‘The pandemic took more than 2 years of school. It took 2 years of my childhood.’

By Gloria Collazo Huamani

October 1, 2026

Youthcast Media Group®

It wasn’t until I no longer had those 30 minutes of lunch and recess, when all the boys and girls would come together to trade bracelets, make up games, gossip about who we liked, play tag and sports, that I realized how much of my childhood happened during the parts of school that had nothing to do with schoolwork. 

I was in the third grade when the COVID-19 pandemic began. I remember my parents explaining that I couldn’t go back to school and wondering when I would see my friends again — or whether I wanted to go back at all. But after spending two years learning from home, cut off from the friends, teachers and routines I had known, I began to understand what I had lost. 

Gloria Collazo Huamani, sophomore at Benjamin Banneker High School in Washington, D.C. (courtesy of Collazo Huamani).

For many of my friends and classmates, going to school changed from a bus ride every morning to clicking a link and seeing their teachers and classmates through a screen. My experience was a little different. Instead of going to virtual school, I was homeschooled. My new routine was sitting at my kitchen table, with my mom teaching me how to write a paragraph or solve a math problem, surrounded by the same walls I saw every day. 

My family was not alone. Many families across the country turned to homeschooling after schools shut down. Homeschooling increased sharply during the pandemic, especially among Black families, rising from 3.3% in the spring of 2020 to 16.1% that fall, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.  

It would be two years before I entered a classroom again.

At first, I loved homeschooling.

I didn't have to wake up early or put on a uniform. I liked the comfort of my own room, surrounded by my stuffed animals and toys. I didn't have to push my way through that horrible lunch line because my food was now waiting for me at the kitchen table. 

It felt like a fever dream where school was canceled and all day was fun. That was my view as a 9-year-old. 

But as days turned into weeks and weeks into months, that initial excitement wore off.

Every day became the same routine. There was no recess when I could play princess with all the other girls. There were no conversations in the lunch line and none of the small things that had broken up the school day before. I didn’t realize how much those moments mattered until I could no longer experience them. 

With less to look forward to, I started spending more time on the internet. 

I turned to platforms such as YouTube and TikTok to distract myself. Instead of seeing what the kids around me were doing every day, I could watch people online show off their clothes, makeup, dances, art and lives. 

Over time, I started comparing myself with what I saw. I thought the way I dressed was childish and wanted to be like the superstars I saw online. I followed what was trendy and admired the girls and boys who looked so confident on screen.

Before the pandemic, my friends and I didn’t need the internet to tell us what was popular. But during those years at home, I became much more aware of what other people thought was cool and what someone my age was supposedly supposed to like. I felt as though I was growing up without getting to experience all the steps in between. 

Gloria studying at home during the pandemic (courtesy of Collazo Huamani).

When I finally returned to school, I thought my classmates would be excited to see each other again after spending so much time apart. 

Instead, I realized how much we all changed. 

When I walked through those doors, I remembered vague memories of running down those halls and always seeing my peers with smiles on their faces. Now those same faces were tired, with eye bags. The lunchroom, which used to be full of life with happy kids eating to their hearts' content, turned into a lunch where all the girls controlled what they ate and talked about the latest trend on TikTok.

Maybe some of that change would have happened anyway. Kids grow up. Interests change. Middle school has always been awkward.

But I didn’t get to watch my classmates gradually change or change alongside them. I left one social world and came back to another.

When I returned, I was expected to understand a social world that had changed while I was gone. I felt I missed so much that I would never get back, and without that day-to-day learning to help me adapt to these new norms, I struggled.

Those everyday interactions are an important part of how children learn to get along with others: A 2026 meta-analysis of 157 studies from 33 countries published in the academic journal Child Development found that children’s social and emotional skills declined during the pandemic, along with their overall well-being. The researchers noted that schools are not just places where children learn math and reading. They are also places where children learn how to make friends, work through disagreements, understand other people’s feelings and manage their own emotions.

Years later, many parents say some of those effects are still being felt. In a 2025 Gallup survey, 45% of parents with school-age children said the pandemic hurt their child’s social skills, and 22% said those problems were still ongoing. Forty-two percent said the pandemic negatively affected their child’s mental health. Parents were more likely to report problems with their children’s social skills and mental health than with their academics or physical health.

I saw some of those changes around me, too. Classmates who once seemed outgoing became quieter or more withdrawn. Starting conversations felt harder. Making new friends felt harder. Sometimes retreating into myself felt easier than trying to figure out where I belonged.

Now, the kids who were in elementary school when the pandemic began are moving through high school. We are older, but some of us are still figuring out what those missing years meant.

Before the pandemic, I thought lunch and recess were simply breaks from learning. Now I understand that we were learning during those 30 minutes, too. We were learning how to make friends, how to disagree and make up, how to be embarrassed and recover from it, what we liked and what we didn’t, and slowly who we wanted to become.

I can’t know exactly who I would be if I had spent those years inside a classroom instead of at home. Maybe middle school still would have been awkward. Maybe I still would have worried about fitting in.

But I know I missed something I didn’t understand was important until it was gone: the ordinary, sometimes boring, sometimes ridiculous parts of growing up alongside other kids.

You can make up schoolwork. You can return to the classroom. But there are some parts of childhood you don’t get to repeat.

Gloria Collazo Huamani is a sophomore at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School in Washington D.C., one of Youthcast Media Group’s journalism class partners. Gloria worked with James Jarvis, a YMG mentor-editor and reporter for Inside Health Policy, on this story.