As of April 2023, over 39 million children worldwide have been infected with SARS-CoV-2. Now entering the fourth year after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic in March 2020, children have been at the forefront of dialogues around school closures, mask mandates, and vaccination campaigns. Fundamental to these discussions lies a need to quantify the impact of COVID-19 on children—and in order to optimize child health now and in the future, we must learn from our past.