Each afternoon, a familiar conversation unfolds in many households.

“How was school today?”

“F���Ա�.”

“What did you learn?”

“N�dzٳ󾱲Բ�.”

In the classroom, teachers also struggle with stonewalling students. They’ll pose a question, . They might incorporate “” to give students a moment to gather their thoughts. But even then, their students offer brief or vague responses. Students, meanwhile, about asking for clarification or diving deeper into a topic in front of their peers.

This can have consequences. Children who hesitate to ask or answer questions risk becoming . Adults who avoid asking questions or avoid admitting what they don’t know can become willfully ignorant: and the impact it can have on themselves and others.

With the start of school just around the corner, it’s an important time to create opportunities for children to stretch their .

I’m an educator, and parent who studies and .

Here are five strategies parents and caregivers can use with children to make them better conversationalists and cultivate curiosity. The suggestions might appear straightforward. But they outline an easy way to avoid being iced out with “yes” or “no” answers.

1. Be creative with your questions

Part of the issue arises from asking questions that can be batted away with a one-word response.

Children want to know whether the adults in their lives are genuinely interested in their day. Asking the same, rote questions each day says otherwise.

Try shaking things up and ask more specific, open-ended questions instead: “What was the most interesting thing you did today?”

“If you could turn back time and change how you handled something at school today, what would it be?”

“If you were in charge of your class tomorrow, what would you teach?”

2. Engage with their curiosity

As important as it is for adults to ask questions that convey genuine interest, it’s just as valuable to engage with questions kids ask.

Young children ask “why” so often that adults can find themselves falling back on a classic retort: “Because I said so!”

When a “why” gets shut down, . Instead, try acknowledging and engaging with this curiosity: “Good question. Here’s my thinking …” or “Let’s talk about why this is important …”

At the same time, you can also : “I’ve wondered that too. Do you think it’s because …?”

3. Think out loud

When adults , they’re showing children how their brains work and how problems get solved.

“Do you ever wonder why cats purr?”

“Do you think I can mix the dry and wet ingredients for the cake at the same time?”

“I noticed the flags were at half-staff today in front of your school. Could you ask someone to find out why?”

Doing so encourages children to listen to their inner voice – and to trust the questions that emerge, no matter how silly they might seem.

4. Be a seeker

Admitting you don’t know the answer to something can be uncomfortable, especially because children often expect their parents to know everything. But simply responding “I don’t know” to a question isn’t enough. It’s important to show children how to find answers, whether it’s through assembly manuals, recipes or a nutrition label.

If you come across a confusing passage in a book, you can show kids how to use the : a glossary, table of contents or index.

Then there are the questions that don’t have a single, simple answer. You can explain how more than one internet search might be necessary and it’s probably not a great idea to simply accept the first answer that pops up.

By showing children that it’s OK to not know all the answers, you give them the confidence to ask more questions.

5. What I heard you say was …

Children can have a hard time articulating what they’re curious or confused about.

For this reason, is a critical behavior to model. If you’re confused about what you’re hearing, rather than saying something like, “I don’t get what you’re saying,” you could repeat what you heard, and then ask, “Is that what you’re saying?”

If they give a meandering answer to your question – even if they go off topic – you can highlight what stood out to you to show that you were really listening: “What I really appreciated about your answer to my question was …”

Avoid the temptation to multitask when children approach you with questions. If you put your phone away, make eye contact and ask follow-up questions, kids will be more willing to keep asking questions in the future.

Children are born with a natural wonder and enthusiasm for learning. As , “The complex and subtle problems we face can only have complex and subtle solutions and we need people able to think complex and subtle thoughts. I believe a great many children have that capability if only they are encouraged.”

Prodding children to tap into their own curiosity while respecting their needs, limitations and fears can have a powerful impact on their ability to ask and answer questions about the world, big and small – or, at the very least, give them the confidence to try.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

The 12 members, who were recently handpicked by controversial Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., also debated overturning decades of established practice around hepatitis B shots for newborns, though they ultimately tabled that vote.

The other two shots in play were the measles, mumps, rubella and varicella (chickenpox) combination vaccine, also known as MMRV, and this year’s COVID 19 booster. 

By the end of the week, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, also known as ACIP, voted to no longer recommend the MMRV combination vaccine for kids under 4 years old, rendering it largely inaccessible for that age group. 

The committee also voted to shift the COVID 19 booster recommendation to “shared clinical decision making” for all people over 6 months old — regardless of age or risk level — meaning that before getting the shot, individuals will need to talk through the pros and cons with a health care provider, which includes pharmacists. 

Through this departure, the committee largely preserved access and insurance coverage, while also raising doubts about the effectiveness and safety of the vaccine, at times citing debunked theories.

“There is just widespread confusion about, ‘What should I do as a parent? Who should I listen to?’” said Northe Saunders, executive director of the pro-vaccine advocacy organization , formerly called SAFE Communities Coalition. 

“American parents and American providers don’t actually know what the best recommendations are anymore,” he added, “and so that is going to lead to more hesitancy, because there’s uncertainty about what the right thing to do is, and that’s going to lead to declining immunization rates.”

Before the ACIP meeting, MMRV and hepatitis B vaccine recommendations were based on decades of established practices supported by science, which experts described as “settled,” so it was unclear why they were being relitigated, according to numerous medical professionals, including those who spoke during the meetings as well as those interviewed by ����Ӱ��.

The point of these conversations is, “to raise doubt, to confuse people,” said Paul Offit, the director of the and an attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Offit was instrumental in the creation of the rotavirus vaccine and previously served as an ACIP member. 

“The degree to which the public is confused about vaccines is the degree to which they will be less likely to get them,” he said, “and that is RFK Jr’s goal: to make vaccines less available, less affordable and more feared.”

The meetings themselves appeared to be marked by moments of pronounced confusion for the new committee members, some of whom asked for clarification around what they were voting on multiple times.

At least some of this was likely due to their unusual level of inexperience, which committee Chair Martin Kulldorff even noted as he opened day two on Friday.

“We are rookies,” Kulldorff “With one exception, this was either our first ACIP meeting or our second.”

Typically, committee members are highly qualified medical professionals who are vetted for months to years before serving. In an unprecedented upheaval earlier in June, Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 existing advisory members via a Wall Street Journal — after promising he would leave the committee’s recommendations intact. 

Almost immediately he brought on eight new members, a number of whom have espoused anti-vaccine rhetoric and other scientific misinformation. One of them eventually stepped down and Kennedy then added an additional five members leading up to last week’s sessions.

Measles, mumps, rubella and varicella

The MMR vaccine was in the United States in 1971, followed by the MMRV vaccine in 2005. Two doses of the combined shot were preferred until 2008, when monitoring studies showed an increased risk of febrile seizures — convulsions in a young child caused by a fever — following the first dose. 

While these seizures are short-lived, resolve themselves and are not associated with any long-term negative outcomes, “they’re hard to watch,” said Offit.

So by 2009, the CDC released updated recommendations, in place up until Thursday’s vote, which advocate for separating MMR and varicella for the first dose at age 12-47 months and administrating the combined shot for the second dose at age 4-6 years old. These vaccines are among those required for school entry in all 50 states, though numerous states have recently introduced legislation to loosen mandates, and exemptions are on the rise.

The vast majority of parents (85%) opted to follow that recommendation for separating the shots, with 15% still choosing the combination vaccine for the first dose, often to avoid multiple jabs of an infant.

The committee’s recent update to the recommendations will mean that choice no longer exists.

While this change itself is “not a huge deal,” Offit said, the arguments brought up by committee members were “intellectually disingenuous” and will only continue to “raise doubt.”

Stacy Buchanan is a pediatric nurse practitioner and a clinical professor who is the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners’ liaison to ACIP

“I really feel like this was brought up to just further confuse caregivers that are already questioning whether or not they want to have their child vaccinated,” said Buchanan. “And in a time where we’re seeing unprecedented numbers of measles in communities, I think that we need to be really clear that the MMR vaccine — whether you’re getting the combined or two separate injections — is really key and needs to be administered routinely based on the schedule.”

In past years, the liaisons like Buchanan, who have on-the-ground clinical experience, would weigh in during the committee’s working group meetings to help evaluate the evidence. That precedent was unexpectedly overturned in late July when the liaisons received an email accusing them of being and no longer permitted to serve. Now they can only be heard during the public comment portion of the meetings.

In a statement released Thursday, the American Academy of Pediatrics wrote, “Today’s meeting of the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) promoted false claims and misguided information about vaccines as part of an unprecedented effort to limit access to routine childhood immunizations and sow fear and mistrust in vaccines. Following today’s meeting, instead of emerging with clear guidance about vaccines that we know protect against serious illnesses, families are left with confusion, chaos and false information.”

The AAP also emphasized that they had released their own , which includes unchanged MMRV vaccination recommendations.

Committee members elected for the combination shot for those under 4 to remain covered by Vaccines for Children, which provides vaccines to millions of kids who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford them, despite their recommendation against its use. Some members apparently misunderstood what they had voted on Thursday and reversed their stance the next morning. 

COVID 19 booster

On Friday, the committee voted on four measures surrounding the COVID 19 booster shot. Three passed, and the fourth, which was the most controversial and would have recommended required prescriptions for anyone seeking to get the shot, ended in a tie vote that ultimately failed.

During his presentation, Retsef Levi, put in charge of the working group on COVID, raised a number of concerns around mRNA vaccines that have been widely disputed, including the assertion that they could change the way the body reacts to its own genetic material. Levi is a professor of operations management at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and has no formal medical training.

The three provisions that did pass will mean that while the vaccine is not actively recommended for anyone — including those at high risk of infection — those over the age of 6 months can access it as long as they make the decision in conjunction with a health care provider.

Richard Hughes, a George Washington University law professor and leading vaccine law expert, said the committee appears to be using the practice known as “shared clinical decision making,” because it “gets at that medical freedom rhetoric — and provides an option other than ‘no recommendation’ — but is not a good option.”

While this sort of policy sounds like it’s creating greater choice, ultimately evidence shows it leads to struggles for health care providers who haven’t been given clear risk factors, Hughes said. This can be cumbersome, time consuming and lead to patient distrust.

“When you know that it’s an automatic ‘you should get it’ that’s different than ‘I don’t know, it’s kind of murky,’” he added.

The new policy is particularly confusing, said Offit, since last month the Food and Drug Administration only licensed the boosters for those . 

“The good news is, anybody can use it,” Offit said, “even though, according to the FDA, they’d be using it off label. But we don’t recommend it for anybody. Basically, that’s what they’re saying.”

He described this as a “bad choice” which will lead to fewer people being vaccinated and fragmented state-by-state policies.

Earlier this month, the governors of Washington, California and Oregon announced they’d be forming to establish their own vaccine recommendations, which Hawaii quickly joined. A few weeks later, seven northeastern states, including New York and Pennsylvania, formed with a similar goal.

Hepatitis B

The hepatitis B vaccine was first recommended by ACIP in Before that point, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 people, including about 20,000 children, were infected with the highly contagious virus each year. 

This was particularly dangerous for infants who have a 90% chance of developing liver cancer or chronic liver disease, if they contract the virus. For 4- and 5-year-olds, that chance remains high at 30-40%.

At one point, the vaccine was only recommended for infants whose mothers tested positive for the virus, since it can be transmitted during birth, but for a number of reasons — including inaccurate test results — this was found to be ineffective. So by 1991, ACIP’s recommendation was expanded to include universal birth doses. Since then, infant infections have dropped by 95%.

