What is virtual learning doing to Canadian kids?

Jordan At this point, there’s not much new to say about whether or not children across the country should be in class classrooms in person or not. By now, to borrow an overused phrase, it is what it is. Every school aged child in this country has missed some in-person learning time over the past two years,some more than others. Some kids, for various reasons, have missed a lot.Rather than debate why, what we can discuss is what that missed school is doing to them. What we’re learning about children and resiliency, and adaptation in a gigantic experiment, that we’d rather not be doing. And we can discuss what we do know about how to help these kids, when they need virtual school, when it’s okay to give up and turn off the screen, and what they might need instead.Because one day as impossible as it seems, this will all be over and it will be the kids who have lived a significant portion of their entire lives in the middle of this pandemic who will need our help.

Jordan I’m Jordan Heathrowlings.This is the big story. Dr. Rebecca Pillai Riddell is a clinical development psychologist and professor at York University. Hello, Dr. Pillai Riddell.

Dr Rebbeca Pillai Riddell Hi.

Jordan Thank you so much for being here. As I mentioned to you before the show, I’m squeezing this in between sessions of virtual kindergarten. Yes, that’s where we are right now.

Dr Rebbeca Pillai Riddell Yes, that’s where we are back again.

Jordan Well, let’s maybe start back at the very beginning of all this because we’re definitely going to get to the long term impacts that multiple closures have had on children of all ages. But maybe when schools first closed way back in March 2020, we had to do that. It was chaos. We didn’t understand what we were working with. Even then though, what were you thinking about the impact of that on children?

Dr Rebbeca Pillai Riddell I think that we didn’t know a lot. Then I had a bit of a heads up that we were heading in that direction, just working in the University sector. I think it was kind of plunging into the unknown, a black void, to be honest. Even before the provincial government kind of announced that they were going to be shutting down, I told my kids, I sent them with garbage bags earlier in the week and said,start bringing things home. Because I think that after March break, it’s going to be a while. And I said to them, I think your teachers may say, what are you doing? And I just want you to bring everything home.And true to form, my kids didn’t go back to in person learning, actually for 18 months.

Jordan Wow.

Dr Rebbeca Pillai Riddell So I think our experience, because we had high risk people in our household, and a grandparent with COPD, it really changed our perspective of the pandemic right from the get go.

Jordan And there have been closures of differing lengths of time. And to your point, some parents who simply haven’t been able to send their kids back to school because of the risks. And I guess my question is, do we have any guidance, in terms of how long something like that needs to last before we start talking about what we’re going to talk about in a minute,which is the long term impacts to children’s development.

Dr Rebbeca Pillai Riddell We know that children do best when they’re socializing and learning and engaged. And so I think that’s the key piece is the socializing and the learning. There’s social emotional pieces, and then there’s academic pieces, and so I think that the amount of time depends on the child, the stage.You know you were talking about having younger children.A full virtual day for a four year old is not the same as a virtual day for a 14 year old, which is the oldest in my house. And so I think that there are a lot of factors in there. But I think that everybody agrees. A lot of the children’s hospitals have come together and issued statements that in person learning is what we want to strive towards and to fight for.

Dr Rebbeca Pillai Riddell But we can’t just let kids in school. There has to be resources and infrastructure to protect the teachers and to protect the children and to protect society as a whole from the spread of the pandemic. And so, it’s hard to give a time limit as to what’s an okay amount of time, because for some it could be a week. And for some, there are some children who are enjoying actually being in lockdown, being able to work from home. So it just really depends on the child. But by and large, in person is the best way to go.

Jordan One of the reasons we reached out to you in particular is because,I’ve seen you discuss in a couple of places the impact of delays in socialization for children. And I guess here probably particularly young kids who are still learning that socialization aspect, but I guess any children, first of all, maybe what is that that you’re talking about? And how does it manifest?

