They Need Our Faces

From Petra North on American Thinker.com (Sept. 23, 2021):

The title of a C.S. Lewis book—Till We Have Faces—seems to me a haunting image appropriate for our time. Lewis suggests that it is only when we know ourselves that we are able to receive unconditional love. As a veteran teacher, I believe that to deny our faces to anyone, but particularly to children, is to deny them knowing themselves by denying them us. It is emotional child abuse; it is unconscionable; and it is right in front of us, literally and figuratively in our faces.

Before the Covid lockdowns and mandates, we saw faces everywhere, all over our lives. Faces are a significant part of our spoken language and are part of our literature, our poetry, and our entertainment...for a reason. We use idioms about faces to impart all kinds of imagery: We “fall on our faces;” we “spit in faces;” we “save face;” we “get a slap in the face;” If we are unlucky in poker, it is likely our thoughts are “written all over our face.” In his prescient book 1984, George Orwell says “if you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”

Faces are everything.

When we interact with other people, we rely almost totally on watching—and then reading—their faces. We know instinctively that children’s development depends almost entirely on their learning to read the faces in front of them. This is why, whenever we interact with children, we make sure they can see our entire face and we are more animated than we might otherwise be.

Although the American Academy of Pediatrics recently removed from its website all information about the importance to infant development of seeing facial expressions and the CDC has doubled down on masking in schools, no sane person can that face-to-face interaction is important to children’s social and emotional development. (The AAP claims the information’s disappearance resulted from moving content to a new platform and that the information, once reviewed will be back, maybe, before year’s end. The timing is interesting.) And while there are still sites like this and this to go to for evidence of what our instincts tell us, we don’t really need proof.

We know that kids need faces. We know they need our faces. We. Just. Know. [read more]

Other articles on wearing masks:

• Masks are changing how kids interact
• The horror of masking children
• Masks allegedly harming children's speech development
  
• Unmask America
  
• Study Finds People Wearing Masks are Meaner, More Selfish, Less Moral, and More Violent