Parents warned not to make kids anxious about impact of virus
PSYCHOTHERAPIST GIVES FAMILIES ADVICE ON COPING WITH ISSUES
PARENTS should stop jumping ahead with future fears if we’re to help children cope with the pandemic, families have been told.
Mums and dads shared their concerns over the lasting impact of coronavirus on youngsters.
They were taking part in an online session on the M.E.N’s Manchester Family Facebook page where psychotherapist Sarie Taylor was offering her advice.
Parents spoke about a range of problems they are experiencing with their children, from angry outbursts and fears over going outdoors, to worries about returning to school and relatives dying.
They told of how their children’s anxiety has worsened during lockdown and fear we could have a generation marked by the pandemic.
But anxiety coach Sarie, a trained psychotherapist specialising in improving the lives of those suffering with anxiety, stress or overthinking, says our children are often more resilient than we realise and will probably surprise us by how well they come out of this. She said: “What I’m hearing at the moment is that this will be a generation of children who are more anxious, who are less successful, who are this, who are that.
“But what if this is a generation of children who are able to see how resilient they are, how capable they are?”
She says we need to trust that our children will ‘reset’ after the restrictions of lockdown and not keep worrying about what ‘might happen’ in the future or how this ‘might’ impact on their education or wellbeing.
Sarie, who has her own Perfectly Imperfect Mind Mentor business, said: “None of us know how this is going to
impact our children in a year’s time, in six months’ time, even in a week’s time.
“And the best gift we can give to our children is to show them and share that message that actually we’re just dealing with right now. And even though things can be overwhelming, even though they may be missing their friends, even though they maybe scared about going back to school, or what that will be like, that knowing that even with those feelings, even with some anxiety, that they are capable, they are capable and they are resilient.”
She says it’s understandable for parents to want to ‘fix things’ for their children and take any worries away, but ‘ultimately we can’t stop them from having worried thoughts’ and the physical symptoms like tummy aches and headaches that often follow.
What we can do, she says, is acknowledge those thoughts, but help children to focus on the things they can control.
She said: “We’ve got to look at what we can do. We’ve got to look at what things we can put in place when we’re allowed to be out and about more together and how we can kind of allow them to get as much of this experience as they wanted, without them having to just become fixated and stuck in this idea of it not being fair and that they can’t have what they wanted.”