While most research into COVID's lingering effects has been focused on adults, some 65 million are suffering with it.

But many parents reported similar symptoms with their kids.

Turns out new research published by the Journal of the American Medical Association found nearly 6 million children in the US have been living with long COVID.

The tricky part for doctors is there is no test for long COVID.

Doctors must diagnose it.

Senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan spoke to the coauthor of the report and to one mom whose instincts were to trust her mother's intuition.

So I thought he was being lazy, you know, and just not putting any effort into doing things he needed to do.

At first, Maricel Quinones scolded her son Noah, for being a typical teenager, lounging around late for school, letting grades slip.

But then she remembered Noah had gotten COVID earlier.

She wondered, could her six year old have long COVID?

She didn't want to believe that at first.

I was one of those that I'm like, I'm over it.

I'm over it.

I'm done.

Want to get past it.

But we can't just get past that because there are people who are still dealing with these long term effects from it.

As a parent, I'm dealing with it.

They just thought, you know, high school that really high school routine made me teenager who doesn't want to do what he's supposed to do.

But it's like I was trying I was genuinely putting in the effort and I just wasn't getting the results that I was putting in sometimes.

Noah also had chest pain, trouble breathing.

The family signed him up for Recover, a nationwide study of long COVID in almost 5400 kids, including a group Rutgers assembled in New Jersey.

Why would it be COVID?

You know, it's you had COVID so long ago, you should be over by now.

Your body already has the antibodies to fight it and stuff.

It should be good.

But I mean, my mom heard about the research team and she heard about the program.

She thought it would be a good idea.

The results show Maricel's suspicions were correct, says researcher Dr. Sunanda Gaur Listen, kids have long colds and you're not.

It's not all in their head.

And that when kids are complaining of certain symptoms that that attention needs to be.

The first thing that I would tell both parents and clinicians is long COVID in children is real.

It is relatively common.

It's certainly not rare.

Dr. Lawrence Kleinman coauthored the new paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association that reported among 6 to 11 year olds who previously had COVID.

45% experienced at least one prolonged symptom, most often nausea, stomach pain and memory loss, compared to just 33% in uninfected kids.

Among 12 to 17 year olds who'd had COVID.

39% cited loss of smell and taste, fatigue and muscle aches compared to 27% of uninfected kids.

Symptoms like brain fog often overlapped both age groups.

Being a child might mean that you are forgetful or you don't focus.

But we actually can see that this is more common in children who had COVID than in those who didn't.

There's no test for long COVID.

Doctors must make a clinical diagnosis based on symptoms which can often mimic other illnesses.

And there's no magic bullet to treat long COVID either.

Doctors take it one symptom at a time.

So you sort of find the particular problem and try to fix that problem to the extent we can.

But globally, there isn't yet anything that can be done to treat all of those symptoms.

When you see a pattern and you see that it's actually lasting a lot longer than what normally would be a week or two feeling just crappy, then you have to say, What?

What's going on?

Maricel says Noah pushed through it and graduated from high school.

Now they'll look for a treatment program to help regain his focus and energy.

He feels validated.

I thought maybe if I could help other people like to help myself, you know, get the get the research done and maybe hopefully, potentially find a cure, buy something to help people with brain fog and help people who are so fatigued like I am get out of it because it does it from a deal.

He'll stay in the federally funded study.

It's growing and researchers want more volunteers.

I'm Brenda Flanagan, NJ Spotlight News.