According to Offit, the birth dose “has always been a target of anti-vaccine activists,” since the hepatitis B virus can be transmitted sexually. But it can also be transmitted in many other ways, including through surfaces. 

On Thursday, ACIP members were meant to vote on an updated recommendation which would have delayed the initial dose until an infant is one month, a move that would likely lead to a serious reduction in uptake, according to doctors.

Ultimately, after hours of arguments, which included research Offit called “bogus,” the committee ran out of time to vote on the measure Thursday. Friday morning they chose to table it indefinitely. 

Buchanan, the nurse practitioner, expressed concern that the safety of the well-established vaccine was even being reargued in the first place: “The ‘why’ was never there, and that’s so important, because we should not be bringing things to a formal ACIP committee vote without having a science-based rationale for bringing the question forward.”

While Hughes was relieved the vote was punted, Offit was more pessimistic, expressing fears that the committee will eventually try to push the first dose even later than one month.

“And that would be a tragic decision,” he said. “That would mean that there will be children in this country who will get hepatitis B in the first year of life, or in childhood … which will limit their life for no reason.”

The 14th Amendment has long been interpreted to guarantee the right of citizenship to nearly all children born on U.S. soil. Three district courts concluded Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order taking away that right was likely unlawful and issued universal preliminary injunctions barring the order from taking effect.

In a 6-3 vote Friday, the high court’s conservative majority found the lower court judges overstepped. 

“When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too,” reads the majority opinion written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett. 

The court ruled that Trump’s birthright order would not go into effect for 30 days. During that time, the possibility exists that the plaintiffs could successfully reargue for another nationwide injunction under the new rules set by the Supreme Court. But if they fail, birthright citizenship may no longer be automatic in the 28 states that have not challenged the president’s directive.

Trump, appearing in the White House briefing room Friday, said “the Supreme Court has delivered , the separation of powers and the rule of law.” 

The decision does not address the constitutionality of Trump’s move to end birthright citizenship, considered settled  law for nearly 160 years. But it comes at a time when the president is aggressively trying to extend his powers through a barrage of executive orders that now can no longer be as forcefully blocked across the country by a single federal judge who deems them unlawful or unconstitutional. Judges have issued since Trump took office for a second term in January, the Associated Press reported.

It also coincides with the administration’s far-reaching and controversial immigration enforcement campaign that has targeted and swept up those without secure legal status, including students. Educators and advocates are particularly concerned about the fate of young children. 

“The timing could not be worse, with increased ICE activity across the country,” said Adam Strom, executive director of Re-Imagining Migration. “As educators, this makes our jobs even harder. When you fear that your citizenship can be taken away, it’s very hard to learn.”

The ruling came just days after the Supreme Court decided on Monday to to countries other than those in which they were born. Immigrant advocates say both decisions run counter to core American values. 

David C. Baluarte, CUNY School of Law professor and senior associate dean for academic affairs, said if Trump is able to implement his birthright order, some children born in the United States to undocumented parents or those temporarily in the U.S. would be in great jeopardy.

“That means they will be an undocumented immigrant here, and everywhere, in perpetuity — or unless they can convince some country to give them citizenship,” Baluarte said.

Walter Olson, senior fellow at the right-of-center Cato Institute, said now is a “particularly bad” time for the high court to weaken a critical means to check the power of a “scofflaw administration.” 

Olson said the president, through this particular directive, signaled from the outset of his second term that he was seeking to be “very radical” in his authority. He said the birthright issue was a remarkable choice because it was not at all up for debate. 

“The law was very clear on behalf of birthright citizenship,” Olson said. “So, the executive order deserved the immediate unpopularity and outrage that came with it. It’s settled law.” 

reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” Trump argued it “has always excluded” people born in the United States but not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” including those whose mother was unlawfully present in the country and whose father was not a citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of the child’s birth. 

This same restriction applies to those children born to mothers whose presence in the U.S.�� is lawful but temporary, including those visiting under the Visa Waiver Program or on a student, work or tourist visa — if the father is also not a citizen or lawful permanent resident, Trump contends.

Margo Schlanger, law professor and director of the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse at the University of Michigan Law School, said the Supreme Court left open three pathways through which the lower courts can block nationwide policies by the Trump administration they believe to be unlawful.

The first is through a lawsuit filed against the government by a state. The second involves a nationwide class action lawsuit, which can be cumbersome, complicated and time consuming: It’s often difficult to prove any group of people have enough in common to constitute a class. The third would allow a lower court to “set aside” a rule it deems unlawful under the . 

Schlanger notes that every one of the three remaining pathways has “major” procedural obstacles. She predicts that the state plaintiffs will go back to their district courts and argue that even under these new Supreme Court rules, they still have grounds for a nationwide injunction because that is the only way to guarantee complete relief from an unlawful executive order. 

At the same time, she said, in one or more of the other cases, private plaintiffs might try to expand to a class. Both or either type of case could land the issue back before the Supreme Court — not for procedural arguments, but to decide the issue on its merits. 

“I don’t expect the Trump administration would win at that point,” Schlanger said. “What they were doing is using this case as an opportunity to restrict the authority of the non-Supreme Court federal courts.” 

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said Friday’s decision leaves Americans with one less tool to fight an “out-of-control” executive branch. 

“Today, the justices have kneecapped the lower courts’ ability to protect Americans from Trump’s most pernicious policy abuses, making it far more difficult to resolve key questions by requiring additional litigation,” she said in a statement. “People need courts to protect them from this or any other administration wreaking havoc on our nation’s laws and Americans’ lives.”

This was produced by  a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet focused on education.

Over the past few years, it’s become clear that states need more money to support kids.  is long gone, but effects from  still linger, evident in persistent child care shortages and ongoing child behavioral and mental health concerns. Now, states are increasingly trying to generate new sources of money to support young children, although in at least one state, a ballot measure was designed to pull back on just these kinds of efforts.

At least a dozen measures were on ballots across the country Tuesday, proposing tax increases or new revenue streams to pay for child care and other child-focused services. Voters overwhelmingly chose to maintain or increase spending on these initiatives — though there were some holdouts.

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Here’s a look at how early childhood fared this election: ()

Child care:

 Washington state:  aimed to repeal a capital gains tax that passed in 2021 and has since provided child care subsidies and money for select child care programs. By failing, the tax and funding stream for child care will remain in place. 

 Travis County, Texas:  called for a property tax increase to raise more than $75 million to create affordable child care spots and mitigate the loss of federal pandemic funds for local child care programs. 

 St. Paul, Minnesota: The 2024 Early Care and Learning Proposal is a property tax levy aimed at providing public funding to child care. The city would raise $2 million the first year and add an additional $2 million each year until year 10, with this money going into a special early care and education fund that would . (The city’s mayor, Melvin Carter, said he was  if it passed). 

Sonoma County, California:  asked voters to approve a quarter-cent countywide sales tax to create a local revenue stream that would help pay for child care and children’s health programs, with a special emphasis on children who experience homelessness. The initiative gained over 20,000 signatures from registered voters to qualify for the November ballot. 

 La Plata County, Colorado:  will redirect up to 70 percent of revenue from a lodger’s tax toward child care and affordable housing. 

 Grand County, Colorado: Ballot Measure 1A will increase the county’s lodging tax from 1.8 percent to 2 percent, with the revenue paying for tourism, housing and child care. 

 Montrose, Colorado:  will increase the city’s hotel tax and put 17 percent of the revenue toward local child care. 

Early childhood health, education and well-being:

 Platte County, Missouri:  measure calls for a quarter cent sales tax increase to create a revenue stream for mental health programs, including early childhood screening. 

Pomona County, California:  aims to reallocate at least 10 percent of funds in an existing city general fund to create a Department of Children and Youth. The funds would also be used to pay for youth programs, child care and support for parents. 

Santa Cruz, California:  proposed a $0.02 per ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages to raise funds that can be used for youth mental health and programs for children. 

 Colorado:  aims to establish a $39 million fund by imposing a 6.5 percent excise tax on guns and ammunition. While most of the money is directed at crime victim and veterans mental health services, $3 million will fund behavioral health services for children. 

 Missouri:  would have established a new gambling boat license, with the estimated $14 million in revenue funding public school early childhood literacy programs. 

 Nevada:  on the ballot this year gave voters the chance to exempt diapers from sales tax, starting on January 1, 2025. 

The shift from summer vacation to going back to school can be tough for children and their families. Beyond adjusting to new routines, the transition requires handling a mix of emotions. While some kids might feel excited about new teachers and classmates, others may experience anxiety, sadness or uncertainty about the upcoming school year.

A new state-by-state report shows Indiana’s child well-being ranking has dropped — in part due to Hoosier kids’ , as well as increased rates of youth deaths.

Although Indiana continues to rank in the bottom half of states for its rates of teen births and children living in high-poverty or in single-parent households, those numbers are showing improvement.

The ranked Indiana 27th among states, three places lower than last year. It’s still a slight improvement, however, compared to 2022 and 2021, when the state ranked 28th and 29th, respectively.

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In specific categories covered in the latest report, Indiana came in 15th for economic well-being, 17th in education, 31st in family and community, and 32nd in health.

“Indiana has significant opportunities and challenges ahead in supporting the well-being of our children,” said Tami Silverman, president and CEO of the Indiana Youth Institute.

“We should celebrate the progress we’ve made, especially in economic well-being areas such as parental employment rates and housing affordability; and we must acknowledge the disparities that persist for our kids,” Silverman continued. “Every child in Indiana should have access to quality education, regardless of their background or circumstances. By addressing these disparities head-on, we not only invest in the future of our children but also in the economic prosperity of our state.”

The report is prepared by the Annie E. Casey Foundation in conjunction with organizations across the county, including the Indiana Youth Institute. It rates states in 16 wide-ranging areas, which are lumped together under the categories of health, education, economic well-being, and family and community support.

Gaps in reading and math

The education portion of the — focused on student achievement — reiterates low numbers familiar to Hoosier education officials.

Just 32% of fourth graders nationally were at or above proficiency in reading in 2022, the latest year for which numbers were available. That was down from the 34% who were proficient in 2019, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Scores were even worse for eighth grade math. Nationwide, only 26% of eighth graders were at or above proficiency in math two years ago, down from 33% in 2019.

In Indiana, one-third of fourth graders performed at or above proficiency in reading — a four percentage-point decrease from the 2019 rate of 37%, the report showed.

Further, only 30% of Indiana eighth grade students performed at or above proficiency in math, marking an 11% decrease from 2019, ranking the state 11th nationally.

Among Indiana fourth graders in 2022, Black students had an average reading score that was 23 points lower than that of white students. Students eligible for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) had an average reading score 18 points lower than those not eligible for NSLP, according to the KIDS COUNT report.

Meanwhile, eighth grade Black students in Indiana had an average math score that was 31 points lower than white students. Hispanic students in the same grade had an average math score that was 19 points lower than their white peers.

The Casey Foundation report contends that the pandemic is not the sole cause of lower test scores, though. Rather, the foundation says educators, researchers, policymakers and employers who track students’ academic readiness have been ringing alarm bells “for a long time.”

U.S. scores in reading and math have barely budged in decades. In Indiana, state education officials have repeatedly pointed out that Hoosier literacy exam scores have been on the decline since 2015.