Dr Rebbeca Pillai Riddell Sure. So when we talk about developmental milestones, I think every parent runs to the pediatrician and tries to figure out, you know how is my child growing? How is my child? But there are other what we call kind of social emotional milestones,and cognitive milestones, which means basically how the children think, how they feel and how they get along. We set up our ability to think, to feel to get along in the first five years of life. They’re considered very critical. And I’ve kind of said in different forums that you know as an attachment researcher myself, who focuses on the early years, you really know that in the first year of life, the most important thing to teach your child isn’t getting them on Baby Mozart, you know or getting them learning their alphabet or trying to speak. It’s really about the connection so that they feel securely attached to parents, and to a family network so that they can grow and build on that foundation.

Dr Rebbeca Pillai Riddell It’s kind of an interesting thing is that with the younger kids, when I’m thinking about babies, having parents around in these situations are naturally construed from the pandemic where you have parents at home with their kids all day, it’s actually a bit optimal for the child anyway, from a perspective of attachment because they’re spending more time together as a family.

Jordan I was going to say we’re not having any problem with attachment to the child these days.

Dr Rebbeca Pillai Riddell No, not at all. And I think obviously I want to be clear that the home environment isn’t always a safe place or a secure place. And so there are children who this would be definitely more detrimental. But thinking about the more typical situation that having parents around, where you know the delays, I think, will start happening is as you get into later in those zero to five years, because these are the ages when children are learning how to socialize. So they start moving away from just turning into a caregiver during the first year of life, just sort of you know playing beside kids. We talk about parallel play and being able to they’re looking at each other, but they’re not necessarily playing together. And then they evolve into this interactive, co-operative play.

Dr Rebbeca Pillai Riddell And for children who are in lockdown, this sort of stuff is not happening. And so these are building blocks, like we think of our developmental milestones as building blocks into social and emotional relationships that lead us to falling in love and building our own families,or that sort of thing,building families of our own. So I think that one of the things that I’ve been hearing from teachers as well is that even just some fundamental things, like sitting in place, standing in line. These are all social skills that we kind of take for granted, because in those first years, parents and teachers, and early childhood caregivers, and educators are all teaching children these very important social rules.But they’re being delayed because of the lack of socialization in groups.

Jordan It’s been fascinating to me, and I’m speaking about my daughter here, but probably about a lot of other kids who are at the very kind of top of that four to five year socialization window to see her struggle with all of that when she finally went to school in September, start to learn that standing in line, waiting your turn, sitting quietly in your seat and you know now losing it again. And I imagine that she will have to build that back. And I guess what I’m wondering about in that age, but also as they move beyond it is we talk a lot about how resilient kids are, right. And that’s really frustrating for some parents to hear. But how elastic is that kind of learning, you know, the difference between, like, Oops, you missed it or you can get it back and lose it again. Like it really seems to fluctuate depending on what’s happening.

Dr Rebbeca Pillai Riddell Yeah,like we talk about these sensitive periods in development, and I think that with these sorts of socialization, nobody really fully knows how the impact of the lockdown we’ll find out years after the pandemic when we start doing longitudinal follow up studies. But I think I want to reassure parents that children are resilient like our brains learn, and it’s not that they’re getting no socialization. It’s just a different type of socialization. And the way our society evolves, we’ve been so heavily on in person learning in person work in person. The society we come out of the pandemic, too, has changed. Even the workplace has changed. And so in some ways, while they definitely the socialization aspect of interacting with children, sharing that sort of thing can be delayed, I really do have faith that when we get back in our periods where there are normals because we’re not in a consistent lockdown, taking those opportunities, when it is safe to interact, to do outside play, to do things with children so that they are socializing, that these kids will come out just fine. I think we have to focus on what they can do and some of the social skills that they’re learning online. Right,so children are learning about how to socialize online, which we think is completely negative. But as we think about the future, they may actually be developing skills to better prepare them for the future,that is to be when they’re doing jobs online. And maybe there are skills that they’re learning that we haven’t fully even defined yet.

Jordan If parents are worried about their kids development, especially in terms of socialization, moving perhaps now beyond just the younger kids,but to all kids who have kind of been through two years of this now. What should they be watching for? And I guess how might it sort of manifest in their day to day behavior to the point where, if you should be concerned, this is what you’re watching for?

