I would argue that your children will learn non-verbal communication even better with masks on. It encourages alternative methods of conversing and challenges you to be a better listener and more attentive student. Honestly I don't know why we didn't do this in elementary school just for the hell of it!

Call me a backwards traditionalist but I prefer to keep social skill development that has worked for millennia.

What we now call "school" has barely existed for centuries, let alone millennia. Pretty sure kids were much better socialized prior to our current state of primary education.

Pretty sure these school-less kids spent all day with their parents, siblings, cousins and peers instead of staring at a video lecture.

Did kids wear masks while socializing before we invented school?

Did kids wear uniforms or learn on whiteboards and laptops?

That’s how websites like this one came about actually: “ backwards traditionalist”. Also the internet, ICE, industrial revolution, etc. We just kept doing what worked for millennia.

> learning non verbal communication is very important

You're right. There's absolutely no way kids could learn non-verbal communication if they had to wear a mask for several hours a day. It's not like literally everyone in Japan and China has been wearing face masks for 20 years.

I work in Japan. Before 2019 It wasn't even figuratively everyone, and it wasn't all the time. Wearing masks was done for many reasons sure, the most common reasons being: -If you genuinely felt sick. -If you wanted to avoid wearing makeup. -If you wanted to conserve moisture/heat for your face. -If you had some kind of social aversion.

Most of my Japanese coworkers take their masks off at their desks these days. People don't like wearing masks all day, even when it was already part of the local culture they grew up in.

I don't know how masks will affect non verbal communication. I imagine the next generation will come out of this having adapted more to detect expressions in the eyes and shifts in the corners of the face. For children with severe ASD I would expect it to seriously impede their growth in interpreting facial expressions.