How to Talk to Your Children About COVID-19?

COVID 19 has taken the world by its storm. Everyone is worried, anxious, and confused by the uncertainty of the situation. We are adults and can process the information more quickly than our younger lot. They have young brains with so many questions popping up and jumping in their mind fields. 

As grown-ups, it is our responsibility to feed the right information to their minds through healthy cautious conversation. The goal is to make them informed enough to take preventive measures and not panicking out at the same moment.  Have some light chit chat and teach them through healthy activities to respond to a particular situation. 

Spend time with them

It is imperative to spend time with your children and listen to what they have to say about the present circumstances. If you do not listen to them and answer their questions, then they would pick up the information from an unverified source to satisfy their minds. Pick a time, be it play time, study time, or table time, and prepare yourself for what you have to say. 

Optimize your message     

Any person or any organization did not start this pandemic, so do not incline your tone and answers towards blaming others. Stay calm and reassure your kids that situation will improve soon, and how the scientific community is working to deal with the situation. Keep a check on your daily conversation tone, and instill optimism and a ray of hope about the ongoing circumstances. 

Rely on credible websites such as CDC, BBC, or NCBI to take reliable information. Cut off the random access of children to the radio, TV, or online media to avoid communication of false, exaggerated news that could leave a negative impact. Educate them about the rumors spread by social media platforms. 

What might be cooking up inside of your child’s mind?

Now, let’s address the questions that might concern the younger generation and discuss appropriate answers to those queries. 

1. What is COVID-19, and what is a pandemic?

COVID-19 is a disease like many other diseases. CO-Corona, VI-Virus, and D-Disease, it is a disease caused by the Coronavirus. It’s just we have not heard about it before. It is caused by a virus which is small specie not visible by the naked eye. Therefore, we need to be more careful as we cannot see it. 

Just like many other words in your English book, the pandemic is a word to describe a situation where a disease is affecting people all over the world. As it is making people ill living in every country so it is called pandemic.

• Why do I have to wear a mask when I go out?

The virus that makes people sick feels very happy when it gets a chance to jump from one person to another. It can dance when we cough, sneeze and spit. The virus can be sitting inside us, waiting to make us sick. So, even when we are not ill, the virus can jump from us to the people around us. 

Wearing a mask can prevent our friends and family from getting sick due to us. Cough and sneeze in your handkerchief, or elbow, and wash the hands many times a day. 

• Why can’t I go to school and meet my friends?

When there are many people together, then there are more chances of germs getting spread. We care for our friends, so we will rejoin school when this virus will go to its home. We can still video chat and call your friends to catch up on what they are doing in these pandemic vacations. What activities and games they are playing these days? 

• What will happen if we get sick?

We won’t get sick as long as we are wearing a mask and washing our hands frequently. However, if we get sick, then we would have to stay in the room alone for some time. It is to make sure that other family members might not get the disease due to us. 

• When will this end?

No one knows about it as this is a new situation, and we are still learning to handle it. The best thing we can do is to not go out of home, wear a mask if we go out, and wash our hands before eating, drinking, and after every few hours.

Our expert teams are working to find a weapon to kill this virus once and for all. Till then, we need to be patient and calm. We need to take care of us, our parents, grandparents, and friends. And just like that, keep the conversation going!