In this episode about navigating Covid19 with kids, host Amelia Phillips speaks to Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist Professor Brett McDermott, about the best ways to talk to our kids about coronavirus and its impact on their lives, plus how to spot signs of stress and reassure our kids.
Below is an unedited transcript of the podcast episode:
Had this sad but slightly funny moment with Charlotte, my five year old the other night, we were sitting in bed reading her bedtime story and she just suddenly burst into tears and started sobbing. And I said, Charlotte, honey, what’s going on? What’s wrong? And she just out of the blue said, Mommy, I don’t want you to die.
And I. Gob smacked, like she’s never mentioned death like that before, and I did not know what to say. I had one of those fumbling moments and kind of mumbled and I said, Oh, I’m not gonna die, darling. And I did what I do best, which is gave her a big bear hug and just held her tie and she looked up at me.
Then with these tears stained eyes. And she said, Mommy, when you die, I’m gonna put a vegetable in your mouth. And I just had this sort of split moment where part of me was just so distraught that she was so upset about death. And then the other part of me, the nutritionist in me was like, Oh, my messaging around vegetables and vegetables being healthy for you is really sinking in.
I might need to dial that back a little bit.
This is healthy her with Amelia. And in this special series on navigating Covid 19 with kids, I’m wanting to help my fellow moms get through this difficult time as best we can. Today I wanna learn about the best ways to speak to our kids about all the turmoil that’s going on at the moment. Joining me via Skype to discuss this is the former director of Beyond Blue Child and Adolescent psychiatrist, Professor Brett McDermott.
Thanks for coming on today, Brett. It’s a pleasure. It’s a pleasure. You’ve got so much experience in the field of child psychology and you’re a dad yourself going through this with the rest of us. Tell me, how do we recognize those early signs that our kids might be getting anxious, worried, or even just simply saddened by what’s going on?
Look, I think there’s some really good news here, and the really good news here is that although every child is different, You the parent, you the mum, you are the expert in your child. And what you need to look for is are they acting like they’ve always acted or are they doing something different? Have they had some little personality or behavioral change?
So if you know your child is quiet and thoughtful and quietly creative and gets on with it, but now they’re noisy and irritable, well that’s different. That might be a sign that something’s going on. If your child. Knock about rolling in the grass, really active kind of person, and they’re suddenly quiet, then that’s different.
You know, I want people just reflect on, on what their child was like before Covid and what they’re like now, and if they’re acting differently. Well, that’s a sign they might be under stress or they might be, you know, trying to work through, uh, in their own childlike way what the rest of us are trying to work through.
And that’s this crazy time we’re living in a, at, at the moment. Yeah. Well, I mean, that example I just gave with, with Charlotte, my five year old, I mean, it’s so out of character for her to birth into tears like that. So if something like that does happen, what sorts of questions should we be asking our kids to get to the bottom of how they’re feeling?
Which, I mean, often they don’t even know it themselves, do they? Well, that’s right. I mean, they won’t be able to put into words, you know, feeling overwhelmed or feeling anxious or feeling scared. I mean, especially the younger ones, you know, the, the preschool and the, the grade one, two kids won’t be able to.
Uh, put that into words at all. Um, so, you know, you can do a whole bunch of creative things to get them to express themselves. I mean, I’d like not to ask them specifically because it’s so easy for someone to shrug or someone to say no. I mean, teenagers are famous at this. If you ask them, they actually probably won’t answer.
For younger kids, you can get them to draw a. Of how they’re feeling. And if it’s covered with red and blacks and strange blobs and things where you know, they’re communicating something to it, or, uh, for an older, for a teenager, for instance, you can tell them how you are feeling. You can just reflect on how you are feeling and they will.
We’ll join that conversation if they want to. They’ll say, um, that’s how I’m feeling, or whatever. So, so it’s kind of different for each age, but I wouldn’t just go and, you know, I just wouldn’t ask them. I would, I would actually, younger ones try to get them to show you through a drawing or a story. And older ones, I would share your feelings with them.
I think that approach is really fascinating, but as a parent, I am confused about the approach I should be taking in how I behave towards them during this time. Should I be the rock in all of this? Should I put on my suit of armor and be the the stoic alpha parent that is going to lead the charge through this or.
Or should I be honest with them and and say to them, I’m really worried about this as well. I’m confused about what the best approach would be. Yeah, and I think, you know, that confusion again reflects the times. And you know, I feel sorry for people advising. I feel sorry for government at the moment. I mean, it is inherently confusing times.
Now what I would ask people to do is not to be. Too much at one or the other end of the spectrum. If you are too quiet and too completely contained and don’t say anything, then the child will think, This is so scary that mom can’t even talk about it. , Okay. If you are too much like, you know, this kind of superpower person, you know, kids, kids see that as different as well, and they say, Well, you know, mom can’t even talk about that.
