As a psychotherapist I spend most of my working life supporting families with difficult situations. As an adoptive mum of 3 I have spent 12 years parenting children who have had many worries to overcome. I wanted to use this blog post to break away from my usual topic of supporting children who’ve experienced abuse and think about child emotional well-being now in the midst of the Coronovirus outbreak.
Ask most parents what they want for their children and you’ll usually receive a response of ‘health and happiness’. You may feel at the moment that both of those are at risk. However, just as there are preventative things we can do to lower the risk of infection, so too are there things we can do to help our children with the emotional impact.
So, here are 10 ways in which Mums and Dads can best support their little (and not so little) ones.
1. Manage Your Own Anxiety
Anxiety is a perfectly normal and biological reaction to anything that feels like a threat to life as we know it. It is appropriate at the moment to have concerns about how Covid-19 might impact you and your family. However, we cannot truly help others with their anxiety if we are overwhelmed by our own. So, what can you do right now to help reduce your stress levels?
Although this situation is not a good one for us to be in, it does offer parents an opportunity to role-model stress management to our children. They will be watching us for clues as to how serious this situation is. They will also be conscious of how the adults around them are managing their own emotions. Our children will always pay more attention to what we do than the things we say.
2. Talk About It
I believe that one of the best ways to support our emotional health is to discuss our worries with someone who is able and willing to hear them. When it comes to children though we aren’t always open to doing this. We might feel that they shouldn’t be worried about these things, that it is a problem for the adults or that they are too young to understand.
But children need guidance. They are not able to manage these situations on their own. If they aren’t talking to you then they will try and talk to others – and the message they receive may not be the one that is best for them to hear.
When speaking with children we want to consider the developmental stage that they are at. Very young children are more concrete in their thinking. This means that they need very clear answers to questions. Older children can cope more with the grey. They can understand the complexity of the situation more. You know your child best so are the best person to consider what they need. It may be the case that you need to have separate conversations with each child so you can explain things in the way that is best for them.
My eldest two children have a range of complex needs. At the moment we have asked them not to talk with one another about the coronovirus without an adult present. Leaving them to work this out together is likely to be unhelpful. How can you create a safe space for your child to talk with you?
3. Then Don't Talk About It
Covid-19 seems to be the only things anyone is talking about right now. I get that. It is a crisis that is uniting us not only with those around us but with the whole world. However, the more we talk about it without having any meaningful solutions, the more anxiety provoking it becomes.
It’s right to talk to our children about it but it’s also right to have periods of talking about other things.
4. Listen and Empathise
A lot of parents worry about saying the wrong thing when having hard conversations with their children. Some may avoid conversations as a result. A lot of time though our children don’t really need us to say much at all. The most important thing is that they get to voice their concerns and have them recognised.
You don’t need to have all the answers, you just need to listen and empathise with how they are feeling. If they ask you something really difficult in the moment it is okay to acknowledge what they have said, tell them you are going to think about it and come back to them with a response. This will give you a bit of thinking time around how you wish to respond. If you genuinely cannot give them an answer then it’s okay to say that to them and offer them empathy for how hard it is to not know.
5. Don't Let The Media Control Your Home
Watching the news is not exactly an uplifting experience at the moment, is it? Social media is loaded with unhelpful opinions, incorrect information and conspiracy theories, and our newspapers seem to have gone with their usual tactic of scaring people into mass hysteria!
Perhaps best at the moment to think about how much of this you allow into your home. Whilst being connected to the outside world is important, we want to be the ones controlling the message our child receives. Most countries have news programmes designed for children. They will have much stricter guidelines on the way they report this situation. Although I would still recommend parents watch alongside their children and are also mindful of internet access at present.
6. Involve Them In a Survival Plan
Our natural instinct is towards survival. When we fear our survival is at risk most people become activated to protect themselves and their families. Children are no different. They want to know that this is a plan.
For my children the first obvious plan was to increase hygiene. I have spent time with two of them revisiting how to wash their hands – literally walking them through it step by step. As our home sees a lot of people coming and going from it, we also spent some time cleaning communal areas. Done without a single complaint, I might add!
As both myself and my wife are self-employed we are already experiencing a financial impact. So we have talked with our boys about ways we can reduce expenditure in the short term. We asked them for ideas of money saving opportunities and made the conversation light and playful. We praised them for the good ideas they shared.
Like anyone else, children need to feel like they have some control in situations that can evoke feelings of powerlessness. They need to feel like they have a part to play whilst also understanding that they are not responsible for the whole families wellbeing.
7. Keep Their Routines
We’ve started to talk about the possibility of being at home more and some small changes that we might need to make to our family lifestyle.
However, on the whole we are trying to keep their routines at normal as possible. The more a child’s life changes, the harder it is for them to cope with those changes. Kids need life to be predictable. Their nurseries, schools and colleges may close in the near future but we can ensure that other routines such as mealtimes and bedtimes remain the same.
Braver parents can have a go at some homeschooling….. although this is not recommended if it is only going to add to the family’s stress levels!
8. Consider What This is Triggering
They say ‘trauma binds to trauma’. Any time we go through difficult situations our brains search our memory bank to see if we have had similar experiences before. It’s the brain’s way of seeing if we have previously found a way to survive.
Unfortunately this can then bring up previously difficult experiences that we may not have overcome. For many children their worries will be about losing loved ones. This is particularly the case for those children who have lost people before.
For some of the children I work with, empty supermarket shelves will trigger their experiences of neglect before they came into care. Feeling stuck at home may also raise difficult memories if they have previously lived in homes that felt unsafe and they felt unable to escape.
9. Keep In Contact With People
Self-isolation can be an incredibly difficult experience when our greatest need as human beings is to feel connected and have a sense of belonging. For many people, being alone automatically raises feelings of loneliness. This is true for all humans across all ages.
Your children may not be able to go and visit granny and grampa at the moment but we do have the technology to ensure that we can maintain good communication.
One good things that comes from all this may be an increase in people looking out for one another more and having meaningful connections.
So, let’s stop messaging so much and start picking up the phone.
10. Remember Most People Will Be Okay.
I know this may feel scary but the reality is that most people will actually be okay. Not everyone will contract the virus and the majority of those who do, will recover. This needs to be a central message to our children.
I hope that this post has given you some ways to think about how you support your children. I’ve opened up the comments section below for people to add other ideas, share their thoughts or ask for help if needed.
I wish you and your children all the best.
Love Fi
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