You are already everything your child needs.
This is hard. Most of the parents and caregivers I know were already sagging under the weight of everyday demands, even before COVID-19 arrived on the scene. Worry, as contagious as the virus itself, spread slowly at first, but reached pandemic proportions as schools began to close and upend daily life with fear, uncertainty, and stress. Some are scrambling to figure out childcare, some are frantically trying to understand how to take on the role of quasi-teacher, and some are frightened that they can’t provide basic needs for their family.
By day, I’m a pediatric occupational therapist. I specialize in infant mental health and am a part of the Profectum community of professionals, using the DIR/FCD model to help families be together and support the social, emotional, and cognitive development of young children. By evening, I am the parent of two young boys. I don’t have much to offer public health officials, but I am uniquely qualified to help parents and caregivers wade through the flood of information, prioritize their own mental health, and understand how to support their children in the face of a difficult situation.
Please be assured, this is not another list of resources for online learning or activities to address common core math standards. I had no fewer than 14 emails from teachers yesterday with well-intentioned suggestions, activities, and resources. I appreciate the intention and know that these will be useful in time, but right now, this is not what our children most need. Our children most need parents and caregivers to be sturdy and available to listen and reassure them. Our children need us to help them find the new normal.
Remember: when children feel safe and loved, they learn from absolutely everything around them.
There are several concepts from infant and early childhood mental health that can guide our thinking. The first is that, just as you’re asked to secure your own oxygen mask before assisting others on the airplane, tending to your own mental health matters. It’s natural that you feel overwhelmed by the effects of worry, financial stress, isolation, and the demands of caregiving. It’s also natural that these would begin to take a toll on your ability to be attuned, patient, and empathetic. Find compassion for yourself and your impossible position, lower your expectations, and to look for opportunities to care for your own needs.
The reason why this is so important is that children are exquisitely attuned to the actions and emotions of their caregivers, to the subtlest shifts in vocal tone and body language. Their nervous systems reflect and resonate our emotional state: our fear and anger becomes theirs, but so does our calm, our steadiness, and our love.
This becomes more complicated as we consider the child’s age and development. Children are attuned to the signals of their caregivers, but their minds are too immature to give those observations context. They just haven’t had enough experience with the world to understand sophisticated concepts, like “precautions” or “social distancing.” A child’s brain is wired to look for connections and meaning, to create an explanation that makes sense of their experience, especially to determine safety and threat. When confronted with concepts that are too complex for them to understand, children tend to fill in the blanks to create a story that makes sense, given their level of development. I have been surprised (and also not at all surprised) at what the children around me know and what they think they know.
With my own children, aged 4 and 7, I have done my very best to share age-appropriate explanations, to reassure them, and to model level-headed precautions. Despite my efforts, my four-year-old recently asked if the coronavirus could grow bigger than a person… My best guess is that he overheard something about how the number of cases of COVID-19 have “grown,” but he’s trying to make sense of this information with his own limited understanding of the word “growing.” Even my sensible seven-year-old harbored exaggerated worries. Children orient to emotion, so the story of SARS CoV2 had spread like wildfire through the first grade kid community with dire tales of virulence and imminent death.
Consider what your child sees and hears. Use age-appropriate resources to calmly explain what’s happening, but protect them from sensational media and be mindful of what you say in their presence. It may also be important to consider the ways that children understand the necessary and well-intentioned actions we take to protect them. What do they understand about our impulse to buy mountains of toilet paper? What do they hear in our voice as we urge them to wash their hands again, and with greater care? What do they understand about why they can’t go to school, to soccer, to Grandma’s house, or to the playground?
Like familiar landmarks, children find comfort in predictability and consistency. Support them by acknowledging the disruption to everyday routines and invest in the habits that will create the new normal. You do not need to be their teacher or therapist. You do not need to create a rigid schedule of activities or attempt to duplicate all of their lessons or therapies at home. As their caregiver, you are the most important touchstone to feel safe and loved. Trust yourself to know what they will need to feel safe. Provide plenty of opportunities to connect with you around routine caregiving rituals, such as baths or mealtimes, and look for ways to infuse reassuring predictability in your day in the form of simple, sustainable routines.
It’s safe to assume that, like the adults around them, children are overwhelmed, confused, frightened, and angry. Be aware of the ways that stress and worry might affect your child’s regulation and behavior. Kids are often able to put specific fears into words, but they struggle to share more abstract worries. These emotions emerge in the form of increased dysregulation and behavioral responses. For example, my four-year-old had a meltdown as he was leaving for school last week. Eventually, I was able to determine that he was scared because he didn’t have any hand sanitizer and he believed himself in danger without it. His response was perfectly logical when seen from this perspective and he calmed as soon as he was reassured that the teachers would keep him safe by providing soap to wash his hands.
You may also see worries emerge in play. Take extra time to play and interact with your child to learn what’s on their mind. Kids use play to manage their stress and anxiety. In the last week before schools closed, my seven-year-old reported that “coronavirus” games had emerged on the playground (variations of tag and hot potato) where the object of the game was to avoid infection. Recently, my four-year-old presented me with two LEGO structures, explaining, “There’s a big coronavirus and a little coronavirus. The big one is the bad one, but the good one came and chomped it.” These are very healthy ways for kids to manage their experience of stress and provide adults a window into what is on their mind.
Many of us have scrambled to problem solve work schedules and learning schedules, but remember that relationships matter, too. Children organize their experience around relationships with caregivers and peers, and the sudden loss of these important relationships can be very traumatic. Social distancing has removed the child from regular opportunities to connect with the important people in their life. As you provide age-appropriate explanations about this, acknowledge and accept the sadness and frustration and be creative about how to keep those people in mind.
This is true for grownups too. We’re distanced from relationships with the friends, family, community, and professionals that co-regulate, organize, calm, and reassure. Social distancing does not have to mean social isolation. Prioritize your own relationships and think creatively about how to make technology work for your family to find the support you need.
Take heart. This is hard, but you are already everything your child needs.