During the 2024 legislative session, state lawmakers took decisive action as part of an ongoing push to improve literacy and K-12 student performance.

Paramount among the new laws passed was one to .

Stats on youth health and family life

Health-focused portions of the report show that — after peaking in 2021 — the national child and teen death rate stabilized at 30 deaths per 100,000 children and youth ages 1 to 19.

But in Indiana, the death rate has continued to rise. While 29 deaths per 100,000 Hoosier children and youth were recorded in 2019, the rate increased to 36 deaths in 2022, per the report.

The Indiana Youth Institute (IYI) has already drawn attention, for example, to such as depression and suicidal ideation among the state’s youth. According to IYI data, one out of every three students from 7th to 12th grade reported experiencing persistent sadness and hopelessness. One out of seven students made a plan to commit suicide.

The most recent data available additionally show that nationwide and in Indiana, the child poverty rate improved and economic security of parents increased back to pre-pandemic levels.

Between 2018 and 2022, roughly 113,000 — or 7% — of Hoosier children were reportedly living in high-poverty areas. That’s a drop from 10% between 2013 and 2017, according to the report.

From 2019 to 2022, teen births per 1,000 declined from 21 to 17, and the percentage of children in single-parent families also dropped from 35% to 32%.

Still, some gains

Advocates pointed to “some bright spots” for Hoosier kids and their families in this year’s national report, as well:

Between 2019 and 2022, more parents (75%) had full-time secure employment in Indiana — which surpassed both the national average and that of the four neighboring states: Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio.

In 2022, fewer children (22%) lived in households that faced a high housing cost burden, spending 30% of their income solely on housing expenses, in comparison to the national average (30%).
In 2022, more Hoosier teens (95%) between the ages 16 and 19 were either enrolled in school or employed, an improvement from 93% in 2019.
Far fewer children under 19 (5%) were also uninsured. Indiana saw the fifth-highest decrease nationally in uninsured children between 2019 and 2022 — a 29% improvement.

The report offers several recommendations for policymakers, school leaders and educators that include chronicling absenteeism data by grade, establishing a culture to pursue evidence-based solutions and incorporating intensive, in-person tutoring to align with the school curriculum.

“Kids of all ages and grades must have what they need to learn each day, such as enough food and sleep and a safe way to get to school, as well as the additional resources they might need to perform at their highest potential and thrive, like tutoring and mental health services,” said Lisa Hamilton, president and CEO of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. “Our policies and priorities have not focused on these factors in preparing young people for the economy, short-changing a whole generation.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com. Follow Indiana Capital Chronicle on and .

While Helen Russell’s clever, well-researched exploration of the parenting culture of Denmark and other Nordic countries might not fully map onto the experience of most families in the U.S. or U.K. (Russell’s original home), it offers refreshing insights that can help parents relax a bit, give themselves heaps of grace and have much more fun raising their family. For societies like ours that are confronting crises in practically any arena that concerns our children, Russell’s deep dive into the “Viking way” offers practical, doable approaches that entire nations have proven can work in creating healthy, happy families.

Russell had been in London, “living the city dream” as an editor for MarieClaire’s U.K. online edition when her husband was offered his dream job working for Lego in Denmark. Both were feeling overworked, overwhelmed, burned out and ripe for a change. Denmark had just been voted the happiest country in the world (not for the first time) and she was intrigued. The couple emigrated and soon found themselves parents of “the redhead and the IVF twins,” which placed them in the thick of Nordic childrearing culture.

After 10 years in her new homeland, Russell still maintains sufficient outsider status to offer observations that are helpful, thought-provoking and sometimes hilarious. Her culture shock winds through anecdotes such as the reminder from her son’s Scout group that, “On Wednesday, we build bonfires! Bring daggers,” or the fact even in big cities, you’ll see rows of “under threes” bundled up in huge Mary Poppins-style prams no matter the weather while mom or dad runs inside for a latte or a sandwich. (It’s considered crucial for babies to be able to lie flat rather than be curled over in a buggy or car seat.)

The Nordic countries — Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden — share the Viking heritage, descendants of the seafaring folks who roamed (and yes, often marauded) across northern Europe from 800 to 1066 CE. Their hardiness is genetically baked in from those beginnings in a harsh environment, and culturally is encouraged today through common practices such as encouraging babies as young as two weeks to take in plenty of fresh air “to help the lungs develop.” Viking children live outside, Russell says, rain or shine. Given the local climate, this often means rain or worse. If the Nordic countries have a shared motto, it’s “There is no bad weather, there are just the wrong clothes.”

Those of us who prefer the warmth of the hearth to unrelenting cold drizzle easily recognize Russell’s shock at the realization that not only will her children be splashing around in the cold and drear, she, too, will be expected to join in and actually play in all that mess. Viking parents volunteer. They go along. They get out there. Danish children are not issued the appropriate wardrobe at birth, she writes, but they might as well be. In some places, posters are put up reminding parents exactly what children need for each season, from the all-in-one snowsuit and Gore-Tex boots for winter, to the balaclava “elephant hat” that all children wear much of the year in varying thicknesses. Wind-resistant, waterproof and thermal clothing come in the smallest of sizes and are simply a fact of life. Luckily, she writes, the thriving hand-me-down culture means no one has to buy all that kit from scratch. Just look around—and pass along whatever your kids grow out of.

In chapters running the gamut from Viking health and safety to school time, to singing and the social brain, Russell touches on many elements that create the unique Nordic approach to children’s lives — encouraging the risk-taking that fosters resilience and self-confidence; the idea that it’s great to cut loose, go wild and get dirty; the view that play is a sign of well-being; the necessity of developing grit, the freedom to mess up and learn from one’s mistakes — all go into creating happy, well-adjusted children.

It is a given in Nordic parenting that children will figure things out, learn to use their bodies and manage their surroundings. They are raised to trust themselves and others from the very beginning. Samfundssind, or community mindset, is the bedrock of Nordic society and from infancy, children are raised to consider the ethos of “the greater good,” even when it means a bit of discomfort for themselves. In Nordic society, fathers are parents and are expected to be involved in all aspects of their children’s upbringing. Real Viking dads change diapers and wouldn’t respect a father who didn’t, she writes.

In each chapter, Russell offers observations that even the most urban, most non-Nordic parent can incorporate to create opportunities for greater freedom and self-reliance for their children, even at very young ages. Her tone is chatty, self-deprecating and sometimes veers a bit cute, but especially for new parents, “How to Raise a Viking” is a delightful, liberating handbook that encourages loosening our grip a bit, trusting our children and each other a lot, and helping our children grow into their richest, most authentic selves.

However, none of Russell’s great examples or clever observations would be sufficient for someone living in a non-Nordic country to raise a child gloriously expressing all the best Viking values. No matter how hard you might try to go it alone, you need a society that supports those values. A quick answer to “How do you raise a Viking?” would be, live in a society that values children in real, practical, unwavering ways, not as entities deserving of lip service prior to elections, but as the bedrock of a society that intends to have a future. This is where policymakers might want to look at “How to Raise a Viking” and check out the lengthy citations in each chapter. It’s no secret that American society must make fundamental changes in how we support parents and children if we are to move forward in a functional, even sensible way. In “How to Raise a Viking,” resources abound that might help move that needle.

Reading Russell’s chapters on government-subsidized child care, parental leave, free healthcare, free education and free dental treatment and a work week that generally clocks in at 33 hours can make the reader wistful for why we can’t have nice things. Yes, taxes are high, but it’s hard to argue with the societal payoffs. (See “happiest country in the world,” above.)

Nordic society isn’t perfect. Some U.S. educators would no doubt take issue with how reading and academic achievement don’t really receive much emphasis until a child is 8 or so, though as Russell points out, children in Nordic countries play for longer, learn later, but still do better in the long run than children in the U.S. and U.K. — and are happier. There are clouds on the horizon, as children in Nordic countries are now getting smartphones and devices at earlier ages, which is causing as much headache and consternation there as it does over here.

In her Epilogue, Russell writes that she knows the idea of the Viking spirit isn’t a package of ideas that can be shipped and adopted wholesale; they are elements to strive toward. By 2050, she writes, economists predict that 40 percent of current jobs will be lost to automation. Right now, we simply don’t know what our jobs our children will be doing in their adulthood. But they will need resilience, adaptability, grit and the ability to think for themselves.

That’s the Viking spirit.

The Alaska House of Representatives voted by a wide margin and with bipartisan support on Friday to .

, from Rep. Sarah Vance, R-Homer, also requires companies that provide internet pornography to check whether an Alaskan viewing that pornography is at least 18 years old.

The bill, which passed on a 33-6 vote, advances to the state Senate for further consideration.

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Vance said the age requirement, which also requires parents to sign off on 14- and 15-year-olds using social media, is about protecting children.

“It contributes to the well-being of our children, because we know that continued exposure to this kind of content affects their mental health, the way that they view themselves, the way that they view relationships, body images, and it really gives a twisted view of what healthy sexuality is,” she said before the vote.

The bill was originally written without the social media component, which was inserted via an amendment offered Wednesday night by Rep. Andrew Gray, D-Anchorage.

“I believe that with the inclusion of (a) social media (ban) for kids under 14, and only with parental consent for those under 16, we are achieving the goal of the underlying bill, which is to prevent young people from seeing online pornography,” Gray said before the vote.

The bill’s opponents — and even some of its supporters — said they believe it raises privacy and constitutional free-speech concerns. The bill requires pornography websites to verify ages via a “commercially reasonable age verification method,” which could entail submitting an ID.

Supporters who acknowledged those issues said they hope that the Senate will address potential problems, while detractors said the potential problems are too big to be overcome.

“There might be a scenario in the future where it is safe enough to protect people from privacy concerns, but really, I am very concerned about the privacy of all individuals who might have to comply with this type of commercial age verification technology,” said Rep. Genevieve Mina, D-Anchorage, who voted against the bill.

Rep. David Eastman, R-Wasilla and another opponent, said that right now, the United States has a very different view of the internet than a place like China, which puts restrictions on its citizens’ use.

“We are so close to going more in a direction with China’s internet,” he said, “where anytime you hop onto the Web, you have to upload your picture, you have to upload your template and again, you’re going have to do something to verify who you are, and then that will be tracked.”

The original version of the bill is similar to legislation backed by , which says that 16 states have passed bills it supported.

Legal challenges in state and federal courts have had mixed results, and last month, the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Texas’ version of the law in a 2-1 decision.

Gray, who added the social media ban to the bill amid bipartisan support, also successfully amended it to include a $100 per-year state voucher for parents who buy content-filtering software.

Under the language of the amendment, parents would submit a reimbursement request to the state.

Eastman, speaking to the voucher plan, criticized it as poorly worded and suggested that Alaskans might be able to receive reimbursements for their Netflix subscriptions because that company offers content-filtering features on its video streaming service.

Vance said legislators should not lose sight of the bill’s ultimate goal.

“In the end, we’re protecting the most vulnerable among us,” she said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com. Follow Alaska Beacon on and .

“Young children are the best of us: hopeful, idealistic and driven by unconditional love. We owe it to them — and to the world they will inherit and improve — to nurture and protect their developing brains and bodies, as well as their instincts and talents and hearts.”

—Dr. Dana Suskind, founder and co-director of  and author of “”

“What inspires me to work on behalf of our youngest children and families is that we are seeing the promise of our future fulfilled before us and living into our values every day.”

