Ideas to support our children and young people through this difficult time

Ideas to support our children and young people through this difficult time 

All of our children and young people feel anxious from time to time, this is a healthy and expected part of growing up. It is likely that the current pandemic is increasing the level of anxiety that many of us are experiencing and while this is absolutely normal given the current circumstances it can also leave us feeling unsure of what to do and what to say to support our children and young people in the best way possible.  

Allowing our children to talk and actively listening to what they are saying

If we want to support our children to feel safe it’s important that we take the time to listen and understand their concerns.  Parents often have the misconception that paying too much attention to the worry will make the worry grow.  In fact, listening and validating our children’s concerns is the most straight forward way to allow our children to feel seen and heard.  When children feel seen by their parents they essentially feel felt, a term coined by Dr Dan Siegel, and experience that wonderful feeling of ‘they get me’.  Actively listening to our children greatly increases the chances of these wonderful warm experiences.  To actively listen to our children: 

We need to stop what we are doing

We need to sit or stand in a position that allows us to maintain eye contact

We need to wait until our child has finished speaking  

At this point we can summarise the information our child has conveyed and check in that we have understood them correctly….” have I got that right?”  This process allows our child to know that we see them and we are interested in what they have to say.  Repeatedly having this experience is incredibly containing for children (and adults!) and makes it more likely that they will feel able to let us know when they are struggling in the days and weeks ahead. 

Naming and taming their big feeling 

When the world feels frightening or scary, it’s important to remember that sometimes anxiety doesn’t look like anxiety but can manifest in any number of behaviours, children might cry and yell or they might refuse to engage in things they normally enjoy. And although this can be incredibly frustrating for us as parents Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson suggest that we need to look beyond assumptions and interpretations and be curious about the feelings behind the behaviours.  What we know from the science is that if we can connect with the feelings the lie beneath the behaviour this will help to regulate and calm both the feeling and the behaviour. 

Dan Siegel calls this technique ‘name it to tame it’.  Imagine a five-year-old (or 13-year-old!) who doesn’t want to come in from the garden to go to bed and is getting overwhelmed by feeling of anger and frustration at the injustice of having to go inside.  Using the ‘name it to tame it’ technique we would get down to eye level and in a very kind and empathetic tone of voice acknowledge just how disappointing it is for them to have to leave the garden “ you were having such a lovely time, I can see that it is really sad for you to leave when you were playing such a fun game”. This will allow the young person to feel both seen and soothed by you which will go a long way to calm down the hyperarousal she is experiencing in her body.  This doesn’t mean that you don’t leave the garden but it means you are saying yes to the feeling and you are supporting positive emotional regulation while also holding the boundaries.   

Supporting our children to manage uncertainty

One of the biggest challenges of the current pandemic is uncertainty.  For our children and young people, managing high levels of uncertainty can be really unsettling.  There are a number of ways we can support our children with this: 

Create routine and structure their day – children thrive in a structured predictable environment; it builds feelings of safety and security even in situations of great uncertainty. Even better if you can make the structure visual for children to easily see throughout the day.   But remember we are not teachers and there is no perfect way, something that works for one family will not necessarily work for another. We all need to find a way that works best for our family and ensure that through this process we remain compassionate to ourselves and our families.  

Talk to our children in a way that is simple to understand and honest.  As parents we are hard wired to protect our children which often drives us to immediately jump to reassurance, however this is not always the most helpful response as it can increase their reliance on reassurance and rob them of the opportunity to develop the capacity to reassure themselves.  Instead try  listening and hearing their concerns, asking questions to facilitate a shared understanding of what they are experiencing.  After taking time to acknowledge and validate their worry support them to think about the things they are already doing to take care of themselves and others, like staying at home and washing their hands regularly and the huge contribution these small things are making to the overall effort. 

Support them to spend time in the present moment, help them to find activities that really engage them. For some children this will be playing with Lego, for other young people it may be an engaging board game or puzzle.  We know that time spent in this engaged state, a state psychologists call flow, is an important investment in our overall wellbeing.  We could also use this time to introduce our children to the concept of mindfulness, there are loads of lovely apps available like smiling mind that can support us with this process …. However, be prepared for some giggling (which is great because giggling lets us know that little (or big) people are in a relaxed state) if this is something that is new for your family  

Support them to look for the silver linings, getting to spent more time with mum and dad (perhaps not so much for teenagers!), the beautiful sunshine, the time to bake and watch movies together, the technological skills we are all developing.  Lea Waters suggesting asking children what their WWW (What Went Well) is each day or maybe asking them to name three things that they are grateful for at bed time.  Our brains are really good at remembering the tricky stuff but it needs a little bit more support to notice and remember the good things and the science tells us that we can get so much better at this if we practice spotting them regularly.    

Managing our own big feelings 

As adults we have enormous influence over the emotional tone we set for our children.  Our emotions are so contagious that we all influence and are influenced by each other’s emotions. If we are having a day (or a week) where we are struggling to manage our own normal anxiety in response to an extremely uncertain situation that’s OK. However, it’s important that we remain mindful of how we are managing this anxiety in front of our children and young people because this will have a direct impact on their own level of anxiety.  What our children need from us now is more time, more love more tolerance, and this can be hard which means it is incredibly important to pay attention to the idea of putting our own oxygen masks on first. Parents can sometimes feel incredibly guilty about the concept of looking after their own wellbeing first but if we are well and are experiencing positive emotions these are the emotions that will ripple through our families. 

  

There are lots of well researched ideas that we can use to support ourselves to manage our own level of wellbeing:  

We can reduce the amount of time and be more selective about listening to the news

We can practice mindfulness even for as little as 10 minutes each day

We can create a gratitude practice such as writing down three things we are grateful for each day

We can stay connected to our tribe, we are socially distancing not socially isolating 

We can try and privilege exercise and getting plenty of sleep   

When our children watch us managing our big feeling it opens the way for them to do the same with their own big feelings. Sometimes we will manage this really well and sometimes we won't and that's OK, being mindful of the ripple is the most helpful first step we can all take. 

Dr Tamara Scully is a Chartered Clinical Psychologist based in the UK.  Tamara runs Castle Psychology (www.castlepsychology.co.uk)  and is passionate about promoting wellbeing and resilience in children, young people and their families