ISLAMABAD, July 13 (online): As the pandemic continues, children are still mostly at home. Summer activities are canceled or up in the air, and many children are suffering confusion and stress. Parents may be stressed themselves, but there are ways to help kids feel better.
During the first few weeks of staying at home, Maryam Jernigan-Noesi’s 4-year-old son Carter was excited. His working parents were around him most of the day, and it seemed like a big extended weekend. But after a few weeks, she says, things changed.
“In terms of getting dressed and brushing teeth and that type of routine, he was a little slower to do that… testing the limits with mom and dad,” she recalls.
Carter was used to a two-hour nap at school. But now at home, he didn’t want to nap. And at night, it was hard for him to get to sleep. “So in some cases, he was in bed just wiggling and twisting and turning,” Jernigan-Noesi says. He would tell his parents he wasn’t sleepy and couldn’t fall asleep.
As a child psychologist, Jernigan-Noesi knows that when children are emotionally distressed, they may revert to behaviors from earlier childhood. Those who are potty-trained may have accidents and wet the bed. Others may start thumb sucking again. “So, Carter, for example, who hasn’t been rocked to sleep in a while, wanted to sit in my lap and be rocked in the chair that I used to breastfeed him in and rock him to sleep when he was much younger,” she says.
A number of Jernigan-Noesi’s friends tell her their children, 8, 9 and even older are suddenly clingy, following parents around the house, asking them to sit in the bathroom while baths are taken and teeth are brushed. “It’s almost as if they did not want to do anything independently, which was uncharacteristic,” she says. “These were developmental milestones they had met years before this time.” She adds she has also begun to see this issue reported in psychology literature.
Stay tuned to BAAGHI TV for latest news and updates!
