As schools reopen six months into the pandemic, many children are worried for their families’ safety and stability, bummed they can’t see friends or play sports, struggling with distance learning or worse.
Children and adolescents “may begin to worry about things that perhaps in the past they didn’t have to worry about as much, and/or are stressed out by listening to the news [or] trying to figure out how to make the next academic year work for them,” said Tyish Hall Brown, a child psychologist and associate professor at the Howard University College of Medicine. Household issues such as financial stressors or food insecurity may also weigh on kids, she added.
Here’s how to gauge whether your child is having mental-health difficulties during the pandemic — and what to do if they are: It’s most important to notice any major changes in behavior, Hall Brown said: Were they previously outgoing, but now don’t even want to talk to friends via Zoom ZM, +6.10% or text? Are they misbehaving more than they used to? Worry less about one-off instances and more about persistent, prolonged behavior, she said.
“What we ask parents to do is describe the behaviors, and then we talk to them and we make the diagnosis based on everything we see,” Hallas said. If your child has a previously diagnosed mental-health condition, be sure to stay connected with their provider, she added. If you’re an essential worker who isn’t at home with your child 24/7, you can still find “intentional times to connect,” Sanford said, whether they’re through text messaging, leaving notes, or making a quick call on your break.
“Every time we hear ‘never, ever,’ we have to stop and pause, because that’s not the case,” she said. “If a parent can help a child narrow down exactly what that worry is, which is ‘[I] can’t see my friend today,’ they can help them move past that.”
And 250 thousand reported dead.
They do call them the snowflake generation for a reason.
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