You're Not Failing, It's a Trauma Response: Comfort, Compassion and Hope for Parents of Children At Home During the Pandemic

Wondering why your 10-year-old is suddenly throwing toddler-level tantrums again? Curious why, despite all best efforts to keep routine, your middle schooler is experiencing horrible insomnia and plummeting motivation? Feeling uncharacteristically moody, scattered, down, or just generally like you're "playing along" but everything could fall apart at any minute? Guess what: you actually CAN blame the COVID-19 pandemic for all of this. 

We can't expect ourselves, nor our children to act "normally" right now, because this time is not "normal." Overnight, parents and children were asked to completely overhaul their entire routines as schools closed, take on new roles instantaneously, and do all of this while the world outside is fraught with fear, uncertainty, and pretty much no predictability. If you're feeling like all bets are off in terms of your child's behavior, your own behavior, your sense of routine and what makes sense and generally any kind of real ease within your home environment-- you're not alone, and there's actually a very good reason for why it feels that way: 

What we are experiencing now, as a global collective, is a shared community trauma. This trauma is real, impacts all of our systems in some way, and does so differently for everyone. Some of us may feel stress or anxiety in our bodies; some may notice it in our thinking, concentration, outlook, or fatigue, or it may be present in our rebellion, denial, numbing or busyness. Just like we wouldn't question that a child who had just experienced a car wreck or the death of a parent couldn't focus on school, had mood swings or regressed to thumbsucking, we shouldn't be surprised that this collective trauma impacts our children, and us, in this same way. It is so critically important that we recognize the current moment for what it is in terms of our own, and our children's, mental health and emotional wellbeing. 

The stages of grief-- denial, arguing, bargaining, depression and acceptance-- can help adults identify where we personally are on this rollercoaster of emotions through which we are all cycling each day, and can help parents find validation for their own state as they also navigate supporting their children. It's important to remember that we can move through the stages in any order, at any pace, including revisiting stages more than once. Personally, I think I moved through both denial and then bargaining (in the form of over-doing/busy-ness) pretty quickly at the get-go, and now I find myself moving into a slower place where I'm more used to the routine of this, it feels more real, and I'm thinking more about the long-haul, which sits differently in my body than initial crisis-mode-stress does. How about you? Has your mood shifted since this all began? What has that rollercoaster or progression been like for you? For your family? Where might it be for your children?

As important as it is to be reflective and careful with our mental health and to acknowledge the grief that we and our children are feeling, it also helps to remember that humans are amazing, strong, compassionate, connective by nature, resilient by nature, and tend to inherently seek to find light in hard times. My favorite image for this is the persistent dandelion that always finds a way to grow in the crack in the sidewalk, year after year, season after season; life wants to live, our joy wants to be expressed, our lightness wants to prevail. 

I'm learning many things as I work with children and families during this pandemic, and one of these things is an overwhelming appreciation for the resilience, joy, strength and bravery of children. Things may be uncertain and stressful, and everyone has their own reactions, but I feel in each child I've interacted with something strong, courageous and light in their very core that inspires me to cultivate the same. Perhaps we can all make it a goal to emulate our children's resilience, optimism, and innate desire to feel, but not dwell too long on, the hard parts, and instead focus on sunshine, play, and hope for the future: things that the truest parts of children have been rekindling in me.

Authored by: Miranda Pool, M.Ed., NCC