The Coronacoaster: Our children are listening to everything we say

Social distancing, borders slamming shut, outbreaks, confirmed cases, essential workers, urgent restrictions, exposure sites, quarantine, mandatory mask-wearing, stay-at-home orders. These are all daily terms now, at home and in the playground. Our children’s emergency vocabularies have grown significantly over the last 18 months as they acclimatise to the 24/7 news and conversation reel that accompanies the covid rollercoaster (or ‘coronacoaster’ as my 7-year-old son calls it).

The full emotional impact of the pandemic on Australian children is yet to be realised. For one, its influence remains ongoing. As I write this, Sydney and Melbourne are in lockdown in a race to control the Delta variant. Circumstance also plays a considerable role in determining the impact.

The devastating ramifications of families losing their incomes, businesses and careers, and losing physical access to loved ones in aged care, hospitals, and border closures is high. Every family has a different set of circumstances, making it difficult to measure the impact on our children. I heard an analogy that the pandemic is a storm that we are all in together, however, we are all in vastly different boats. Some families are in super yachts, and others are in tiny boats with holes, paddling frantically. Every child is experiencing this storm differently, and we are all in desperate hope that the sun will come out soon.

They are listening

Whether we like it or not, COVID19 is here for the long haul. As I resign myself to this fact, I want to be more mindful of the information my 7 and 11-year-old sons are exposed to. It is easy to forget that children hear EVERYTHING said in the home. I don’t allow TV news programs to be on around my children. That is a personal choice. I don’t find any value in my boys sitting and playing Lego to an audio track of murder, rape, drug-rings and tragedies in the background. My sweet boys will be adults in the blink of an eye and be barraged with a lifetime’s worth of tragic news every week with the constant round-the-clock ‘news’ that today’s world endures. I choose to give them some peace and respite now while I can.

I am, however, guilty of having conversations (AKA COVID whinge-sessions) with my husband that would be better left for when the boys have gone to sleep. I need to improve this habit and it is not because I want to shelter my boys from reality or keep them in the dark, it is more to do with their ability to synthesise the information they hear.

Young children think literally

My concern is that without proper scaffolding, they will go away and process the information in a way that is unhealthy for them. My 7-year-old sees the world so literally that if he heard me having a whinge to my husband, it would be all too easy for him to catastrophise. An example might be me saying, “Great. Another lockdown. There goes our Open Home on Saturday. We are never going to get our house sold before the settlement date!” Deep down, I know there is still time. My husband knows I am venting and is calmly calculating dates in his head and reassuring himself. However, my little boy is nearby, resigning himself to the fact that we have just lost any chance of moving into the new home that he is so excited about. He takes what we say as gospel. If Mummy says it won’t happen, it won’t happen, even if it’s just Mummy being dramatic because she is tired and stressed.

In my role as a teacher, I have seen children’s literal innocent minds at play many times. I have sent more than one child up to the office to empty my pigeon hole only to see them return crestfallen that they didn’t get to nurse a pigeon back. Once I told a Year One class that we would be riding on a ferry. When the boat turned up, I had a little girl burst into tears and cry, “THAT IS NOT A FAIRY!”

I try to be explicit and clear now when I communicate with children. I do, however, need to be more careful with indirect communication. What our children overhear can be just as impactful as what they are told directly. I think that sometimes adults forget that.

The effects of world events on TV – 9/11

A core memory involving the perils of children’s literal thinking is from the morning the twin towers fell. I was teaching Year One at the time and arrived at school to students who were utterly inconsolable. I, too, was devastated and struggling to comprehend such an unspeakable tragedy. As I took time to unpack the children’s grief, I discovered many added layers of fear caused by misunderstandings.

Several of my young students had overheard their parents say that it was the start of World War 3. By the time I opened the classroom doors, this misinformation had spread throughout the class. Everyone was panicking. They were too young to understand that the comments had been made based on fear rather than fact. The children’s stress levels were compounded by the fact that they didn’t understand the concept of a replay button. Many of my 5-year-old students had watched 50 or more buildings fall to the ground that morning. Reading groups were quickly replaced with a film and television lesson as I needed every child to at least understand how videos worked – that one clip could be played over and over. I couldn’t take away the trauma of the images they had witnessed, however, I could help calm their minds that a World War had not been announced and that buildings in every city of the world weren’t being destroyed one after the other. It was an eye-opening moment for me to see how adults and children process news, comments, and information differently, based on many factors, including life experience and brain maturity.

It’s okay to talk to kids about world events

I think it is healthy for parents, caregivers and educators to communicate with children about world events, including the COVID19 pandemic. I believe, however, that it needs to be done sensitively and in an age-appropriate way that considers their experience levels and cognitive-processing abilities (and also provides them with breaks from having to hear about it all the time).

I can’t control the pandemic, but …

My goal over the coming months is to be more mindful of the covid-chatter I expose my children to. I believe that this intention will positively impact our whole family. While we wait for the storm to pass, I will do my best to prevent my own frustrations and fears from capsizing the boat my children are in. It feels as though there is so much out of our control with this pandemic. Perhaps the way we react to it all and speak about it in front of children is one of the things we can control.