Dr Rebbeca Pillai Riddell Well, I think parents have a lot on them as well. So you know I think that when we’re thinking about the mental health of children, I have to emphasize that we have to think about the mental health of parents as well. So the idea of kind of giving parents a checklist, another thing to worry about as they’re balancing their jobs as they’re balancing holding things together. And some parents are working in the home, some are having to go to the front lines. I guess I’m resistant to giving parents a checklist of things to further worry about. But I think that in the larger scheme, though, parents know their children.I think that when you have aspects that go beyond the normal and when we think of it as a clinical psychologist, so things that kind of gets you a diagnosis ,as opposed to being a part of the wide range of normal. And there is a wide range of normal, and every behavior are things that actually impact the child’s social cognitive, or how they think, how they act, how they feel. So for parents, thinking about sadness, thinking about worry, thinking about their ability to interact with people and focus on school. And so all of these sorts of things are, regardless of the pandemic or not, are things that parents should be thinking about.

Dr Rebbeca Pillai Riddell But understanding that our expectations for our children and ourselves have to be moderated by the pandemic, it can’t just be the same old, same old, we’re just doing it from home. The pandemic has all of these extra responsibilities, like the pandemic tax. I feel like it’s like a time tax that no matter what we’re doing, when we’re going out, thinking about masks, thinking about lineups, thinking about booking online before you go to a movie theater, anything that we do now, these time taxes, which means the time has to come from somewhere. And so when we think about adapting to the pandemic and learning in the pandemic for young children, adapting our expectations as to what they should and shouldn’t be doing, I think trying our best and really getting them through routine and feeling secure safe. We talk about lower level needs, particularly for young kids, making sure that they’re fed, they feel safe, they feel loved and they’ve learned something. It’s a far cry from trying to be again, trying to enrich and trying to make sure that they have seven extracurriculars, which I wouldn’t recommend either. But the idea that even extracurriculars anything that we’ve wanted, everything has been impacted. So that means our expectations have to be impacted, too.

Jordan So far, we’ve kind of spoken about kids as a catch all group, but there must be a huge range of normal, as you just kind of described it in terms of how kids get through this. How can we find ways I guess when this is over, when at least the latest lockdown is over, and kids can safely get back in classrooms. How can we find ways to identify the kids that will need extra help socializing? And is that something that teachers should be preparing for right now? Because ultimately, they’re the ones that are going to end up with 25 kids who have been alone with their parents for a month, all back in the classroom at the same time.

Dr Rebbeca Pillai Riddell Yeah. And again, I think teachers are also you know struggling and need time and support. and their expectations and principals and parents expectations of teachers. I think that particularly when we think of the younger kids, right. We have different stages, as you said, all the way you know. I think about babies, and I think about emerging adults. Someone is a professor at a University, thinking about all of the students who have not even set foot on their campuses. It’s a very different stage depending on where they are. And I think that helping students and not assuming that students have, like with the younger ones in particular.That it’ll take time, time to socialize, time to learn how to sit in their seat time. And that is going to come at the cost of some academic progress in certain ways. And so I think that really working together teachers, parents and children to try and get them back to baseline levels of socialization and emotional health before we really focus on what’s been lost.

Dr Rebbeca Pillai Riddell I shut down people who are thinking about learning loss, because you just can’t go there. I think right now we have to go more fundamental and think about emotional health, and making sure that kids have the emotional resilience because resilience just doesn’t come out of nowhere. Kids are resilient, but they need support.

Jordan Yeah

Dr Rebbeca Pillai Riddell They need to be supported in their resilience.

Jordan That brings me to a very practical question,which is, how much should parents be pushing and forcing online learning to kids who don’t really want it ? Again my daughter is four and a half. She doesn’t want to sit in front of a computer for 4 hours a day. We’re probably not going to make her do it if it leaves her in tears. But I mean,I can also understand for parents of kids who are nine or ten or eleven feeling that learning loss and feeling like it can turn into a power struggle of like, you must do this and the kid hates it.

