AAP Voices Blog

As a fellow trainee in developmental pediatrics, I have a panel of children who have been in my continuity care since I started my developmental and behavioral fellowship in July of 2018.  

This story is about a 7-year-old boy. We diagnosed him with Autism Spectrum Disorder about two years ago. He is a bright boy who quickly grasps new concepts but has severe rigidity with routines, interests and schedules. 

His rigidity affects his attention during learning, but with school and community therapy support, he had been doing well and progressing. Since the schools are closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, he has had to stay home with his mother, a single parent.

This boy’s world is thrown off completely by the lack of his typical routine. No school bus comes daily, there are no teachers, no school, no friends, and he is constantly worried about COVID-19. For him, this cannot be real, and this is not his world.

I can see how stressed he’s become with all these changes. But with limited resources available through school and community, we struggled to support this family. 

We’ve been doing telemedicine appointments and our social worker has been trying to help his mother with parenting strategies and emotional regulation techniques. We recommended using social stories about the unavoidable consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and ways of creating new routines. 

We recommended incorporating new routines into his day, but the more his mother strives to create a new schedule for him, the more anxious he gets because he thinks he can never get back his life.

We are now trying medications to address his anxiety and attention. We are hopeful that the medications can be helpful, and he will get some therapy supports soon.

This family is living just a day at a time. Just as all of us need air and food, all children need connections with teachers, counselors and peers. In addition, isolation only exacerbates stressors for the vulnerable population. 

Send in your COVID-19 pandemic story, and we may share it here and on our social media channels. https://bit.ly/2XVvJIu

*The views expressed in this article are those of the author, and not necessarily those of the American Academy of Pediatrics.