—Anne Mosle, executive director of

“State policy choices matter! The research is clear that state investments in young families and caregivers lead to a lifetime of benefits for children and society. It’s inspiring to work toward policy solutions that will enhance well-being and equity.”

—Cynthia Osborne, executive director of

“I’m inspired by family child care educators! I’m so grateful for their endless commitment as teachers and caregivers. Every time I watch them fostering curiosity, wonder and joy in young children, I am re-energized and ready to redouble efforts to get them the recognition they deserve.”

—Jessica Sager, co-founder and CEO of

“I’m inspired to work on behalf of children because securing our children’s future isn’t just a moral imperative; it’s the most crucial investment we can make. Every child deserves an equal opportunity to fulfill their dreams, and it’s our job to dismantle barriers that stand in the way of those dreams and create pathways for their success.”

—Marquita Little NuMan, executive director of

“The years of early childhood are the most consequential period in all of human development, holding the potential to put children on the path to lifelong success. But if the moral obligation isn’t sufficient rationale, think of the money. Our nation continues to spend an untold fortune on the results of our failure to act in accordance with the science of early development. It’s time we got smarter.”

—Dan Wuori, strategic advisor on early childhood, , and founder & president of

“When I was younger, I knew I wanted to be a super-engaged mom and also have an impactful career, but our public policies and workplace structures were not at all set up for that. I’ve been working for the past several decades to change the status quo—to make it easier for people to parent, work and care, because all of our children, regardless of where they come from or what they look like, should be able to count on safety and nurturance from their parents, early educators and community as a whole.”

—Julie Kashen, director of women’s economic justice and senior fellow at

“I’ve been inspired by children’s capacity and life stance, of course, but especially by the very young children with significant needs and disabilities whom I worked with long ago, and whose lives and opportunities have been very uneven. I’m inspired by them and by the millions of children who need significant supports to thrive and grow, the tireless work of their caregivers and educators and the promise of even more social progress to build a better future for the next generation and the world.”

—Nonie Lesaux, co-director of the at the Harvard Graduate School of Education

“Being a child advocate is not someone else’s responsibility. It calls on all of us — lawyers, doctors, teachers, environmental specialists, and spiritual leaders — to keep the best interests of children and families in mind in our work, to stand up for improved conditions that will help children and families thrive, to listen and be guided by the work of communities, and to leave the earth in better shape for the next generation.”

—Joan Lombardi, senior fellow at the at Georgetown University

“Kids are who inspire me! The urgency to honor childhood, the right to be a child— their full authentic selves, to play, to be loved, to be respected, to be free, that’s what fuels my work.”

—Shantel Meek, founding executive director of the at Arizona State University 

“When I think about what inspires me, the answer is simple: my daughter. Through my own lived experience as a young single mom, and as a Black woman, I quickly came to understand the significance of Dr. King’s quote: ‘Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly,’ and that my daughter’s destiny would be strongly connected to the success of her peers. It’s what’s led me to community organizing, advocacy and public policy work, and on this journey, I’ve met thousands of children and young people who give me hope for our future.”

—Kim Janey, president & CEO of economic mobility pathways

“Young children inspire me with their joyful and curious approach to our world. Protecting that genuine wonder drives me to ensure we are doing everything possible to foster their joy through inclusive learning environments across all settings in partnership with educators and families.”

—Michelle Kang, CEO of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (

“The hardworking educators who undertake the often-underappreciated tasks of educating, nurturing and loving our children provide tremendous inspiration for my work. Their tireless efforts support families and, in turn, sustain the vitality of our city. I am equally inspired by the families navigating the complexities of child care in hopes of giving their children the strongest possible start in life. Ultimately, I recognize the profound impact of high-quality child care on society. Prioritizing children’s well-being isn’t just morally right; it’s also an investment in creating a brighter future for all of us in New York City.”

—Jocelyn Rodriguez, director of child care quality innovation at  

“Every day, young children are on a journey to learn something new about their world, and the early educators who care for them encourage this by creating joyful, affirming and nurturing spaces. I am inspired to support these early educators because the children in their programs hold so much hope and promise for our future.”

—Erica Phillips, executive director of the

“The foundations of a just and good society that allow persons to reach their full potential are established in the earliest years of human life. I work for young children and their families because I care deeply about building a society where human dignity is respected and individuals have every opportunity to flourish.

​—Joe Waters, co-founder and CEO at

“I am inspired in my work by the joy and creativity of young children as they explore the world, and the brilliance and thoughtfulness of the teachers and caregivers who help shape the environments in which they learn.”

​—Diana Mendley Rauner, president of

“As Too Small to Fail celebrates its 10th anniversary promoting early brain and language development, I continue to learn and feel inspired by the children and families that I meet through our work in communities across the country. I’m particularly inspired by the parents and caregivers who give so much of themselves to provide their children with the best start possible.”

​—Patti Miller CEO, , Clinton Foundation 

“As a child, I dreamt of making changes to the systems that impacted me, driven by a desire for fairness and equity. Now, as a mother, my greatest sense of purpose and joy comes from advocating for children’s rights and well-being. Navigating a fulfilling career alongside the challenges of rising child care costs has made me acutely aware of the obstacles many families face. As a deeply devoted mom, I am driven to create a better world for my children and all young ones, where they can thrive and reach their full potential.”

—Allison Gilbreath, senior policy and programs director at  

“There is something profound about a young child’s joy, curiosity and unlimited potential that compels me to build a world that keeps those intact for as long as possible.”

—Kai-ama Hamer, director of  

Every parent on some level wants what’s best for their children. Only a privileged few have the means to pursue that goal — frequently at the expense of less-privileged children, though they may never be aware of the price that’s been extracted. That’s the hard news in this kind-hearted book. The thing left unsaid when privileged parents say they want what’s best for their child, Jaffe writes, is “and not for other children.”

Jaffe doesn’t blame parents of privilege — a category to which she belongs — for the terrible circumstances of other children’s lives, but she does make clear that we all have a responsibility and a role in creating and perpetuating that disparity. Her book is directed primarily at parents of privilege, which she defines as “any family who writes down six or more figures on the ‘total household income’ line of their tax return,” and it is both an unflinching invitation for them to do better and a roadmap for how they can use their privilege to see to it that all children have what’s healthy and what’s best.

In interviews with child care and policy experts, parents, labor activists, attorneys, nannies, educators and others, Jaffe methodically lays out the reality of inequity that saturates every molecule of the U.S. child care and education system, starting before a child even comes into this world. (In Seattle, she writes, families trying to get on waiting lists for day care may see an option for “trying to conceive.”) The conversation she has with her readers isn’t accusatory or scolding, but there’s no softening of the fact that it’s a hard conversation to have — and one we all must engage in if we have any hope of our children living in a just and equitable world.

Jaffe starts her story with the birth of her daughter in September 2017 when she joined a listserv for parents in her Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. The daily meetups for these women and the occasional man were friendly, calm affairs dotted with small talk about babies’ sleep schedules and other minutiae of day-to-day life with an infant.

The listserv was an entirely different kettle of fish, with 30-part threads dissecting the many and varied ways the parents could get it wrong. The abiding theme was “worried” — If you skip the iron-fortified cereal, do you worry about your baby getting enough iron? Every conversation presented a new variation on the theme, things Jaffe had never even considered worrying about. Iron? Do I need to worry about that now? But worry was in strong competition with the listserv’s other theme: getting the best for their child — the best waffles, the best teething necklaces, pediatrician or strollers, the best pre-K. The best life.

The conversation gave her a sense of whiplash, Jaffe writes. She was working as an attorney for a nonprofit law firm that brought lawsuits on behalf of children in foster care; one of her responsibilities was to read fatality reports of children who died in foster care after their state’s government already knew they were in danger. Finishing her workday immersed in questions of abuse and neglect, opening her computer to the litany of worries from the privileged parents of Park Slope felt like a “fable about the children in the city I lived in.”

Acknowledging how hard it is for just about anyone to be a parent in the U.S. — the only high-income country in the world without paid leave for new parents, where child care costs more than the average mortgage payment, schools are chronically underfunded and “our college admission process is reminiscent of “The Hunger Games” — Jaffe is sympathetic to the challenges. But the point of her book is not to comfort the comfortable; It is to paint a clear picture of the country’s two-tiered system between the top 10 to 20 percent of income earners and everybody else. Outcomes for children not born into one of those top brackets are vastly different from the privileged few: Racism is at the root of that inequity. The practical outcome of parents with privilege relentlessly pursuing their own child’s interests — hoarding resources within the public school system, for instance, or maneuvering to keep their children (and their resources) out of majority low-income, majority Black and Latino schools — leaves other children behind.

Beginning with early childhood, Jaffe looks at the child care system’s deep segregation by race and class. Because the U.S. has no child care infrastructure, she writes, most parents have little choice when finding their young child’s care, but parents of privilege have the option of touring various programs and finding the best among choices. Low-income families are relegated to publicly funded programs in a fractured system. Families in the middle struggle to make the “least bad” choice among limited options. No one asks about the wages and benefits of the child care workers and pre-K teachers in any of those choices, and few of us ask about the structural forces that have created this impossible situation.

It would matter if we did, Jaffe writes, and then offers a list of questions to prompt that conversation, a format she follows in each chapter with takeaways detailing individual choices, collective action and further reading for readers wanting to act or to find out more about that chapter’s issues. You can’t read “Wanting What’s Best” without gaining a clearer understanding of the inequity baked into everything concerning children’s lives in the U.S. and without seeing at least some way to take action precisely where you are.

Throughout “Wanting What’s Best” Jaffe reiterates the fact that even though individual choices matter, the solution to fixing our broken system doesn’t lie with any individual. The U.S. has no cultural understanding of child-rearing as a communal activity and doesn’t acknowledge the commonsense reality that everyone in our society benefits when every child has enough to eat, a safe place to sleep, loving adults to care for them and good schools to educate them — the best, in other words.

“But collective action,” she writes, “particularly when it’s undertaken by people with privilege, creates change. Decisions about child care, schools, and how we use our time and money may not feel like political decisions, but they are.”

What would it look like, she asks, if we fought for other people’s children as if our own children’s future depended on it?

Children under 5 years old may be eligible for coronavirus shots as soon as the end of February — much earlier than previously expected.

On Tuesday, Pfizer and BioNTech that they requested the Food and Drug Administration authorize a two-dose regimen of their vaccine for children under 5. Meanwhile, the companies will continue to research the efficacy of a third shot.

In December, disappointing trial data showing that two smaller doses were safe for youngsters but, in children ages 2 to 4, threatened to extend the timetable before which young children would be eligible for COVID vaccines. But the FDA urged Pfizer-BioNTech to submit their initial trial data so that regulators could begin the review process, then to later submit numbers on a third shot once those become available, The Washington Post . Results from the study of a three-dose regimen are expected to arrive in late March at the earliest.

“If they get the two-dose approved, then they can get going. And by the time the first round of two-dose people are ready to boost … if they have a third dose approved, then they’ll get through this course,” explained Benjamin Linas, professor of medicine at Boston University. “But if they wait until they have all the data for the three-dose course, then they won’t even be able to get started.”

Even if three shots prove to be the optimal vaccination level for the age group, the Massachusetts doctor reassures parents that two doses provide far more protection than zero.