Dr Rebbeca Pillai Riddell Yeah. And even just looking at my circle of friends about how different people have taken different approaches. And so remembering that with online, it, definitely people are tired, parents are tired. And parents have to work,right? Like this is the other piece with the online that I think we see that particularly female caregivers are bearing the brunt of online school much more so often than males. And so when you think about how to get these kids and what you should be forcing, I think forcing is really tough. You want to get a routine, you want to try and build participation. The older the child, the more they’re going to fight and rebel if they don’t want to. But trying to set realistic expectations about how they learn. They don’t have control about being in the classroom or not. But some of these topics can be learned asynchronously, they can be read. They can be learned in different ways. It may be particularly for younger kids. There may be different ways that I’ve seen parents use documentaries to teach, to watch some child friendly documentaries, as opposed to sitting in the classroom, making it more fun for the children, trying to pick topics that they want to learn. Like,you know obviously, the ideal scenario is to try and follow along with the teacher as much as possible, but keeping expectations that perhaps you know if you’re not there for the whole class that you can sign in for certain classes and try and build from there.

Dr Rebbeca Pillai Riddell It’s not a black or white all or nothing. They’re in school or they’re in their online class or they’re not.And trying to work with their resistance to try and figure out some of the barriers as to what is wrong. Is it an uncomfortable chair? Are there aspects that are boring that the child just cannot get into? Is there another way and again, recognizing that a lot of parents are stretched thin. And some of them, I remember in June of 2020, parents just saying they gave up and that was okay too, at that time, hoping that,this is more a circuit breaker lockdown. You know,we’ll be back in person by the end of the month.

Jordan I want to make sure that I don’t phrase this question in an insensitive way, because it’s not what I mean by it. But putting your research hat back on again with everything that’s gone on as you look down the next few years, I don’t know several years of data. What kinds of learning could we get out of this ,that excites you, in terms of learning about child development? Because I imagine as awful as this is, it is kind of a big opportunity.

Dr Rebbeca Pillai Riddell I think that we are going to, you know something that excites me is that, the different learning styles that have had to be accommodated. So just as I was saying before, there are different ways to the same path. I think that the contributions to online learning and online schooling can be good for a lot of students. I think that the traditional classroom 25 on one, 30 on one environment isn’t ideal for everyone. And so I feel that we can share resources, particularly, like across even the province and virtual school for some. And there is a minority. I do see that voice. I hear that voice on academic twitter about some students who are thriving in the pandemic. And so I think that’s something that excites me in terms of, we did not want to be here. We didn’t want to learn all these alternative ways of learning and teaching, but it forced us to. And I feel that particularly for people who even for mobility reasons, disabilities. People who you know, the typical in person world is so highly unaccessible. That both across from kindergarten to University and beyond, this has opened up a new way that people can engage in the world that helps people who are differently abled.

Dr Rebbeca Pillai Riddell So I think that that’s one silver lining that I can think about during the pandemic. And that this has also led to the kids when they graduate and find jobs, that equity has come into better play through the pandemic.

Jordan Last question, and I’m going to assume, since we’ve been chatting for about 20 minutes here strictly about kids, that it’s only parents listening to this show at this point, everybody else is tuned out. So what would you say to them? Man it’s tough out here. What would you just parting words be, I guess ?

Dr Rebbeca Pillai Riddell Secure your own oxygen mask. I can’t emphasize that enough. So much of the research about developmental outcomes of anything for children. Anything depends on parental mental health, and so burning yourself out, will not just hurt you. It will hurt them. And one of the best things you can do to take care of your children is to take care of yourself.

Jordan Dr.Pillai Riddell thank you so much and good luck with your homeschooling as well.

Dr Rebbeca Pillai Riddell Thank you.

Jordan Dr Rebbeca Pillai Riddell, Clinical Development Psychologist at York University. That was the Big Story. For more from us, head to thebigstorypodcast.ca. Find us on Twitter at @TheBigStoryFPN. Of course, talk to us anytime via email, Email us with your story ideas,or your general comments or your general love or general hatred at , thebigstorypodcast@rci.rogers.com [click here!]. You can get this podcast anywhere you get podcasts. You can also get it by asking your smart speaker whichever one you have in your home, or your phone, or your car to play the Big Story Podcast.

Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.

Back to top of page