Covid-19 has raised the levels of anxiety in everyone. Families are being pulled in every direction, working from home, homeschooling, mask wearing and social distancing and as a result all of our stress levels have jumped through the roof.
Learning can’t happen if children are stressed out and we can’t truly support them if we are at the end of our ropes. Pandemic Schooling requires new strategies to support our children and ourselves.
Here are some resources to help to do both:
The Center For Disease Control (CDC), the CDC not only provides up to date information about the Covid-19 virus, but also shares a variety of tools to support parents and children during this stressful time. The Covid-19 Parental Resource Kit divides resources by age group of children and addresses their mental, emotional and social well being. The Stress and Coping section, turns its attention to adults and the possible stressors they may encounter.
The Child Mind Institute is a wonderful non-profit whose mission is ,according to their website, “transforming the lives of children and families struggling with mental health and learning disorders.” The site covers a variety of topics A-Z that address concerns and disorders. The Covid-19 articles are vast and cover everything from Identifying signs of depression in children to Family resources for remote learning.
The Help Guide provides ways to manage your mental health during Covid-19 by managing anxiety, fear and stress. Some of the articles of note cover, Finding joy in difficult times, Overcoming insomnia triggered by the pandemic,and Coping with financial stress. They offer six free pre recorded meditations to learn mindfulness techniques and address anxiousness. The site seems mainly adult focused but I did find a few articles for children and teens.
Virus Anxiety compiled a variety of articles from newspapers, and online platforms like Vice, NY Times, and Mashable to provide tools for Covid-19. Their articles cover everything from dealing with xenophobia to ways to address loneliness in isolation. I particularly like two sections, the Ask an expert section , where their experts answer some common questions about how to deal with issues that come up during the pandemic, and the Take a break section, where you can literally click on a link and get a much needed break watching Lizzo playing the flute or Youtube’s Some Good News with John Kransinski. They also offer free pre recorded meditations.
The National Institute of Mental Health provides shareable informational links about Covid-19 and mental health strategies that you can post on Facebook or other social media to spread awareness. They also have educational videos, articles and radio programming to address your concerns.
If you or any of your loved ones need emergency mental health support, you can text 741741 to a crisis counselor at the Crisis Text Line.
-Damali Navarro, Guest Columnist
Damali Navarro is an actress, writer, producer and an homeschool educator for over 10 years. My homeschool journey began out of need to find a better educational fit for my neuro diverse son. Traditional school was ignoring the needs of the whole child.. That’s the sweet way of saying school was sucking the life force out of him. So we leaped into homeschooling and through A LOT of a trial and error we (my son and I) created a self directed learning plan that honors his interests and curiosities.
I have received no compensation in any form from any of these organizations.