“Absolutely, it should give families some peace of mind having their children two-dose vaccinated,” he told ����Ӱ��.

The news may bring some long-awaited relief to parents of children under 5 for whom the Omicron surge has been particularly frightening and stressful between spikes in and widespread .

“As a parent of a 3-year-old, this news does feel like light at the end of (the) tunnel,” said Jorge Burmicky, assistant professor at Howard University, in a sharing The Washington Post story.

But nationwide, rates of pediatric vaccination remain low. As of Jan. 26, just 20 percent of children ages 5 to 11 were fully immunized, while 55 percent of those ages 12 to 17, who have been eligible for shots for longer, had received two doses, according to data published by the .

As of November, nearly a third of parents of children ages 5 to 11 said they would “wait and see” before immunizing their kids in the most recent poll administered by the on parents’ vaccine attitudes.

For this decision around immunizations for children 6 months to 4 years old, Linas believes federal agencies must be upfront about the expected authorization process. Without clear messaging that young kids may ultimately need to receive three shots — but that the initial authorization of a two-shot regime allows youngsters to safely get started — he worries the eventual pivot could erode some parents’ faith in the shots. 

“If you don’t talk about it … it just creates this opportunity for misinformation, lack of trust, and then people shut down,” he said. “This is all about trust right now.”

When he fell ill from the coronavirus in April 2020 and went to the hospital during New York City’s deadly first wave, the young girl, then just 7, turned to her mother.

“He’ll be OK, right?” she asked.��

Her mother, Melissa Keaton, days later had to tell her daughter that their beloved “Papa,” who was 61, wasn’t coming back to the Flatbush apartment he had shared with them and where he helped care for his granddaughter.

“My father was in the hospital,” Keaton told ����Ӱ��. “We never heard from him. We were never able to see him or speak to him. Once he passed, [Melanie] didn’t get to see that visual, final goodbye.”

The young Brooklynite is one of more than who are believed to have lost parents or caregivers to COVID during the pandemic — roughly 1 in every 450 young people in the U.S. under age 18.

The count updates the already-staggering October estimate that had lost caregiving adults to the virus, and is four times more than a springtime tally that found nearly had experienced such loss. In a Dec. 9 titled “Hidden Pain,” researchers from the and published the new total, which they derived through combining coronavirus death numbers with household-level data from the 2019 American Community Survey.��

The death toll further underscores the daunting task facing schools as they seek to help students recover not just academically, but also emotionally, from a pandemic that has already stretched 22 months and claimed more than 800,000 American lives. It’s an issue of such elevated concern that Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, on Dec. 7, used a rare public address to warn Americans of the pandemic’s . An accompanying calls out the particular difficulties experienced by young people who have lost parents or caregivers to the virus.

“As the nation looks to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an urgent need to address the crisis of children left behind,” said COVID Collaborative CEO John Bridgeland in a addressing his organization’s co-published research.

Bereaved children have higher rates of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder than those who have not lost parents, according to that followed grieving children for multiple years. They are more than twice as likely to show impairments in functioning at school and at home, even seven years later, meaning these children need both immediate and long-term counseling and support to deal with such a traumatic loss.

“For these children, their whole sky has fallen, and supporting them through this trauma must be a top priority.”

The sky had indeed fallen for the Keaton family.��

After having suffered a single seizure three years prior, Melissa Keaton said she developed full-blown epilepsy after losing her father, experiencing multiple uncontrolled fits. Melanie witnessed her mother in spasms on the floor on at least one occasion.

The elementary schooler’s virtual classroom was unequipped to help the young child process her multiple traumas, her mother said, and the school mental health services did not reach out to the family. Meanwhile, COVID-related lessons — for example, on the vaccine — triggered painful pandemic memories for Melanie, making online class occasionally upsetting, with her school missing signs she was struggling emotionally.��

Of all children who have lost caregivers to the virus since COVID-19 struck, a disproportionate share are Black. Those losses among African-American youth like Melanie have come at more than twice the rate of white young people, according to data in the new report. Indigenous, Hispanic and Asian youth have also suffered outsized losses, the numbers show.

“The children most likely to lose a caregiver to COVID-19 are also most likely to have faced previous adversities,” said Dan Treglia, co-author of the report and associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania. That ups the stakes, he added, on providing support to help those young people heal.

Also particularly vulnerable are the 70 percent of all COVID-bereaved children who are 13 years old or younger. More than 13,000 children of all ages lost their only in-home caregiver.

Despite dire need, however, professional help often remains inaccessible. In Melanie’s case, Melissa Keaton said she turned over every possible stone seeking mental health support for her daughter, but was unable to secure counseling. Well before the pandemic drove greater demand, reported offering mental health services to students and 52 percent said that inadequate funding was “a major limitation” in their ability to provide those services, according to 2017-18 data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

“Trying to find a therapist or someone for her to talk to, it was impossible,” she explained. “Calling, you know, office after office and everyone is at capacity, there’s nothing available.”

The COVID Collaborative and Social Policy Analytics report recommends that policymakers devote resources to grief camps, group counseling and therapy to support children like Melanie as they move forward and recover. They recommend the creation of a bereavement fund for affected families, similar to that which was created for relatives of Sept. 11 victims. Schools, the researchers say, can play a critical role in ramping up mental health services and mentoring for students.

The American Rescue Plan, which will send a total of $122 billion to U.S. schools, includes funding that some campuses are using to responding to students’ mental health needs, especially when it comes to pandemic-related traumas. So far, of school systems have invested some of their relief money in social-emotional learning materials, according to a Dec. 13 tabulation from the data service Burbio, which has tracked how districts are using the influx of federal dollars.

But with or without support, the Keaton family will continue to feel a gaping hole in their household. The holidays, Melissa Keaton said, are especially hard. They always used to spend Thanksgiving watching football with her father. His Dec. 23 birthday was a regular part of their Christmas routine.

“We have these people who have lost family members, and they’re kind of forgotten, the unknowns. We don’t talk about it because everyone wants to get past it and get back to normal,” she said.��

“But for people who have lost someone, certain things will just never be normal.”

Early Monday morning, a steady stream of Brooklyn families showed up at one neighborhood pharmacy for childrens’ COVID vaccines — even as hundreds of other New York City kids confronted uncertainty and long lines at school sites.

At Neergaard Pharmacy in Park Slope, Heath Griffths, 5, was soon 10 micrograms of Pfizer vaccine richer — departing for a happily delayed school day equipped with a stuffed bear from the pharmacy shop.

Elsewhere in the city, in lines hundreds deep. On the opening day for school-based vaccine pop-up sites, operated by the city and Department of Education, many were turned away as demand overwhelmed supply.

Line an ave deep for kids shots…but no one here to give the shots! H and h was supposed to be here at 630 for a 7 start. Now 730 and a line 100+ deep

— Jason Barnett (@barnettjason)

On 5th Avenue in Park Slope on Monday, Neergaard began its first official day of vaccinating kids, administering about 200 doses, preparing to offer hundreds of vaccines to 5- to 11-year-olds this week.

Vaccines have been a staple for Neergaard, an independent Brooklyn institution .  

About 15 minutes into a child’s screams from a fear of needles, one pharmacist told ����Ӱ�� families choose them for their “more personalized touch — people come in and feel like they’re comforted.” He added, “that kid’s been here a long time.” 

Pharmacists had a deep bag of tricks: “Are you a righty or a lefty?” and “count down from 10 with me” were repeated throughout the morning to help calm kids’ anxieties about the dreaded needles.  

One Neergaard pharmacist said over the last two weeks, the shop has seen droves of parents walk in, seeking shots ever since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention news broke. Appointment sign-ups for 5- to 11-year-olds almost crashed Neergard’s website. 

“I definitely prefer to go here than a place far away … this felt a lot better,” Ava, 10, told ����Ӱ�� after receiving her vaccine.

Meanwhile, as he waited to get his shot, Heath Griffiths silently looked to his mother, Rachel. Confident and on a mission, Heath never took off his scooter helmet. Time was of the essence — he didn’t want to miss any more school than he had to at P.S. 282 on nearby 6th Avenue.

For the Griffiths, the pediatric vaccine means indoor playdates and family visits are back on the table. Once Heath and his 8-year-old brother finish their sequences, the Griffiths will fly to Arizona for the first time since the pandemic began.

“We’re following the CDC guidance and are really excited. I hope everyone decides to do it,” Rachel Griffiths said, adding that the excitement’s been constant since authorization was announced on Nov. 2. Dancing erupted in their kitchen when Heath and his brother learned the news. 

Excitement was an understatement for Neergaard regulars Luke and Parker Trautmann, 10 and 8 years old, respectively. “Relieved,” they jointly agreed. 

“Right when the message came out that kids can be vaccinated, she was on the case,” Parker said of his mom, Amanda.

When first-week, city-run appointment slots filled up, Amanda looked to pharmacies. She said her boys needed the in-person connections vaccines afforded, and the sooner the better. 

And Ava’s mother, Allison, said what was on a lot of parents’ minds: 

“We just hope that a lot of kids are going to be protected,” she said, looking forward to the days when visiting friends and family will “feel a little bit safer, for us and for them.” 

“Happy, excited,” she said, throwing her arms up to celebrate.

Her 5-year old sister, Mayari, who also got the shot, jumped in a circle to show off her “happy vaccine dance” outside the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, where both siblings got immunized.

Then the sisters, hand in hand with their father, skipped down the street back to their car.

Days after Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gave the final sign-off late Tuesday night to Pfizer-BioNTech’s pediatric coronavirus vaccine for use in children ages 5 to 11, shots are now rolling out and kids are — gleefully — pushing up their sleeves.

The Brooklyn Children’s Museum, located in the borough’s Crown Heights neighborhood, is one of to offer pediatric shots. Before the site’s 9 a.m opening, a modest line of roughly a dozen parents and children gathered by the front doors. A larger crowd came for shots afterschool on Thursday, when the museum first had doses available for the age group.

“It’s emotional,” said Kira Halevy, who was bringing her 6- and 8-year-old boys to get immunized. The pandemic has taken up about a quarter of her younger son’s lifetime, and the family jumped at the first opportunity to vaccinate their kids. 

“We’ve been waiting for this,” she said.

Leading up to the shots, her family used the event as a real-world lesson in biology and medicine, explaining the mechanics of the doses.

“The first shot tells your body what corona is,” recited Zeke, Halevy’s older son. “The second shot is telling your body how to fight it.” 

In New York City, nearly ages 12 to 17 have been vaccinated, well above the national rate reported by the American Academy of Pediatrics for that group. 

Now with shots available for the younger age group, a speedy and thorough rollout could significantly lower COVID’s hospitalization and death toll in the U.S. over the coming months and dull the impact of future variants, according to recent . Polling indicates, however, that nationwide will “definitely not” vaccinate their kids and others will “wait and see.” 

But the early-bird crowd on Friday was gung-ho.

“I was literally jumping up and down,” said Jenna Sternbach, describing the feeling when she received the email telling her she could sign her 11-year-old daughter Adlai up for a vaccine appointment. Now, having received the first dose and with a second soon to come, Adlai will soon be able to play soccer without a mask, which she looks forward to. 

The elder Halevy son, Zeke, can see himself very soon back at his friends’ houses, trading  Pokemon cards, he said.

And Wesley Francois, 15, who has been eligible for vaccines since the spring but was finally persuaded to receive the shot by a requirement for his basketball team, was excited to soon be able to ease up on masking.

