What's Going to Be with Our Kids?

Will the virus affect them emotionally in a bad way? Is this new era scarring a generation?

Why should kids be any different from the rest of us, my take.

Depending upon their age and the relationships they have with their parents, and how their parents are handling this not-so-brave-new-world, the answers will vary.

Some families are so sure of themselves regarding the actions that public decision-makers are making, that it is a challenge having a 2-sided conversation.  It is not even up to discussion, for example, as to whether or not kids should go back to school. Dare we even suggest that the educators, professionals who have been working on this since March, could be correct about opening schools, albeit in a hybrid-fashion? (Lori Lightfoot's idea, Mayor of Chicago).

Who knows? All we know is that those countries that closed down, the ones that demanded masks for everyone, no longer have rises in their rates of virus detection like we do in the USA. So shutting down schools is the seemingly obvious thing to do.

But that's not happening, not necessarily. Parents, despite their reservations, will have to decide for themselves how to educate their children, whether or not to find a private online school or keep the kids home and home school. Those who have no daycare in place, who are needing that time to work, whether at home (in peace, finally) or on site, are likely on board with the mayor's recommendation to open up schools.

Psychologically how is all of this affecting our kids? 
Young children pick up on their parents emotions. If parents are rational and don't panic, they usually don't panic either. But every child is different and what we know to be Health OCD is a real thing, not only for adults, but for children, too.

Children are anger allergic, and will want their parents to be happy. They might miss the joy of being home in the family pod, but despite this well-needed intimacy, this crazy hiatus in life, they are fine with letting the family intimacy go if it means seeing their friends. Emotionally healthy kids over the age of 2 are dying to get out and be with other children. They are quite sick of the isolation, like most of us are.

Being at home with their parents has been sheer heaven for functional families with small children, certainly for the kids, not necessarily their long-suffering parents. Parents, hats off. How you're handling this, I'll never know.

In the future (again my take) all children will be more prepared than ever for a health pandemic, much more so than we ever were. They will take that dictum to wash their hands seriously; they already do. They will be careful, perhaps, about showing affection. That could be a very good thing.

What about the older kids, the normal ones who flaunt rules? I say normal because it is a developmental task for adolescents to separate psychologically from their parents, to flex their autonomous muscles. They will flex and flaunt no matter how well we have trained them, those children, the ones we can't babysit anymore, the ones who scoff masks, who socialize without distance.

Those young people, being adolescent and breaking the rules of social distancing, if they got sick, feel pretty bad. They know they shouldn't have been hanging out so closely with their friends. that they should have kept the masks on and encouraged their friends to do the same. And, perhaps worse, if they got sick they know they gave the virus to older family members. The mistake, the guilt, cut their adolescence short. Kids aren't stupid, and whether or not they admit this, they think it, feel it.

They no longer have yesterday's sense of omnipotence.

But frankly, none of us adults do, either.

therapydoc