Young children in the United Kingdom are reportedly forgetting how to complete basic life skills amid the coronavirus lockdowns and restrictions.
Teachers in the UK reported that some toilet-trained students regressed back to using diapers and “others who had forgotten some basic skills they had mastered, such as eating with a knife and fork – not to mention the loss of early progress in words and numbers,” according to the report.
The Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills, known as Ofsted, published a series of reports based on 900 visits with education providers and others, according to the Associated Press.
Chief inspector Amanda Spielman said that very young children were among those most affected by lockdowns surrounding the coronavirus and “experienced the double whammy of less time with parents and less time with other children.”
England initiated a second lockdown last week but allowed schools to remain open, as they have been since September.
In the states, youth suicides shot up in Wisconsin, for example, amid lockdowns surrounding the virus.
“When people are lonely, it’s really hard to cope,” the director of Emergency Services at Journey Mental Health Center, Hannah Flanagan, said. “The specificity about COVID social distancing and isolation that we’ve come across as contributing factors to the suicides are really new to us this year.”