“I’ll be a little more free,” he told ����Ӱ��.

Plus, the pain was only a 1 on a scale of 1 to 5, Mateo Vasquez, 7, estimated after his shot.

The nation’s largest school district is doing its part to encourage the vaccination effort. On Monday, New York City officials are setting up pop-up vaccine clinics at across the five boroughs.

Efforts to boost accessibility to the shots is key, said pediatrician Maria Molina, who practices in Manhattan and the Bronx.

“Now that we have a vaccine,” she told ����Ӱ��, “we have to make sure that every child has the same opportunity to get it.”

That extends to cultural factors as well, she noted. “I not only share the language of my patients, but I share the culture,” said Molina, who immigrated to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic and is now a member of SOMOS Community Care, a network of city health providers from diverse linguistic backgrounds. “It’s coming from someone who looks similar to them.”

The city has extended its for new vaccine recipients to youngsters as well, including those who receive shots at school. After first doses, families will receive an email explaining how to select between a prepaid $100 debit card, tickets to sporting events  or other perks.

“We really want kids to take advantage, families to take advantage of that,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Young folks told ����Ӱ�� that they had wide-ranging plans for their newfound cash: some planning to save or donate it to school fundraisers sending holiday gifts abroad, others are planning to splurge on the aforementioned Pokemon cards or Heelys sneakers, which come with wheels in the sole.

The mayor has not stipulated whether there is a student vaccination threshold at which schools would drop universal masking rules for the classroom — a move made by at least a dozen major districts across the country in recent weeks, with mixed opinions from health experts.

Parents at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum vaccination site on Friday said that they would prefer schools wait to scrap mask mandates until vaccination rates reach as many as 90 percent of students. 

“We’d rather have any form of protection,” said Kira Halevy.

Elsewhere in the U.S., Chicago Public Schools announced Thursday that it will cancel school Friday, Nov. 12 for the nation’s first “” in an effort to boost immunization rates.

It’s an “opportunity for parents and guardians to take their children five years of age and older to get vaccinated at their pediatrician’s office, at a healthcare provider, or at a CPS school-based site or community vaccination event,” schools CEO Pedro Martinez wrote to parents.

For those wary of vaccination, other effective safety measures against the virus may soon be on the way. Pfizer announced Friday that their new antiviral pill cuts the risk of COVID hospitalization or death by in vulnerable adults. That development, alongside President Joe Biden’s recently announced vaccine mandate deadlines for large workplaces, led Pfizer board member Scott Gottlieb to tell CNBC on Friday that the pandemic “” by early January. Other health experts have their doubts, citing the possibility of new mutations of the virus.

Back in Brooklyn, Winona Winkel, 9, got her first vaccine dose Friday and is already counting the days to her second. 

“Then I can hug my friends,” she said. 

The protection provided by the shots, the companies say, supports authorization of the vaccine for the 28 million U.S. children in that age group. The Food and Drug Administration has a hearing scheduled Tuesday with expert advisors to review the case for authorization. 

Two weeks ago, Pfizer and BioNTech submitted their formal request to the FDA for the green light to deliver doses to 5- to 11-year olds. 

If the review timeline spans a similar length as that of vaccines for 12- to 15-year olds, the agency could grant authorization ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday — meaning that the vast majority of K-12 students may soon be eligible for immunizations.

The vaccine efficacy numbers come from a Pfizer and BioNTech provided to the FDA, released Friday morning by the federal agency. In their trial, the companies tested a 10 microgram dose of the vaccine, one-third the size of the shot for teenagers and adults, and found that it produced a “robust” antibody response. Immunity and side effects, they said, were comparable to those produced by the larger dose in 16- to 25-year-old patients. 

No new safety problems or cases of heart inflammation were observed in the trial, which tested 2,268 participants. Israeli studies have found myocarditis to occur in , so it’s possible the condition would have been too rare to have been detected in the main study. 

The news comes as children make up over , amounting to about a quarter of all reported infections per week nationwide, according to mid-October data published by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Over have closed so far this year due to outbreaks of the virus, according to Burbio, an organization that has tracked schools through the pandemic, though COVID-related school closures have slowed considerably in recent weeks as and schools hone their protocols to curb spread.

The White House has made it clear that immunizing children will be a priority once shots are authorized for 5- to 11-year olds. The Biden administration will match schools with COVID-19 vaccine providers, the White House Wednesday. The Department of Health and Human Services will also enlist community-based clinics, doctor’s offices, hospitals and faith-based organizations in rapidly distributing vaccines.

Two-thirds of parents of children aged 5 to 11 years say they will immunize their children against COVID-19 once shots are authorized for the age group, according to by the COVID-19 Vaccine Education and Equity Project.

“While we’re encouraged to see that a majority of parents intend to vaccinate their children against COVID-19 once they are eligible, there is clearly more work to be done to help address parents’ questions and ease concerns about the vaccines,” Beth Battaglino, CEO of the nonprofit HealthyWomen, one of the partner organizations behind the polling, said in a .

Pfizer-BioNTech vaccinations have been fully approved by the FDA for individuals ages 16 and above, and have emergency use authorization for teenagers ages 12 to 15. Shots for kids younger than five may arrive .

The Department of Health and Human Services will also enlist community-based clinics, doctor’s offices, hospitals and faith-based organizations in rapidly distributing vaccines through the end of the year, making enough available to immunize 28 million children. 

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Considered a major milestone toward ending the pandemic, emergency use authorization of a vaccine for children could be announced any day. Pfizer-BioNTech sent data on the use of its vaccine among that age group to the Food and Drug Administration in late September. An FDA advisory committee is scheduled to meet Oct. 26, followed by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention committee the week after. The administration said it is “hosting operational readiness calls” with states, tribes and territories to ensure a smooth process once the FDA approves and the CDC recommends the vaccine. With thousands of schools still quarantining students because of outbreaks, families and schools have been anticipating this key step.

“Superintendents have been very anxious for this to happen,” said Dan Domenech, executive director of AASA, The School Superintendents Association. But he added that some schools might consider the attitudes of their community before agreeing to serve as vaccination sites. “If they have a supportive community, they will do vaccines in the schools as they’ve done in the past.”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency will take charge of setting up sites, storing supplies — including smaller needles — and providing transportation to sites, if needed, according to the fact sheet. The White House said pediatrician’s offices and pharmacies will also be critical in providing the vaccine because they are already “trusted sources.” Roughly 25,000 pediatrician’s offices, tens of thousands of pharmacies and over 100 children’s hospitals are expected to be involved, offering vaccines during the evenings and weekends for convenience.

The American Academy of Pediatrics applauded the announcement.

“Parents trust us to care for their children, come to us with questions and concerns about how to keep them healthy and safe, and will turn to us during this next phase for reassurance and guidance about the COVID-19 vaccine,” AAP President Lee Savio Beers, said in a statement. “We are ready to do what we’ve always done: counsel our families and protect our patients.”

But as Domenech said, the administration is expecting that not all parents will be eager to get their children vaccinated, considering less than of adolescents are vaccinated, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. HHS will launch a nationwide education campaign to assure parents that the vaccine is safe, working with schools and community organizations to “increase vaccine confidence.”

“A key focus of our efforts is raising vaccine awareness and getting parents the facts they need to make the right choice for their kids,” Jeff Zients, White House coronavirus response coordinator, said during a briefing Wednesday.

Schools have been used as for over 100 years, and Linda Mendonca, president of the National Association of School Nurses, said school nurses “have a trusted relationship with students and families.” But schools are facing a along with many other staff positions, which could impact the vaccination effort as it has school-based testing.

An conducted at the end of September showed that two-thirds of parents with children in the 5-11 range said they’re “likely” to get their children vaccinated, but 43 percent responded that they would be “very likely.” 

Those who are unsure about vaccinating their children are more likely to be unvaccinated themselves and continue to note the speed of vaccine’s development and potential side effects as top reasons for their hesitancy. A quarter of parents of adolescents responding said a requirement that their child be vaccinated to attend school could make them change their minds.

is the only state so far to mandate the vaccine for students once it earns full FDA approval. But others are expected to follow. In Washington, the Seattle Public Schools is considering that would ask the state’s health department to issue a such mandate.

In a key step toward coronavirus vaccine access for over 28 million U.S. children, Pfizer-BioNTech Thursday morning that they have submitted their formal request to federal regulators for authorization to deliver shots to youth ages 5 to 11.

The move comes after the pharmaceutical companies announced positive topline results among that age group in clinical trials in late September. The testing regimen delivered two reduced-potency doses to more than 2,000 youngsters, producing a “robust” antibody response, including immunity and side effects comparable to that produced by the larger dose in 16- to 25-year-old patients.��

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“With new cases in children in the U.S. continuing to be at a high level, this submission is an important step in our ongoing effort against COVID-19,” Pfizer Thursday.

The Food and Drug Administration has an Oct. 26 advisory committee meeting to review Pfizer-BioNTech’s request to expand authorization to younger children.��

Pressed on what issues will be on the table during that meeting and how soon afterward authorization might be granted, a spokesperson responded to ����Ӱ�� that the “FDA cannot comment on its interactions with manufacturers about their investigational products.”

Should the review process follow a similar timeline as it did for 12- to 15-year olds, which stretched just over a month from an April 9 submission to a May 10 authorization, children ages 5 to 11 could receive the greenlight for COVID immunizations by early- to mid-November, sometime between Halloween and Thanksgiving.

Meanwhile, schools are facing a third straight school year disrupted by the virus, which as of last week had even as cases overall have begun to fall. As of Sunday, outbreaks had triggered some across 561 districts since buildings opened their doors for the 2021-22 school year, according to the website Burbio, which has tracked school policies and schedules through the pandemic.

Although children rarely fall seriously ill from the virus, the Delta variant has driven up caseloads among unvaccinated Americans, including youth. Last week, over 173,000 pediatric cases were reported, accounting for nationwide, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Vaccines are currently authorized for youth ages 12 to 15, and fully approved for those 16 and up. As of Sept. 29, of 12- to 17-year olds in the U.S. had received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the pediatrics academy, while of adults 18 and older are fully vaccinated.

Youth immunization rates, however, vary greatly by locale. In 10 states, ages 12 to 17 have received at least one dose of the vaccine, while in 21 states, the same is true for less than half of youth that age.

Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that for all eligible students in the state, though the rule will likely not go into effect until July 2022.

Some districts have moved to implement more immediate mandates for children ages 12 and up including Los Angeles, Oakland and Culver City, all in California; and Hoboken, New Jersey. Washington D.C. is also that would require all students to be fully immunized against the virus by Dec. 15.

Though it may prove a challenge to persuade the parents of K-12 students to receive vaccinations in some districts, COVID shots are the most effective way to defend children against the virus, Benjamin Linas, professor of medicine at Boston University, told ����Ӱ�� last month.

“With the vaccine, you’re very well protected from the bad outcomes.”

In a pivotal development for school coronavirus safety, Pfizer-BioNTech announced Monday that its vaccine was for children ages 5 to 11 in trials.

These are the first such results for this age group in the U.S., and data have not yet been peer-reviewed or submitted to the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization. The pharmaceutical company plans to apply for approval to use the shot in children , the New York Times reports, meaning that millions of 5- to 11-year-olds could be inoculated before Halloween if the regulatory review goes as smoothly for this age group as it did for adolescents.

