Given how much stress the rest of us are under trying to juggle life under this bizarre pandemic, I think it’s easy to overlook the impact it has on the little ones in our lives.
This is a topic that came up with my therapist last week when we were talking about struggling with e-learning and new behavior issues, and I kind of surprised myself to realize that I wasn’t really thinking about how the kids were being affected by everything taking place…
- They haven’t been able to go to their school in a month. And play with their friends. And see their teachers.
- They can’t go to the playground, or Legoland, or Busch Gardens, or any of the other places for fun that we visit outside of the house.
- Home has become more than just a safe place where they can unwind – now they’re expected to learn here, and follow schedules that they used to relate with the classroom.
Not to mention, typically taking away things like the playground or time with friends is a punishment, but in this case they didn’t do anything wrong!
I’m sure it’s very confusing for them, and then on top of it they’re seeing Mom and Dad struggling with these new responsibilities and the stress cascades down to them. It really shouldn’t surprise us that they’re acting out more and picking fights with each other and getting into trouble because we’ve essentially taken the world that they know and turned it upside down.
And occasionally I’ll try to explain that, “We can’t go to Legoland right now because lots of people are sick…” but it’s obviously a lot deeper than that, and probably deeper than anyone could really expect a three to six year-old to understand.
It stresses me out to know that almost three quarters of a million Americans have tested positive for COVID-19 and that 36,000 of them have died of it … but kids aren’t going to understand all of that.
They don’t get all of the masks, and the restrictions.
And they don’t get why the rest of us are stressed, either.
So more and more I’m trying to give the kids a break when they’re acting out because once again, none of this is normal, and just because they don’t understand it doesn’t mean that it’s not affecting them.
If anything, I’d argue that it’s affecting them all the more because they don’t understand it.
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