So don’t go down that end too far. If you go at the other end and show what you really feel, well, you might actually, uh, you know, your anxiety might be highly contagious, Anxiety’s contagious, so you need to. Children from the most extreme of your concerns, but you can’t say too little. So I’m kind of asking people, you know, mom’s out there.
I think we need to go down the middle path. We need to talk about our feelings, but we need to talk about them in a very, you know, matter of fact, almost kind of ladi da boring way that shows that we’re not overwhelmed ourselves by anxiety. Can we break it down into maybe the five to 10 age bracket and then the sort of, you know, tens into teens?
How would you. Conduct that conversation. How would you kickstart a conversation with your sort of five to 10 year old kids? So in, in all kids, in both age groups, but let’s start with the five to 10 year old. I think we should have a base assumption. And the base assumption is they know what’s going on.
Everybody knows that this is a strange, crazy time because we’re not allowed to go out and we’re not allowed to. You know, mixing groups and we’re not allowed to go to sleepovers and parties. So your first assumption is they know that something’s going on. Now, we can’t give them the full kind of understanding because they won’t get it.
But I would say something like, You know, people get coughs and colds and you know, people get a runny nose and they’ll go yes. And say, Well, there’s one going round at the moment and it’s not dangerous to you. It’s not too dangerous. You know, it’s not dangerous to me, but it’s, it’s really quite dangerous to older people, and that’s what this is all about.
It’s kind of like a coffin cold that’s dangerous to older people. And they’ll go, How? How dangerous. Not, not that dangerous, but you know, we want to protect all our older people. So you know, the whole of Australia is developing this kind of superpower to keep our hands clean and not to give it to people, and that’s what it’s all about.
So I would encourage people to have a little kind of conversation and narrative like that. It’s just like a coffin cold. It’s specifically dangerous to older people. Now the next important thing is every time they ask. Don’t vary that explanation. Don’t give more information, say the same thing every time, because if it doesn’t kind of sink in the first time or the second time, it will sink in and if you try to modify it, it’ll just get confusing.
So I would think about what you’re gonna say. You can use those words if you like, or you can make up your own words. But for the younger child, say exactly the thi the same thing every time, so they, they’ll stop asking because they’ll know. They’ll get the same information every time. Now, to go on to teenagers, now teenagers, the difficulty with teenagers is there’s so internet savvy that.
They’ve read a whole lot about it already, but the danger with teenagers is they might have got their information from really dodgy sources. Okay? They might have got sensationalized things or some catastrophizing, worse scenario. And what we need to do with teenagers is bring them. To what is, you know, what we know and what is the proper knowledge.
And you know, the knowledge in Australia is Australia’s doing quite well. Our current restriction seems to be starting to work. And we have a very low death rate, and relative to the world, we have a low infection rate and it’s going well. And that’s, that’s the story. So for teenagers, it’s not about the information, it’s about the quality of the information that they’re receiving.
And with your teenagers, how honest with your own feelings do you think we should be? Because that concept you say that, you know, anxiety can be contagious, is a really interesting one, you know? Yeah. How deep do we need to go with, with our true feelings around it? I think generally we like to protect each other from the worst of our feelings, so, If you are feeling very overwhelmed, I would still protect my teenager from that.
You know? I mean, I would be honest, but I wouldn’t, you know, give them the full concerns on my shoulders because, That’s what being a parent is about, isn’t it? I mean, even with mine and as, as you said, I’m a father. I’m a father of some very grown up kids, but I still don’t give them the worst fears that I have.
That’s what we do as parents, and they’ll get plenty of the worst fears from the internet and their friends and things like that. So I think that. You know, our job is to be balanced and optimistic. I was about to say that, you know, it’s even a great coaching opportunity where it’s like, yeah, you know, mom and dad do feel a bit worried by this, but you know, look on the bright side, I get to spend more time with you.
Or you know, we get to slow down and do some of the things that. We talked about doing before and almost like reframing it into that positive context. Absolutely, Absolutely. And you know, it’s so easy for adolescents to become negative and pessimistic. I mean, they’re famous. They’re kind of famous for it, aren’t they?
We don’t wanna promote that. We want to, you know, you can’t be over optimistic because I’ll see through that. But you can say things like, I am gonna make the best of. I think it’s horrible. And let’s face it, no one likes to be cooped up, but I’m gonna make the best of this. And there’s this book I’ve always wanted to read or this online course I’ve always wanted to do, or I’m gonna do some YouTubes about painting or whatever.