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The trial included 2,268 participants ages 5 to 11 who were each given a two-dose regimen of the vaccine 21 days apart. Children were given a 10 microgram dose, smaller than the 30 micrograms administered to older children and adults, which the drug company said was a carefully selected dosage for safety, tolerability and effectiveness.

One month after the second dose, the shots produced an immune response and side effects comparable to that delivered by the larger dose in 16- to 25-year-old patients, Pfizer said. A company spokesperson confirmed to CNN that there were in the trial, a type of heart inflammation that has been linked with mRNA vaccines in boys and young men.

The results come at a pivotal time, as children now make up and as the highly contagious Delta variant has sent more children into hospitals in the past few weeks than at any other point in the pandemic.

“Since July, pediatric cases of COVID-19 have risen by about 240 percent in the U.S. — underscoring the public health need for vaccination. These trial results provide a strong foundation for seeking authorization of our vaccine for children 5 to 11 years old, and we plan to submit them to the FDA and other regulators with urgency,” said Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s chairman and CEO.

The trial results are a hopeful indication that shots will be available for young children before the winter months, when low temperatures complicate outdoor activities and ventilation across much of the country.

“We are pleased to be able to submit data to regulatory authorities for this group of school-aged children before the start of the winter season,” said Dr. Ugur Sahin, BioNTech’s CEO and co-founder.

​​Pfizer said it is expecting to release trial data for children as young as 6 months “as soon as the fourth quarter of this year.”

Already in the first weeks of the school year, tens of thousands of students have been forced out of class due to infection or exposure to the virus, oftentimes with sparse learning opportunities while they self-isolate. In Mississippi, where the state does not require that masks be worn in school, more than in just one week and over 20,000 students and staff were in quarantine.

Even as quarantines stack up, worst-case outcomes among healthy children — like chronic illness or death — still remain “vanishingly rare,” health experts told ����Ӱ�� earlier this month.

But with schools across the country scrambling to regularly test their student bodies as a screening measure against viral spread, the now-likely approval of shots for elementary schoolers before the winter may provide an alternate route for mitigation, and could open the door for more widespread COVID vaccine mandates for students in school.

Earlier this month, Los Angeles Unified became the country’s first major school district to require student vaccinations with a rule dangling full vaccination by the winter holidays as a necessary step to remain learning in person for students 12 and up. Culver City, California and Hoboken, New Jersey made similar moves in late August.

LAUSD officials chose not to comment when asked by ����Ӱ�� whether they would extend their student vaccine requirement to learners ages 5 to 11, should shots be approved for that age group.

In late August, the FDA gave full authorization to coronavirus shots for individuals ages 16 and up. Health experts are mixed on whether schools should mandate that 12- to 15-year-old students, who are currently approved for doses under emergency use authorization, receive the vaccine, according to interviews ����Ӱ�� conducted in early September.

Authorization of shots for younger learners “starts to open the door” for wider student vaccine requirements, Benjamin Linas, professor of medicine at Boston University, told ����Ӱ��.

“We can and do mandate vaccines (like shots protecting against measles, mumps and rubella) for students all over the place, every day in this country,” he said. “We should treat [the COVID shot] like we treat all vaccines.”

Without mandates, districts may have trouble persuading their younger children to get immunized. Though youth ages 12 and up have been eligible for doses since May, only 43 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds are fully vaccinated, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. After a high of 1.6 million pediatric vaccinations per week in late May, the rate has since fallen to 273,000 weekly doses in mid-September.

“It’s going to be an uphill battle addressing [vaccine] hesitancy in schools,” said Linas.

Learn more about the vaccine results for 5- to 11-year-olds here:

Ashley Crandall’s second grade students didn’t like remote learning during the pandemic, and they hated wearing masks.

But they did like keeping their friends and family safe, and, as Crandall told them, the best way to do that was to keep masks up and to social distance.

“It’s bigger than just us,” Crandall reminded the kids when they would complain about the masks. “We have to really think ‘big picture’ about what’s happening in our community.”

Crandall did her best, largely successfully, to keep the scariest parts of the pandemic at bay in her classroom of 19 seven- to nine-year-olds at Democracy Prep at the Stewart Campus on the southeast side of San Antonio ISD which was hit particularly hard by COVID-19.

“They’ve all been impacted in some way,” Crandall said, referring to lost jobs, family members who fell ill or died, and the general anxiety swirling through the community. “School provided a place for students to disconnect from fears that might have been placed on them.”

Because she could provide that safe place, fear, happiness, and relief showed up in artwork the students created for ����Ӱ��, when they were asked to illustrate the “best” and “most challenging” parts of the year. The drawings conveyed two distinct messages:

First, the kids loved their friends, teacher, and community, and had suffered during remote learning.

Second, the kids saw the value in safety protocols even though they hated the masks.

One girl even added a little second-grader shade to her response, “I like how people couldn’t get in my fase [sic] because of Covid.”

The mental health effects of the pandemic went beyond fear, grief, and loss related to the virus, and even the additional economic strain placed on families. Experts say the disruption and discomfort of safety protocols were stressful for kids.

“Kids are more sensitive, they’re not all rolling with the punches,” said school counselor Phyllis Fagell, author of the book Middle School Matters. It’s the job of the adults in their lives to keep stress from turning into anxiety by giving them tools to cope, she said.

Powerlessness — feeling that the pandemic and all of its protocols have been forced upon them — was part of the stress, Fagell said.

Having the power to help protect their loved ones and friends could actually help, if framed correctly, Fagell said. “We want them to focus on what they can control and what they care about.”

That’s a lesson that extends beyond the pandemic. Mask-wearing isn’t the last opportunity kids will have to embrace an inconvenience or disruption by seeing it as a contribution to their community.

Crandall’s success in helping alleviate her students’ anxiety meant that the kids didn’t feel the urgency of mask wearing out of fear. She instead had to appeal to their shared values as a class — empathy for those who might have been fearful, civic duty to “slow the spread”, and care for the health of others.

So instead of “the school is making me wear this uncomfortable mask,” Crandall would emphasize that choosing to wear a mask is a way to strengthen the community bond, because they knew they were sacrificing some comfort to keep each other safe.

The mind-shift worked: “keeping our community safe” was the best part of the year, student David Sutton said.

Lead photos by Bekah McNeel, design by Cheryn Hong

Updated 

For years, kids in Veronica Salgado’s “transition camps” have enrolled because they are anxious about making the challenging leap from elementary to middle school, or from middle to high school.

But this summer, after more than a year of isolation, the struggle to keep up with online learning and little contact with friends, Salgado, Youth Development Manager for Family Service Association, and her team are seeing bigger problems than just helping kids figure out how to find their lockers or make new friends.

Anxiety levels are skyrocketing as kids worry about their ability to keep up with school work, focus in a room full of peers, and navigate social situations with peers they have not seen face-to-face in more than a year. The need is so great that some of the kids in the camp are in non-transitioning grades.

“It’s all hands on deck, for sure,” said Salgado of the camps, hosted in coordination with school districts, and now connected to a hub of mental health services, many established just months before the pandemic hit in March 2020 in what was once a mental health desert on San Antonio’s South Side.

Counselors say it was just in time too: The six organizations at the hub were inundated with requests for services during the pandemic. Now, with the pandemic waning and re-entry weighing on the minds of anxious students and families, they are going full steam to prevent disaster.

At the transition camp, Salgado and her colleagues are on alert for signs of what educators and healthcare providers are calling a “second pandemic” of mental health issues in young people.

“We want to keep them as motivated as possible,” Salgado said. Without someone making a deliberate effort to draw them out, she said, many remote learners will not simply bounce back into the social rhythms of school. “They just go back into their shell.”

While students are participating in transition camps, other family members can access counseling, addiction support, and parenting classes.

The pandemic itself originally accelerated the demand for mental healthcare. Where they had expected to provide about 300 people with counseling and related services in their first few months with the collaborative, said Talli Dolge, CEO of Jewish Family Service, which provides counseling services at the hub, by May 2020 her organization saw over 1,600.

Demand stayed strong in the next school year: From August 1, 2020 to May 27, 2021, the collaborative served 4,619 people.

Most of the counseling during the pandemic had to do with grief and fear as jobs disappeared, loved ones fell ill, and domestic violence increased.

The collaborative weathered the pandemic with telehealth, including donating burner phones to families who didn’t have access to the necessary technology. Family Services continued seeing clients in person, and Communities in Schools, another collaborative partner, made house calls.

But now there is a new issue: re-entry.

Kids started going back to school mid-year, Dolge said, and instantly the mental health crises exploded — the hazards of being isolated at home gave way to all out panic over returning to school.

“The crisis rates are up tremendously,” Dolge said. “Social anxiety is huge and across the board.”

It’s a daunting forecast, but two years ago it would have been devastating.

In 2018 student advocates in South San Antonio ISD hadn’t begun speaking out on the mental health challenges they faced, and the extraordinary lengths they had to go to in order to get help. Texas ranks 50h out of 51 states (and the District of Columbia) in access to mental healthcare for children and adults, and the situation is far worse for lower income communities like the South Side of San Antonio.

The first Mobile Mental Wellness hub opened at a building on the campus of a South San Antonio ISD elementary school in November 2019, not knowing then that a once-in-a-lifetime crisis would soon begin on the other side of the globe.

Going forward, organizations like Rise Recovery, a hub partner, will have their work cut out for them. Alcohol, marijuana, and prescription drug abuse rose during the pandemic as teens self-medicated in isolation.

Experts say they won’t really know how much until students return to school, where the eyes of teachers, coaches, and counselors can spot the warning signs.

What worries Rise Recovery CEO Evita Morin and others are the new cases, the ones that have been hidden behind screens during remote learning.

“The lack of data (during the pandemic was) disturbing,” said Morin said, “I’m not a fan of disciplining kids with addiction, but at least before COVID schools were catching drug use and they could report it to us.”

Because Texas schools started bringing a percentage of students back in the fall of 2020, educators got early glimpses of the coming mental health crisis. So, even with the pandemic still raging in San Antonio, other school districts asked the collaborative to set up shop in their district.

Neighboring school district Harlandale ISD launched their hub in November 2020, and Edgewood ISD, where the pandemic was falling heavily on working class and impoverished neighborhoods on the city’s West Side opened a hub in January 2021.

Altogether the three hubs have created mental healthcare access for 23,535 students from pre-k to twelfth grade.

For many, Dolge knows, the suffering is only getting deeper as the world moves forward, and traumas, anxieties, and grief goes unaddressed. She’s trying to raise more awareness in the community that help is within reach.

“If you didn’t know where to get help before,” Dolge said, “It’s so much more important to get help now.”

For mental health support related to COVID-19, call Texas’s 24/7 at 833-986-1919. You can also call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 or text 741741 from anywhere in the country to text with a trained crisis counselor. 

Dallas principal Ruby Ramirez knew trouble was brewing when the school counselor came to her office looking grim.

A once gregarious, curious student was disappearing before their eyes, the counselor told her, rarely speaking in class, ignoring his work and classmates, and combing his hair forward over his eyes as if to block out the world.

The bright middle schooler had been struggling with remote learning, and Dallas Independent School District’s School for the Talented and Gifted was able to convince his parents to send him to school in-person, hoping that would reignite his love of learning.

It didn’t.

The counselor also had an ominous message for Ramierez:

“He’s not the only one.”

