Helping Kids Through Challenging Times

This year has been chal­leng­ing for almost every­one, includ­ing kids. Now that we’ve arrived at the end of the year, your kids may be feel­ing the impact of this try­ing year.

QMG Pedi­atric Behav­ioral Health Ther­a­pist Amy Hast­ing said that kids have expe­ri­enced an upheaval in their nor­mal lives due to changes such as vir­tu­al learn­ing and social distancing.

“While chil­dren are typ­i­cal­ly very resilient, the world is much dif­fer­ent than it was a year ago – and that can be dif­fi­cult for chil­dren to adjust to,” said Hasting.

As the pan­dem­ic con­tin­ues and restric­tions remain in place, children’s social inter­ac­tions have been impacted.

“Most chil­dren are used to the hol­i­days being a time to enjoy with extend­ed fam­i­ly and friends, but with COVID restric­tions fam­i­ly gath­er­ings may be lim­it­ed,” Hast­ing said. ​“Along with remote learn­ing for some stu­dents, chil­dren are expe­ri­enc­ing less con­tact with friends. Hol­i­day break might be lim­it­ed to doing things with imme­di­ate fam­i­ly instead of meet­ing up with friends which can also be a dif­fi­cult adjustment.”

To sup­port your chil­dren, Hast­ing said com­mu­ni­ca­tion and mak­ing the most of this time is important.

“Par­ents can help their chil­dren by being open with them and com­mu­ni­cat­ing fam­i­ly plans ahead of time. Also, par­ents being cre­ative and plan­ning more fam­i­ly activ­i­ties (less elec­tron­ics) is like­ly to help their chil­dren dur­ing this time.”

Some exam­ples of inter­ac­tive fam­i­ly activ­i­ties include bak­ing cook­ies, tak­ing a dri­ve to look at Christ­mas lights, movie nights, sledding/​snowboarding, allow­ing your child to help plan meals and cook­ing them togeth­er, board games, craft­ing, drawing/​writing let­ters to fam­i­ly and friends, or even build­ing a blan­ket fort. Hast­ing said to be cre­ative and involve your children.

If par­ents have con­cerns regard­ing their chil­dren, Hast­ing rec­om­mends speak­ing to your pedi­a­tri­cian or a behav­ioral health ther­a­pist. For more infor­ma­tion on Quin­cy Med­ical Group’s Behav­ioral Health ser­vices and team, call 217−222−6550, ext. 3418 or vis­it quin​cymed​group​.com.