But I personally am gonna make the best of this and lead by example. So don’t say I want you to do this, you say, I’m gonna do this, and then the teenager will hopefully say, Well, you know, well if mom’s gonna learn to become a great baker of this, well maybe I should use the time positively as well. Lead by example, Oh, I’m gonna clean my room a lot and put all my dirty clothes in the laundry basket a lot in front of my.
Kids, hopefully. Absolutely. They’ll, they’ll pick up on some of that Good plan.
I feel like over the last year or so, Aussies have had a bit of a bad rap as far as disasters that we’ve had to deal with. I feel like there’s had to be some big conversations. You know, there were droughts and we had to talk to our kids about the droughts, and then there were the fires. We had to talk about the fires.
I find it hard to put it in perspective for our kids. I think that’s where, you know, these family conversations are actually really important. That’s where, you know, I, I would actually play the age card and I’ve said to mine a few times, Look, I’ve been around quite a long time now and I’ve actually never seen anything like this, but I actually know it’s going to get better because I can remember in the past there were hard times.
I can remember a couple of economic crashes and I can remember a couple of really bad natural disasters and it was horrible. Then, But it always got better. You know, we’ve had this amazing start of the year and you really want to just retire 2020, you know, and, and it’s, but it’s been the worst out of the year I can remember.
But I know it’s gonna get better, and I also know that. Uh, you know, a lot of us are actually gonna have this kind of sense of growth. A lot of us are going to be closer together. Um, I’ve talked on Zoom with my kids more than I have for a long time, and that’s been fantastic. Our family little WhatsApp group has just been on fire lately.
You know, we’ve had this great opportunity to connect with each other and a lot of people are experienced that as well. So I think that it is bad at the moment, but. I know because of my age that it will get better and we just have to, you know, maintain the best of it until that time. Yeah, it is quite a remarkable global experience that we’re going through.
My sisters over in Dallas and you know, for her and I to both be running out of toilet paper at our local grocery stores at the same time and to be pulling our hair out, trying to homeschool our kids. It’s brought my sister and I, so. Closer in many ways. And I guess that is a really positive way to, you know, one of the positives that is going to come out of this.
Absolutely. I have a daughter in London and we had a joke yesterday about how to gently peel apart three ply toilet paper. So, you know, I mean, humor helps these things help and, and, uh, you know, families are gonna, you know, struggle. There is no doubt about this having a couple of eight year old boys. And, you know, running around a house in an apartment strikes me with some degree of horror
Okay. So I really feel for, you know, mums listening to this with, you know, super active little boys. I think girls we’re a little bit better off. I think that a lot of girls we can engage in reading and we can engage in creative activities. And it’s time that we help boys. You know, if you can get a boy.
Into, you know, page one of something like Harry Potter, which we know there’s seven books that would be fantastic if you can engage them in something, which is like that. But you know, people are gonna struggle and we’re gonna have to fall back on some serious parenting creativity to get through this.
But again, families that do will look back for the rest of their lives thinking as a family. We negotiated Covid 19. Do you remember that? And everyone will. It will be a very, you know, warm and joining experience when people look back at that time. What’s one final tip for us moms when talking to our kids about Corona and just reframing this stage that we’re going through.
Okay. One thing I would really love your listeners to think about is the difference between consuming media together or allowing your child to consume it by themselves. So here’s an example. I remember a long time ago. In nine 11, a lot of children thought hundreds of buildings in New York collapsed because they saw it from different angles, and they saw it over days.
And some people thought that the nine 11 twin tower disaster was 50 buildings over three days because the child sat there by themselves and watched it. But if the parent sits beside, then they can say, Oh, no, no. That’s from a different camera. Oh no, that’s yesterday’s footage. You can consume the media together and you can answer those simple questions.
So for instance, um, a young person I talked to said, Well, Italy’s really close. Italy’s really close and we are gonna get it soon. And I said, No, no, no, no, no. If I drove to Italy in my little car, it would take me about three weeks. If I walked, it would probably take me nine months to walk to Italy. You know, if you and I walk together, you know, we, I can go through about 10 sets of shoes.
It’s a long way. And they went, Oh, that’s a long way. Yes, Italy’s a long, long way away, you know, So consuming media together is really important, you know, sit side by side. And get them to see if they understood what they heard and even repeat back some of the key things to know that they got it rather than completely misinterpreted every word they heard.
So, So listen to media together, it’s really important. And then, And then limit. You know, I still remember during the flood disaster in Brisbane, we were watching it for days and days and days. My son walked in, he sat down and just like a boy, he picked up the, uh, the controller and turned the cricket on and we all felt better.
Even the girls who don’t like cricket, we felt better because we’d stopped watching days and days of disaster. So, So watch media together. And control how much you watch as a family. Such great advice. Thank you so much for coming on today. I know my moms would’ve got so much out of it. My pleasure.
Anytime.
Recent Comments