That’s when Ramirez knew for sure: the second pandemic, the pervasive mental health challenges facing youth around the world, was at her doorstep. If her school didn’t get out ahead of it, they could lose their students. With the looming crisis, Ramierez decided it was time to revisit her training.

“We have work to do,” Ramirez said. Once she saw students’ languishment extending beyond remote learning, enduring into the school building, she knew deeper challenges awaited. “We had gotten to a point where the desire was fading.”

It was time to prepare her staff for the challenges to come.

Mental health professionals and doctors around the globe are warning that after more than a year of stress, isolation, grief, and fear, students will not simply spring back into school. Young people everywhere from to to the are reporting more anxiety, depression, and trauma symptoms.

In addition to withdrawal, increased moodiness and volatility, parents are reporting terrifying instances of self-harm, or young children expressing thoughts of suicide, which have led to a nationwide for children under 18.

The CDC reported that between April and October 2020, the proportion of emergency department visits for kids ages 5 to 11 was up 24% from the same period in 2019, the proportion of visits for 12–17 year-olds increased by 31%. Experts say the stressors of the pandemic have added to the already mounting crisis of anxiety-related disorders in , some as young as eight years old.

As a result, demand for the Mental Health First Aid courses is soaring among teachers, counselors, coaches — people who interact with kids, said Judith Allen, a certified Mental Health First Aid instructor.

Through her , Allen trained 500 adults this spring, and the nonprofit will triple instructors to meet demand this fall. The online courses made it possible for people from across the country to participate.

During her youth-oriented course — roughly seven to eight hours between the pre-work online, class session, and assessment — adult participants started by learning a foundational truth: administering first aid is not about the adult saving the day.

“You’re not a superhero, there’s no cape,” Allen said. In a session in early April, she showed the online group several scenarios where an adult might be tempted to come up with the saving insight or even offer an arm-chair diagnosis. The students in the scenarios expressing loneliness, hopelessness, and lack of motivation mirrored what parents and teachers are describing seeing more of in the wake of the pandemic.

Seeing a kid in crisis elicits a strong desire to save the day, Allen said, but rather than focusing on saying the right words to inspire, motivate, or even break through to a teen going through a mental health challenge, the training encouraged adults to be observant and open, listening to students without judgement or quick answers.

“(CPR training) does not qualify you to crack open their chest and massage their heart,” Allen told our class. She compared this to Mental Health First Aid: offering advice, diagnosis, or counseling should be left to professionals. “No one is leaving here with a doctorate in psychology or psychiatry.”

That didn’t mean walking away without new knowledge. Merely spotting trouble among adolescents can feel like something that requires just those degrees sometimes, and that’s where the course does offer tools most adults don’t already have, like looking for warning signs, indicators that something was amiss with the teen.

As students flood back into classrooms, experts are warning that the anxiety and mental health challenges could increase. Knowing the warning signs will be key to catching challenges early, getting the young person professional help, and possibly saving a life.

The course explained developmentally appropriate pulling away from family, changes in interests, and emotional expression and compared that to signs of trouble.

While most teens will pull away from family to some degree, pulling away from friends and mentors at the same time could be a sign of trouble.

Changing interests from childhood hobbies to more socially or ambitiously motivated interests is also typical. Losing interest and motivation in every area is a warning sign.

Watching the videos, it’s clear that a mental health challenge would be hard to spot from one interaction with a teenager. It was also understandable why signs were so much harder to spot over zoom: the intensity, frequency, duration of the warning sign is what Mental Health First Aid responders should note. While teachers might notice withdrawal or lack of motivation over Zoom, it was hard to tell where else that might be showing up. As Ramirez had noted, remote learning was tough for everyone, and it was hard to tell whether a child was experiencing Zoom fatigue or something more pernicious.

Teachers, coaches, and youth leaders who see the kids regularly and in person are ideally situated to catch the red flags when kids go back to school. Seeing students day in and day out will allow them to track the moods and behaviors that might need to be addressed. A bad day is going to happen, but lots of worsening bad days that extend into bad weeks is a sign of a mental health challenge.

Much of the data presented in the course helped lay people understand the difference between a mental health challenge and mental illnesses or disorders. One in five young people must manage a longer term mental illness in order to thrive, but many more will face a mental health challenge—for instance, a season of depression, substance abuse, or anxiety— during adolescence.

Thriving with a mental illness or disorder is possible if it’s properly managed, Allen reiterated during the training, just like with chronic physical conditions.

The converse is true as well. Mental health challenges can occur in people with no underlying mental illness.

That’s what’s going to be so tricky for teachers, experts warn. The conditions are right for just about anyone to have a mental health challenge in the next year. At the same time, mental illness, especially those illnesses related to trauma, will likely show itself more readily.

In some ways, Ramirez has been in the eye of that hurricane for a long time, though. Nearly half of all mental illnesses present by age 14, the last year of middle school.

Children who grow up in poverty, like 88% of the students at the School for the Talented and Gifted, are at for mental disorders, toxic stress, and trauma. They’ve also been more heavily impacted by the pandemic.

“It’s scary,” Ramirez said, “Traumas have set in for our students, in their minds, in their thinking, that are really going to hinder them forever if we don’t address them.”

Ramirez first took a Mental Health First Aid course, along with her administrative team, in 2018 through Mental Health America of Greater Dallas. Students are taught how to look out for each other as well. This year, with the increased urgency of the pandemic, 10 more staff members took the class so that a quarter of the adults on the School for the Talented and Gifted campus will be certified in Mental Health First Aid. She’s hoping to get parents to enroll as well.

“It changed the way that I saw mental health,” Ramirez said, “It helped destigmatize, for me and my administrative staff, mental health.”

For mental health support related to COVID-19, call Texas’s 24/7 at 833-986-1919. You can also call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 or text 741741 from anywhere in the country to text with a trained crisis counselor.

When it comes to providing play opportunities to children with disabilities, not all playgrounds are created equal. On most playgrounds in the United States, complex play structures with lots of stairs and uneven ground coverings like woodchips or gravel make play inaccessible to kids who depend on mobility aids like wheelchairs or walkers. Traditional swings or narrow slides are inaccessible to kids who need a caregiver’s support or the extra safety feature of a harness to use them.

While all new or renovated playgrounds stemming from the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), ADA compliance is only a bare minimum standard. An ADA-compliant playground might have an accessible entrance and transfer stations — spaces where a child in a wheelchair can pull themselves onto a play structure. But even with those features, many kids will still find themselves relegated to only parts of the playground and unable to enjoy many of its play features. The result is that crucial play opportunities remain limited or even unavailable to the disabled kids in the United States.

Recognizing the limits of traditional playgrounds, some designers and city administrators have begun making efforts to go beyond basic access and ensure that more kids with various disabilities are included in playground design — through a philosophy of radical inclusion.

“There’s [always] a strong focus on ramps and stairs,” says Nathan Schleicher, lead playground designer at , an organization that designs and builds custom playgrounds. “Ramps, stairs, and surfacing ended up being what define [an accessible] play space. But none of those things are play elements. We can do better than ramps, stairs, and surfacing. We can do better to be inclusive.”

A on St. Pete Pier in St. Petersburg, Florida, is an award-winning example of inclusive playground design. For the team behind the project, building an inclusive space meant making it “wheelchair accessible from bottom to top,” explains David Hugglestone, Senior Capital Projects Coordinator at the City of St. Petersburg.

The playground at St. Pete Pier has a mythical ocean and beach theme, complete with wooden sea turtles, larger-than-life starfish, and a pink and yellow kraken. “The design, from the beginning, included play opportunities both inside and underneath things like the kraken — its tentacles and its head,” says Hugglestone. “You can crawl into and under it. If you’re able to climb, you can climb the exterior of it. But even kids who may be in a wheelchair can be pushed in underneath.”

Jennifer Allen says that when her family visited the playground on vacation earlier this year, her 5-year-old son, who uses a wheelchair, navigated it easily. “It was a safe place for him to play tag or other running sports,” she says. Her two other kids, ages 4 and 9, loved the playground, too. For the Allens, “an inclusive playground means family play, [giving] my kids the opportunity to play together like siblings should.”

As cities focus on making playgrounds more inclusive, they’re also making them more inviting and more natural. The one-of-a-kind themed playground in St. Petersburg is also an excellent example of a welcoming community space. It has ample meeting places, complete with colorful oversized beach chairs for families to gather and lounge in, and was built using lots of natural materials, from its wood play structures to its rope climbing zones.

“The kids loved it and were wowed when they saw all the various spots to play on,” says Tonya Whitten, a local mother of three, whose 9-year-old and 5-year-old fell in love with the St. Pete Pier playground when the family first visited. While the older kids played, Whitten rested in a seating area with her 5-month-old baby. She says she looks forward to coming back as her youngest grows to take advantage of the scaled play zones that make the playground suitable for children of all ages.

Across the country in San Francisco, access, inclusion, and the incorporation of natural elements have gone hand in hand. There, , a partnership between the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department and the San Francisco Parks Alliance, is hard at work transforming thirteen of the city’s most timeworn parks. Seven of the thirteen parks have been completed thus far, with the remaining six scheduled for completion by 2022. The renovated parks boast smooth surfaces for safety, accessible swings and sandboxes, double-wide slides, and abstract play structures built from natural materials.

The shift toward inclusive playgrounds has happened thanks in large part to collaborative and community-led design processes. “The most successfully designed playgrounds, in my experience, that tackle challenging accessibility issues, tackled them very early on in the design,” says Susanna Fraker, a project manager with the San Francisco Parks Alliance.

In San Francisco, tackling questions about accessibility meant partnering with an ADA coordinator and hosting a series of meetings where community members could give input on playground design throughout the process.

Similarly, in St. Petersburg, the city partnered with the local (CAPI), a group committed to ensuring the voices of the disability community are represented in city projects.

“The committee was asked to review the design of the playground and all equipment and features and provide input and ideas,” with the goal of ensuring “equal access, equal participation and equal enjoyment” to all members of the St. Petersburg Community, explains Lendel Bright, ADA and Diversity Coordinator at the City of St. Petersburg and liaison to CAPI.

The challenges that both cities faced were what Fraker calls the “push and pull” of balancing the goal of radical inclusion with things like space and budget constraints. Wide pathways or transfer stations that make playgrounds maneuverable for wheelchair-users also take up a lot of space. Added accessible entrances and the one-of-a-kind equipment that make inclusive playgrounds so wonderful can also be expensive. “The fun part,” says Fraker, is when “given the space and budget constraints, designers come up with creative and fully-integrated solutions. It’s not a burden to the project. If anything, it adds play value.”

Schleicher says there’s also a growing understanding that playgrounds are important community gathering places and vital to childhood development. Investing in them just makes sense. “We put that investment into our landscape architecture and architecture. But we don’t necessarily put that investment in our children’s architecture and our children’s spaces. But there is a growing awareness that we can do better.”

At the playgrounds in both St. Petersburg and San Francisco, efforts to ensure radical inclusion have been more than worthwhile. “The minute we opened up [the St. Pete Pier Playground] and saw kids playing on it, it was worth every penny,” says Hugglestone.

“I think it is extraordinarily wonderful that there is a playground for every child [in St. Petersburg],” says Whitten. “It is a very rewarding feeling to see your child having the time of their lives playing on a playground and every child deserves that.”

This article originally appeared at and is published in partnership with