Teaching your kids about COVID is extremely important. Everybody’s learning how to cope with the new normal. But when we have children and we want to protect them in one respect but also make sure that we don’t smother them, we’ve got to use our words to ensure that they understand what is going on. And young minds can easily overthink but we’ve also got to remember that they deserve to know about what is going on. Naturally, children can be worried about their grandparents or even about you. They may even worry about themselves and this is why we’ve got to learn to teach our children about COVID in the right ways. How can we do this?
Deal With Your Anxieties
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If you feel anxious or panicky, it is not the best opportunity to speak to your children about what is happening. We have to remember that our children will pick up on our anxieties. If we are constantly checking our online shopping to see if there are disinfectant wipes in stock because of people panic buying them, it’s these little problems that we need to deal with. Because of all the anxiety that’s going around when we decide to speak to our children, we need to keep ourselves in check.
Encourage Their Questions
They want to know what is going on. And depending on their age, their questions can be incredibly serious or incredibly silly. If they are wondering if their favorite ice cream store is going to close for this could be the pinnacle of their concerns. Whatever their concerns, you need to help your children be heard and get across the facts in a reassuring manner as best as possible.
Don’t Avoid Questions
You may not know an answer, and while there’s a lot of uncertainty flying around you have to remember that if you aren’t comfortable saying “I don’t know,” your children will pick up on this. Even if there is a lot of uncertainty we have to remember that we can teach our children how to put up with uncertainty. Our children can learn to tolerate this and it is a fantastic way to reduce anxiety in their lives as well as build up resilience. As difficult as it can be to endure the unknown, do your best to be comfortable telling them you don’t know the answer.
Focus on How You Are Keeping Safe
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With the sheer amount of anxiety and negativity in the air, we can empower ourselves and our children by making them know what we are doing to keep ourselves safe. Giving them some control over the situation will give them a better sense of resilience. And we can do this in little ways. We could let our children choose masks for the family or sing something different while washing our hands rather than just “Happy Birthday.” Giving our children some control over the situation means that they are helping everyone to stay safe, which means that they are increasing their mental strength.
It is not an easy situation, but we have to remember that as long as we have an open and honest dialogue with our children we can help to reduce their (and our) anxiety.
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