Opinion For kids with disabilities, the pandemic may have been a reprieve
Vibha Krishnamurthy writes: If not going to school has given them their first taste of learning in a safe and happy place, then schools have to be made safer and happier now that they are heading back
What is evident is that for children with disabilities, the opportunities to participate in life — play, be outdoors, have fun with friends — were fewer to begin with. “What has the year been like for you?” That was my opening question for most of the families and young children I met online during the pandemic in my work as a paediatrician. I was prepared for stories of loss. Many of my patients’ families had lost jobs and near and dear ones. Peace of mind, the blissful, invincible feeling only a teenager can have — they lost that too. But I started to notice something else. Some of the children looked happier. They smiled more and shared more with me. I asked my Class VIII patient, “How come you look so much more relaxed than before?” She told me what a relief it was that in online classes, there were no classmates to notice she hadn’t completed her assignments or that she needed extra help from the teacher. I wasn’t prepared for Arjun, one of my patients on the autism spectrum, to say: “This was the best year of my life!”
One “not-so-verbal” young man started a blog to share his stories — ranging from miscommunication and not being understood to bullying and exclusion. I talked to my patient-turned-friend Aditya, a 20-year-old autistic engineering student. Paradoxically, he got better at social skills once he stopped going to college in person. “I finally had time to rest and grow as a person, without the stress of having to ‘practice’ social skills,” he explained. Aditya loved his classes and wanted to learn but couldn’t until college went online. “I could finally learn without the anxiety of having to talk to and talk like other people,” he said.
What must it be like for children who wake up dreading another day in school, knowing that yet again they won’t complete their classwork or be picked for the football team? They watch the class bully tormenting some kid and hold their breath, praying that the bell will ring before it’s their turn. Courage is just another name for having no choice.
But the pandemic was a reprieve. No kids, no teachers, no deadlines, no noise. Days of bliss when the whole family is at home. Endless possibilities unfold — a blog to share your writing, a 3-D printer to make the coolest spinning tops, birdwatching with your sister. None of this was “in the syllabus”.
My own school experience was different. I literally couldn’t wait to get there each day — I knew I was good at it. But even then, I knew it wasn’t the same for everyone. My sister was shy and didn’t excel academically. She dreaded report card day and the disappointment on my father’s face when he saw her results. But once she left school, freed from an environment that stifled her growth, she discovered her strengths and came into her own.
The pandemic gave some of my patients a “get out of jail free” card. We did some research on its impact on children — we thought we would find evidence that the pandemic was harder on kids with disabilities than on those without. It’s not clear from the results that it was.
But what is evident is that for children with disabilities, the opportunities to participate in life — play, be outdoors, have fun with friends — were fewer to begin with. Unsurprisingly, even before the pandemic, kids with disabilities, most of whom then attended school, were more likely to be anxious and sad. School is where the anxiety monster lives. No wonder, then, that for some kids, the pandemic made life better by keeping them out of school.
The real question our research raises is this: What is the point of trying to understand pandemic-imposed isolation if we just go back to where we were when schools reopen? There has been much written about the need to help children recover the “learning loss” they experienced.
For children with disabilities, we need not only to help them recover from the loss but also sustain the gain of freedom from fear. If not going to school has given them their first taste of learning in a safe and happy place, then the adults in their lives — parents and education professionals — have to commit to making schools safe and happy now that they are heading back.
This column first appeared in the print edition on March 30, 2022 under the title ‘For whom crisis was reprieve’. The writer, a developmental paediatrician in Mumbai, is founder of the NGO Ummeed
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