Don’t forget the kids: pandemics and their impact on children
Written by
Edited by J Cameron
Acting as an emotional mentor for children through a professional and familial perspective provides not only a unique opportunity for personal growth, but a terrifying prospect for some potentially unwelcome self-examination. Going through an unprecedented, health crisis like our current pandemic creates a lot of conflicting feelings and emotions for anyone. This can feel especially daunting in the middle of a crisis, and this has its own particular pressures on children and parents.
Children frequently mimic the examples we set for them. They observe us and learn by seeing how we respond. Have a bad habit in response to a particular feeling? Like a mirror, children will reflect this habit back to us. Will we like what they’re reflecting back to us? That depends on our awareness and how we feel about out habits and responses when expressed through the eyes of a child.
Interacting with children can force us to face our relationship with our emotions, including both instances where were we excel and others where we may struggle. This image can, understandably, be difficult to view and accept. Moreover, the children around us are perceptive. They pick up on our emotional wellbeing and mindset more than we probably would like to admit. It’s often remarked that the Covid-19 pandemic is exposing structural issues in our societies, and this is happening on the individual level as well.
Imagine how frustrating it is for them to see us to deny our fallibility and claim a more emotionlessness state. Moreover, this stance is invalidating — it undercuts their emotional awareness and intellect, and further conveys the flawed message that emotions are “weaknesses.” But are they?
Perhaps the best example we can give our children of how to best deal with crisis is to let us feel and express our understandable, messy, human emotions. Reflect. And bloom into the world renewed by the wisdom this global experience teaches us all. Unprecedented times means there is no rule book or reference sheet for how to best respond. In an unpredictable world, perhaps the best lesson for our children is for them to see what emotional human resilience looks like.
Let’s have compassion for our children and our selves.
It is great if this tool works for you and the child(ren) you are working with and gives both of you a platform to share your emotions.