The Masking of America

By Suzanne Downing Thursday, 03 September 2020

Babies born in February of 2020 are now nearly seven months old, taking in the world with their eyes, and hearing language with their ears. They should be cooing and drooling and learning how to be human.

They are learning how to use their personalities and expression to change the world around them. They are learning how to flirt with their adult caregivers to get positive feedback, and maybe a spoonful of applesauce.

What babies are seeing since birth in the Year of the COVID is a world of faceless humanoids who do not make eye contact with others. What they are hearing are muffled and garbled sounds from behind masks.

Our children are being robbed of normal cues that contribute to healthy social development and it’s happening at a critical time in their development — their first two years. The only complete faces they see are their caregivers, and for some in daycare, they are not even seeing those faces.

They are not being exposed to the wide variety of human expression. Babies are not seeing how words are formed with lips and tongues. All of the visual clues are gone for how language is expressed.

Babies from 3-6 months respond to facial expressions of people, and they recognize sounds and begin to imitate facial expressions and sounds of others.

If all they can see are the eyes of people around them….

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