A four-year-old told her neighbour that she doesn’t talk to her friends in class, when asked about her classmates.

Several teachers said this was a painful reality during the time of online classes, especially for the younger children.

The limitation of the screen does not give the three, four, five or six-year-olds the time or scope to interact with their peers, open up to them and develop communication skills. In an online class, if they are allowed to unmute and speak, it will lead to “pandemonium” and no one will be able to hear, said a school head.

Early Childhood Association (ECA), a forum of schools for pre-primary education, in its guidelines for home-based learning, has asked member schools to guide parents to make their children talk to their school friends over the phone and not just on video.

“Children must be supported to communicate in all forms,” the guideline said.

“Talking to friends would help them develop their conversation skills. Phone calls will help develop their listening skills,” said Suman Sood, national core committee member of ECA, and director, BD Memorial.

The limitation of the screen is that each child is isolated and so, they miss the physical experience of being together in a classroom, said a teacher. “In a 20 or 30-minute class, if everyone was to unmute all at once, there would be no communication but only noise,” said Sood.

At the pre-primary level, not all communication is verbal but also through gestures or just by being together. The screen does not allow the children to touch, share or observe each other.

Being confined to the home with very limited association with the outside world is impacting the children’s pronunciation, enunciation and communication skills.

“Children pick up what they hear. Right now, their environment is reduced to a bare minimum and their vocabulary is not expanding,” said Pooja Dugar, director, Leap Years Preschool.

Children would spend two or three hours before the pandemic at school but now their interaction is limited to 30 minutes to an hour.

It is much harder for teachers, too, to hold a child’s attention in an online class and communicate with them.

“How to approach their peers is a learnt skill for this age group (pre-primary) and they are not getting the chance to acquire that skill,” said Sharmila Bose, director, Sushila Birla Girls’ School.