How to Talk to Your Kids About the Realities of COVID

When it comes to the topic of COVID with younger kids, let them take the lead and come to you, Marriage and Family Therapist Susan Stiffelman told Mom.com. The hope is that they feel safe enough to ask questions. When you respond, don’t inundate them with too much information.

“If they say, ‘Mommy what did that man mean when he said all the hospitals are full? What if grandma gets sick?’ You answer that specific question,” she said.

Make sure to keep the answer age appropriate and frame it in an honest and empowering way. Parents can say, "The newscaster is telling us that because they want all of us to do our part to keep everyone safe by wearing our masks." Then follow it with an action like collecting pictures to send to Grandma or a relative that might be isolated, Stiffelman said and say, “Here’s something we can do to help our loved one.”

A couple of months into the pandemic Northern California writer and mother of three, Jessica Guerrieri, wrote a children’s book with illustrator Michelle Miller called, “The Littlest Helpers are the Biggest Help” to use as a guide when explaining the COVID crisis to her girls. One page has a drawing of a girl in a cape that says she likes to think of the doctors and nurses as superheroes fighting against the virus.

“As a whole my daughters have been extremely patient and flexible about all the changes,” she told Mom.com of her girls ages 6, 5 and 2. “We explain, ‘We cannot share our germs right now with other people because of the virus.’ It has gotten to the point where they have accepted not playing with their cousins and friends.’”

Each state is handling the crisis differently. In some areas, kids have not been to school since last spring, while others have ping-ponged out of school because of the surge in positive COVID cases and deaths after the holidays. Plus, a new strain of the virus is popping up all over the world and is said to be more contagious. Explaining to kids why they still have to wear masks, can’t go to school and see friends can be painful for everyone involved.

It’s important to realize when talking to kids that a parent’s job is not to make their kids happy, but to give them the tools to navigate through life’s challenges, Stiffelman said.

If parents give kids those tools and it’s handled well, “which will be easier on some days than others, our kids can come through with an internal knowing that they can get through tough times, that they have stretched their capacity to cope with adversity,” she said.

To do that, start conversations with an acknowledgement that what is happening is not great. For example, when talking about school closures, say to your child that you have news they may not want to hear and you don’t want to be telling them, but it’s happening. When they respond that it isn’t fair, you answer simply with, “I know,” Stiffelman said. And you don’t follow it with “but…”

“When we scramble to justify something that our kids don’t want to do or hear, our own scrambling conveys to them, ‘I’m worried that you won’t be able to handle this,’" Stiffelman said. "Whereas when we say ‘I know,' there’s this implicit, subtle communication that says, ‘yeah, that stinks, but I’m not panicking over here in my parent chair, that I really know we’re going to be okay.’”

It’s been heartbreaking for Guerrieri to hear her daughters say they miss hugging their grandparents. But she and her family take COVID precautions and guidelines seriously and she communicates to her girls that it’s not just for their family, but for everyone in the community.

“Now that there is a vaccine we have explained the importance of science, trusting doctors, and how this will help protect us moving forward," Guerrieri said. "I make sure they understand that life will not always be like this and this time in our lives has made us stronger and more resilient.”