Ruadhán Jones
Despite the challenges, returning to the classroom is the right thing for children writes Ruadhán Jones
It’s difficult to gauge the impact Covid-19 has had on young people, but the likelihood is that it will not be positive. While the physical threat the virus poses children is slim, the effects on mental health and wellbeing are significant.
What is certain, however, is that the return to school will benefit children. Dr Noel McDermott, a psychotherapist with over 25 years’ experience in health, social care, and education, says that schools are “absolutely essential” to help children combat the strain Covid-19 places on them.
“Schools do so much more than force-feed a curriculum into children,” he says. “They prepare a child to move into complex social interactions central to success in life, [and] they mitigate against harm caused in other areas of the child’s life.
“All these areas, more than at any other time in our collective history, are absolutely essential for our children and crucial in understanding why we need to re-open schools and get our children back into them.”
So how do schools help children cope with Covid-19? And what are the challenges facing parents and children in transitioning back to the school? Here are a few tips to help you make the return as smooth as possible.
Fostering resilience
While one of the central roles of schools is study and learning, this is not their only role, Noel McDermott argues. Instead, he describes schools as one of the most important potential resilience sources for children.
“Schools offer a resilience fostering environment,” Dr McDermott says, “and resilience in these times is desperately needed – it psychologically helps us cope with life’s knocks, offering positive development despite adversity.”
The reasons schools are such key centres for fostering resilience are manifold, but here are two key ones. The first is that they are a safe environment for children to experiment in.
Schools allow children to experience social challenge and diversity in a safe and supportive environment, emphasising positive relationships based on trust. Central to this is the presence of empathetic adults – teachers – who provide a buffer to the negative impact of adversity. All this contributes to the emotional and psychological health of children by promoting neurological growth.
Fostering relationships
The second, closely related reason is that they are a key location for children’s social interactions. The social learning aspects are crucial in child development both in the sense that learning takes place socially and that children learn important social connection skills. Through interaction with peers and adults in the school children grow emotionally, cognitively and psychologically.
Equally, children who faced difficulties in the home environment can find those deficits reduced by schools especially when the attachment relationships are looked at closely. Attachment is a strong, warm bond between a child and adult that encourages safety and growth .
It’s for these reasons that Dr McDermott believes going back to school is so essential.
“We cannot hope that our mental health services will cope with the developmental and other trauma that children are and will be experiencing due to not being in school and due to growing up in a pandemic,” he says. “A significant portion of the damage the pandemic is doing psychologically to our children can be mitigated simply by going back to school.”
Easing the transition
However important going back to school is, that doesn’t invalidate the concerns and fears of parents and children. The two main effects that Dr McDermott identifies are the fears associated with the virus and the psychological effect of separation after a significant period of time spent together.
With regard to fear of the virus, Dr McDermott highlights the importance of getting good information on the likelihood of children being infected. There is plenty of evidence which suggests that children don’t suffer severe symptoms from becoming infected and that they are less likely than adults to spread the virus.
In order to address the physical concerns, however, good infection control practices are encouraged. For children, proper hand washing should be practiced and, if they are old enough, social distancing also. As parents, it is important to follow school guidelines for interactions such as dropping kids off: socially distance, face masks, don’t enter the building, etc.
In order to reassure yourself and your child, contacting your school and talking through the different scenarios with them can be helpful. No plan can cover all contingencies, but knowing what is in place can at least provide clarity where uncertainty otherwise reigns.
Separation anxiety
While the physical fears are given a lot of attention, Dr McDermott believes that separation anxiety will be one of the primary difficulties facing parents and children. Given the extended break spent together and the added strain of Covid-19, this can exacerbate the difficulty of separating, especially for young children.
Signs of such anxiety in children will most often be physical. In younger ones, watch out for the following: regression into developmentally earlier behaviours such as thumb sucking, needing a special toy or comforter; emotional dysregulation and temper issues; and, in some cases bed wetting.
In older children, the manifestations may be the following: poor sleep; changes to eating habits or appetite issues; problems with energy levels, too much or too little; irritability; and becoming withdrawn.
How to respond
Although the circumstances seem extreme, having anxieties about returning to school is normal. As such, our responses will largely be tried and trusted. Try and remember how you have dealt with your kids being anxious or unhappy before – ask yourself what worked then?
Dr Noel McDermott believes that the best approach to this is to imagine this not as ‘going back to school’ but as starting at school. What were your kids like when they first started school, what worked with them at that point?
It’s useful to frame it in this way as it has been a long time away from school and upon return many of the processes will have changed (bubbling, queuing, parents having restricted access, no hugging, masks, hand washing, etc). It’s a whole new ball game and the strangeness of it is likely to produce feelings of significant loss and anxiety.
In general, what works with helping kids deal with their anxieties is to increase those behaviours that provide comfort and support prior to starting back and for the first few weeks after going back are:
- More cuddles.
- More one to one time.
- Lots of time to talk about things.
- Normalisation techniques (“of course you are feeling worried darling, we all feel that way when starting school/seeing friend’s after a long time etc”).
- Encouraging self-soothing through special toys for example.
Mind your own wellbeing
It’s not just children who will be affected by the uncertainty and fears of returning to school. While your kids going back to school is the right thing, don’t be surprised to feel unsettled as a parent.
You need to take care of yourself to be able to mind your children. Be compassionate with yourself, we are all experiencing them and it’s normal to have concerns. Talk with your partner, if possible, and ensure you are on the same page in terms of parenting decisions
This will help clarify the situation as well as putting your fears to the test – are they real concerns or imagined? By subjecting them to the ‘reality test’, you can identify which scenarios are likely and make plans accordingly.
Keeping in contact with your school, as well as other parents, can turn the unknown into the known. We can’t control the unknown, but the known we can at least plan for. Share your fears to ground yourself and remember to be patient – this is going to be a difficult time for many of us.