How to support your child during Covid-19 – they don’t understand why it feels like their world is ending

Children thrive on routine – understanding what’s coming next. And none of us know that at the moment. This can be especially frightening for young people

Techniques to help them cope with the pandemic include meditation, rating the intensity of their emotions, and positive reinforcement when they face their fears

Reading Time:5 minutes

As scary as the pandemic is for us, it can be even scarier for children who don’t understand why there have been so many changes in their lives. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 5:15am, 12 Sep 2020Updated: 9:28am, 3 Mar 2021

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected every one of us. We may have been ill ourselves or know someone who has been, may have lost loved ones to the virus, lost a job, lost an income or been unable to return to university or school.

Parents used to shielding their children from the impact of life’s dramas have been powerless to protect them from the pandemic fallout because the coronavirus came out of the blue and nobody knew how to respond.

We grown-ups were tripped up because – almost overnight – we found ourselves working from home, teaching at home, and hunkering down together 24/7, an entirely alien concept. Normal life went out of the window along with our social life.

Everything changed.

Children thrive on routine – understanding what’s coming next. And none of us know that at the moment. Photo: Shutterstock

It’s been especially frightening for children, says Minal Mahtani, founder of OCD & Anxiety Support HK. Not because they grasp the concept of contagion like we do, understand rates of infection or the threat to the global economy, but because, as children, their lives revolve around the small orbit of home and parents, school and friends.

This is their world, that anchors them and makes them feel safe. When this is all scrambled like a snow globe, as it has been by the pandemic, their world is set on its head. Nothing feels the same. Children thrive on routine – understanding what’s coming next. And none of us know that at the moment.

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