Children and coping with Covid

BENGALURU: Adapting to physical distancing, e-learning and isolation at home has been difficult for everyone around the world. While the adults have slowly adapted to the new normal through video calls and physically-distanced meetings, online exams and lack of physical activities have had a drastic impact on the lifestyles of children and has left them feeling anxious, drained and less focused.

Amid such an uncertain scenario, the pandemic has now uniquely presented a great opportunity for parents to teach their children one of the most important emotional wellbeing skills - resilience. While parents are themselves trying their best to handle multiple roles, here are a few measures that they can take to protect the mental health of children during the pandemic.

Develop optimism
Optimism is necessary to be resilient. Optimism, simply put, is looking at the positive side of things. An evidence-based strategy that helps build optimism is asking children to record the good happenings of the day in a journal. This activity is called “what went well” and was developed by Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology. The activity involves children recollecting three good things that have happened in the day, entering it in their journal and sharing it with family members during meal times or common family times. This activity also provides other positive effects such as feeling more grateful.

Build trust and social bonding
Children have young and porous minds and they absorb the vibes of their surroundings very quickly and get influenced by them. As we all are living in a very paranoid and stressful environment, this is sure to mirror on the child as well. Hence, under such circumstances, parents and guardians can emphasise on building social bonding among children that can help them in understanding the importance of relationships and emotions in relations.

The very first in this process is to build a huge vocabulary for names of feelings and emotions. Right from simple words like happy, sad to advanced words such as anguish and elation. This goes a long way in children being able to express adequately what they feel. Another good activity to advance these skills is re-enacting hurtful moments. In this, the child identifies a situation that has upset him or her or a situation in which he or she has hurt someone. This is followed by reenacting these hurtful moments by using appropriate words, body language and tone of speech. This activity emphasises forgiveness and renders meaningful apologies.

(The author is a paediatric psychologist, Aster CMI Hospital)

Be flexible
Being flexible during this time is also an important step that can help your child in becoming more
resilient. Building resilience involves working on foundation skills, one at a time, from childhood
through adolescence, over many years. What is important is to be consistently committed and mindful at every stage of a child’s development. When parents use their child’s strengths to teach new skills, it is more likely to be successful. This world needs more resilient adults and it all starts with parents.