In 2020, the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, and the resulting highly infectious disease COVID-19 led to restrictions based on the principal of social distancing to curb the spread of the virus among the population and to prevent an overload of health system capacities. These restrictions changed the daily lives of young children and parents dramatically. In a German questionnaire study, we aimed to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the magnitude of stress in parent-child systems and on social-emotional child development. Our sample consisted of 90 (39 male, 51 female) children ( M = 17.2 months, SD = 9.7 months) aged 7–12 months ( n = 38), 13–24 months ( n = 31) and 25–38 months ( n = 21). Parental stress was measured using the German version of the Parenting Stress Index, namely Eltern-Belastungs-Inventar. Additionally, social-emotional child development was measured using the Social-Emotional Questionnaire of the Bayley-III. Our findings show that parents experienced more stress during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany compared to norms. Parental perceived stress was higher in parents of older children than younger ones. Interestingly, social-emotional child behavior scores significantly decreased with children’s increasing age. Moreover, higher parental stress was associated with lower values of social-emotional child behavior. Our findings provide important novel data on parental perceived stress and social-emotional child development during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, further research investigating the long-term consequences of the pandemic is needed.

It was the aim of this study to examine the motor and cognitive development of infants with congenital idiopathic clubfoot, compared with typically developing infants. We repeatedly tested the gross motor, fine motor, and cognitive abilities of 12 infants with clubfoot and 12 typically developing infants at the ages of 4, 6, 9, and 12 months with the Bayley-III Scales. All infants with clubfoot were treated with the Ponseti method, which led to a restriction of normal movements of the lower extremities in the first months of life. They showed a great delay in gross motor development but not in fine motor or cognitive development. However, in the clubfoot group, we found some slight deficits in specific cognitive tasks, including problem solving and spatial memory. In addition, our results revealed significant correlations between gross and fine motor performance and cognitive performance in the control group but only between fine motor and cognitive performance in infants with clubfoot, indicating that both, fine and gross motor skills, are related to cognitive processes and can mutually replace each other to a certain degree. Further research is needed to gain a deeper understanding of clubfoot infants’ development and to clarify the need for mobility training.

Until now, many studies have investigated the link between motor development and visual-spatial abilities in infancy and childhood. Most of these studies found evidence that there is such a link in typically developing children or children with locomotor delay. Only a few studies have tested the consequences of this link in children with abnormal visual development because of infantile esotropia. Moreover, little is known about the effects of late surgery on motor development. We assessed the motor abilities of 3- to 7-year old children with severe deficits in stereopsis due to infantile esotropia (angle ≥ 12°) and typically developing children prior to and 12 to 16 months after surgery. We used the Movement Assessment Battery for Children (Movement ABC-2). Prior to and one year after surgery, the strabismic children showed significantly lower global motor scores than normal children. Moreover, in the strabismic children, we found significant differences relative to the healthy children in the subscales assessing manual dexterity and balance prior to and significant differences in the subscales assessing manual dexterity and ball skills after surgery. Overall, the strabismic group did not demonstrate improvements in motor development after surgery. However, the children with a positive Bagolini striated glass test following surgery performed better in the subscale assessing balance than children with a negative Bagolini striated glass test. Motor skills were poorer in children with infantile esotropia, both prior to and following surgery. Moreover, the children with improved binocular vision after surgery demonstrated better balance skills. Possible explanations and practical implications are discussed.

BackgroundSeveral studies have investigated motor and cognitive skills in infants as well as gross motor abilities in schoolchildren treated for congenital idiopathic clubfoot, mostly indicating specific impairments in those children. However, until now, little is known about the motor and cognitive abilities of preschool children treated for idiopathic clubfoot. Thus, it was the aim of this study to examine gross motor, fine motor and cognitive skills of 3-year-old-children treated for idiopathic clubfoot.MethodWe tested gross motor, fine motor and cognitive functioning of 10 children treated for idiopathic clubfoot and 10 typically developing children at the age of 40 months (SD = 1) with the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development.ResultsThe children treated for idiopathic clubfoot showed a slight delay in gross motor development. In particular, they demonstrated difficulties in tiptoeing, walking upstairs and walking downstairs. Moreover, we found some slight deficits in cognitive development, particularly in visual-spatial memory.DiscussionChildren treated for idiopathic clubfoot appear to have an increased risk of gross motor and spatial cognitive deficits. Orthopedic pediatrics should incorporate measures of gross motor functioning, for example tiptoeing, in their orthopedic setting. Moreover, future studies are needed to clarify whether the observed deficits persist through childhood. If so, some kind of a motor training for children with idiopathic clubfoot might be required.

While many studies have investigated links between motor and visual spatial cognitive abilities in typically developing children, only a few studies have tested this link among children with innate handicaps. Therefore, we assessed motor abilities (using the M-ABC-2) and visual spatial cognitive skills (using the Block Design subtest of the WPPSI-III and a picture mental rotation task, PRT) of 5-7 year old typically developing children (n= 17) and same-aged children with severe deficits in stereopsis due to infantile esotropia (n= 17). Compared to the typically developing children, children with esotropia showed significantly poorer motor performances, especially in manual dexterity and ball skills, and significantly poorer and slower performance on the visual spatial cognitive tasks. Especially the girls treated for infantile esotropia needed more time to mentally rotate the pictures of the PRT correctly. Overall, this study showed that perceptual, motor and cognitive processes are interconnected and that children treated for infantile esotropia had an increased risk of motor and visual spatial cognitive deficits.