The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — or is that Centers for Destroyed Credibility? — recently changed its standards for early childhood development. Flying somewhat under the radar, a couple of weeks ago the CDC released an updated milestone checklist for children and included a link to a Pediatrics article that referenced a study for the changes. Notably, we can chalk up another one for the damage done by the COVID response.

One of the more troubling milestone changes was extending a child’s age for reaching expected speech and vocabulary ability. For example, the updated standard says children should speak at least 50 words at 30 months olds. The CDC’s previous standard was 50 words by 24 months. According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, a child at the age of two speaking less than 50 words is a cause for concern.

One of the study’s authors, Jennifer Zubler, noted that the reason changes to CDC standards were made was because the threshold of at least 75% of children reaching the milestone guidelines was not being met.

According to the study: “Application of the criteria established by the AAP working group and adding milestones for the 15- and 30-month health supervision visits resulted in a 26.4 percent reduction and 40.9 percent replacement of previous CDC milestones. One third of the retained milestones were transferred to different ages; 67.7 percent of those transferred were moved to older ages.”

This raises an obvious question: What’s the culprit behind this change in a child’s developmental expectation? The most likely answer appears to be COVID-related guidelines, specifically regarding mask wearing. The masking of not only children but of adults impacts and impedes a young child’s language development. Both speaking and reading abilities can be affected when a child cannot properly hear an adult whose face is covered, or see his or her mouth move to form words. This impediment of a mask on a small child likewise muffles his or her attempts at speech.

Millions of Americans have been outspokenly critical of the CDC’s masking guidelines for children in schools, and many of them are concerned specifically regarding child development. As the lockdowns proved to do little other than damage the economy, masking (which the CDC has admitted is of little value for stopping viral spread) of little children (who are the least threatened by COVID) has done little other than stunt their verbal development. It is indeed a travesty what has been imposed on children, all in the name of “safety.” In truth, it’s due to the self-interests and ambitions of those lusting for greater power.