来源：《卫报》
原文刊登日期：2022年4月4日
If children have siblings and they’ve mixed with others, they tend to be on the same level socially as before the pandemic. But the ones who are only children and have just been in the household with mum and dad don’t know how to interact.
如果孩子们有兄弟姐妹，而且他们和其他人交往过，他们的社交能力往往和大流行前一样。但是那些独生子女以及和父母待在家里的孩子不知道如何交流。
They have issues with sharing, being very overexcited and turn-taking. They’re quite advanced in numbers and letters for their age because they’ve been at home with adults, or they’ve been playing a lot on tablets, but they are very behind socially, the empathy isn’t there.
他们在分享、过度兴奋和话轮转换方面有问题。他们在数字和字母方面比同龄孩子进步很多，因为他们一直和成年人待在家里，或者一直在玩平板电脑，但他们在社交方面落后很多，没有同情心。
Where I work it is a fairly affluent area, there aren’t a great deal of social problems. It seems to be the slightly more middle-class children who’re socially behind. They’re more likely to be only children, have older parents, and their parents are mostly office workers so they worked from home and were more isolated. A lot of children were put on tablets.
我工作的地方是一个相当富裕的地区，没有很多社会问题。似乎更多的是中产阶级的孩子在社交方面比较落后。他们更有可能是独生子女，父母年龄较大，他们的父母大多是办公室职员，所以他们在家工作，更与世隔绝。很多孩子都有平板电脑。
It’s not a criticism of the parents because they were forced into that situation, but you can see it in the children’s social skills. Under five, social skills are everything, it’s the marker of how they will develop more than whether they can say the alphabet or count to 10. Children with good social skills and interaction, even if they’re not the quickest at learning to read or write, often have the best educational outcomes.
这不是对父母的批评，因为他们被迫进入这种情况，但你可以从孩子的社交技能中看到。五岁以下的儿童，社交技能就是一切，这是他们如何发展的标志，而不是他们是否会说字母表或数到10。拥有良好社交技能和互动能力的孩子，即使他们学习阅读或写作的速度不是最快的，通常也能获得最好的教育成果。
Parents are presenting with a higher level of anxiety about how their kids are developing. They ask “is my child normal?” Lots of parents are saying “my child is autistic” and the child clearly isn’t. They’re just presenting schematic behaviour, they line things up and do things continually, which is just how toddlers develop. We have to assure them this behaviour is normal, it’s normal for a toddler to snatch. Parents haven’t had the opportunity to talk to other parents, so they’re at home and Google something and it opens a can of worms.
父母们对孩子的成长表现出更高程度的焦虑。他们问：“我的孩子正常吗？”很多家长都在说“我的孩子有自闭症”，但孩子显然不是。他们只是在展示示意性的行为，他们把事情排列起来，不断地做事情，这正是幼儿成长的方式。我们必须向他们保证这种行为是正常的，蹒跚学步的孩子抓东西是正常的。父母没有机会和其他父母交谈，所以他们在家里用谷歌搜索一些东西，就会遇到一些棘手的问题。
The parents are definitely making it worse for their children socially and for themselves. We’ve got one particular little boy, he’s four and he’s not ever mixed with children at all. The mum is extremely nervous about Covid and so over-anxious that as soon as he cries, she’ll keep him off because she thinks he’s been traumatised. He’s a completely normal boy but he’s not being given a chance because her anxiety is transferring on to him.
父母无疑让孩子和他们自己的社交生活变得更糟。我们有一个特别的小男孩，他四岁，他从来没有和其他孩子交往过。母亲对新冠病毒非常紧张，而且焦虑过度，他一哭，她就让孩子远离别人，因为她认为他受到了创伤。他是一个完全正常的男孩，但他没有得到机会，因为母亲的焦虑转移到了他身上。