well-being.

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"We must act now to use the science of early childhood development to address the Covid-19-related stress in children’s and caregivers’ lives. If we don’t, the pandemic will in the short term put millions more children than before at risk for hunger, homelessness, abuse, and neglect."

The world is learning more about the uncommon but puzzling ways Covid-19 can show up in kids, keeping worried parents on the lookout for symptoms of the disease. We should also be concerned about how toxic stress brought on by the pandemic, or made worse by it, will affect children’s developing brains and bodies and their future health.