Ep. 29: A Child Psychologist On How to Prepare Children for Back-to-School
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How should parents prepare children for back to school? How to speak to anxieties about masks and social distancing? What do you say to a child who is worried about catching the coronavirus? Or passing it on to grandparents or immunocompromised parents? Child psychologist Dr. Naomi Slonim provides her tips for caregivers looking to prepare schoolchildren of all ages.
Relevant links and highlights:
Here’s the link to that great Liz Renzetti column we mentioned that ran in the Globe and Mail: Send Your Teens to School. They’ve Suffered Enough Already.
Here’s a link to some of the services our sponsor Medcan provides to children, such as the Annual Health Assessment for Children & Youth and Dedicated Care for Children & Youth.
If you’re also seeking guidance of a more medical flavour, check out Medcan’s Dr. Jacob Arnold, a paediatrician, who conducted a webinar providing his guidance for kids returning to classroom. It’s on YouTube.
In the episode, Dr. Naomi Slonim cited two approaches for parenting models:
Emotion-focused Family Therapy from Dr. Adele Lafrance.
Collaborative Problem Solving from Dr. Ross Greene, now known as Collaborative and Proactive Solutions.
Child Psychologist Dr. Naomi Slonim’s Tips for Parents Seeking to Prepare Kids for the Pandemic Back-to-School:
Parents are the models for their children. The number one thing that you can do as a parent to prepare your child is actually to think about your own anxiety and your own concerns about school. You need to talk about how you're coping with that, and what things you can do to help you feel less worried. So you can have those conversations around dinner, and you can even make up some things that you may not be worried about. These are small things that you are using to model how you talk about feelings, how you deal with feelings, how you cope with feelings. When parents model very adaptive healthy coping strategies, then their children have the ability to do the same.
Remember, anxiety is contagious. Whatever you need to do as a parent to decrease your anxiety and to feel like your anxiety is manageable—that will help your child. Typical relaxation strategies that parents and families can use: parents can model deep breathing, exercising, getting proper sleep, eating well. Those are kind of basics. They can also model ways that they tell themselves things that are helpful. So how do they talk back to their thoughts?
For younger children, I think it's really important to speak to their imaginations. You might say, think of someone really brave in your family who did something really brave. And think about what that was like. Or, you might say, let's think of your favourite superhero and pretend that we're that superhero. And we can face anything.
Parents need to get their kids back into routine. In the summer, bedtimes get later and kids don’t have as much structure—and this has definitely increased since the pandemic, since we haven't have had as many activities. So a couple of weeks before school starts, parents need to start getting their children ready to have structure. Regular mealtimes, regular bedtimes, and a sense that things are happening at specific times. Parents can start doing school-like things like reading or having children read a little bit on their own everyday. These are nice ways to ease back into things that are schoolwork-like.
Ease back into social interaction. If your child has not been having a lot of playdates or activities, this is a really good time to encourage them in a socially distanced way to really get back to connecting with some of their friends that they haven't seen for a long time so that they feel like these people will be familiar when they go back. And they will have people that they can talk to and play with and rely on for support.
Visualize the first day of school. The other thing that works really well with children because they have such great imaginations is to actually visualize what school will be like. So what will your classroom look like? What will it be like to be at school? You can start having these conversations with them. You can even go to the school, you know, look at the building, get used to walking there, again, to get them back into that pattern and to have it be something that they're getting a little bit of what we call exposure to before starting,
Please subscribe and rate us on your favourite podcast platform. Eat Move Think host Shaun Francis is Medcan’s CEO and chair. Follow him on Twitter @shauncfrancis. Connect with him on LinkedIn. And follow him on Instagram @shauncfrancis. Eat Move Think is produced by Ghost Bureau. Executive producer is Chris Shulgan. Senior producer is Russell Gragg.
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Back to School with a Child Psychologist final web transcript
CHRISTOPHER SHULGAN
Hi, I'm Christopher Shulgan, Eat Move Think’s Executive Producer. Back to school occupies this strange role in society. On the one hand, there's anticipation. Kids have been home since March break. They're bored, and their parents are tired of trying to fit in work around them. At the same time, there's a lot of anxiety. In Toronto's Globe and Mail newspaper, Liz Renzetti wrote a column about this that had a good line: "Parents are facing back to school decisions involving a number of variables that would make Stephen Hawking's head spin." Our sponsor, Medcan provides mental wellness services for children, and the pandemic and back to school anxiety comes up a lot. So we thought it might be useful to check in with one of Medcan’s child psychologists to get some advice for parents on how to prepare kids to return to classrooms. Dr. Naomi Slonim is a registered school and clinical psychologist working with children, adolescents, parents and families. She completed her PhD in school and clinical child psychology at the University of Toronto, and a postdoctoral clinical fellowship at the Sick Kids Centre for Community Mental Health. But before we get to my conversation with Dr. Naomi Slonim, here's a clip from an interview that I did with my niece, Eva, aged five and heading into kindergarten.
EVA
I don't go to school since of coronavirus.
CHRIS
Can you tell me how you feel about being around other kids because of the coronavirus?
EVA
Yeah. Okay. Well, you can't go around because they might have coronavirus.
CHRIS
And do you want to go to school in September or do you want to stay home?
EVA
I want to stay home.
CHRIS
How come?
EVA
Because of coronavirus.
CHRIS
Okay. Thank you, Eva.
EVA
Thanks Chris.
DR. NAOMI SLONIM
My name is Naomi Slonim. And I think I took long route to child psychology. I started off in philosophy, moved into cognitive science and then decided I wanted to do something more applied and work directly with kids. So I moved into the clinical program.
CHRIS
Why did you want to work with kids?
DR. SLONIM
I always enjoyed the world of children. I always enjoyed their imagination and the way that they look at life, at play.
CHRIS
What sorts of concerns are you hearing from parents about their children returning to school?
DR. SLONIM
From parents, I'm seeing them kind of hedge between two very difficult alternatives. Even before they've decided whether to send their kids to school or not, they're thinking about what would life be like for my child at home? Knowing my child, can they handle an online curriculum? Can they be at home away from their friends, not seeing their friends as much? And then what is the risk to putting them back in a school environment, or what is the benefit from putting them back in a school environment?
CHRIS
If you were to go back in time, say back in December, and if you were to say, you know, eight months from now you are going to return to school and everybody's gonna wear a mask. And not only that, but everybody is going to be coached to not conduct any physical contact, no hugging, no fist bumps, it would have sounded like a dystopian young adult thriller kind of thing. Like, this world is a strange world. And as a parent, it makes me nervous to put my kid in this strange environment. Do you have any advice for parents who are considering the issue of whether to send their children back to school physically? I assume, you know, in most families, that would be a conversation between the parents. Do you have any suggestions for how that conversation should go?
DR. SLONIM
I think in terms of making that choice about whether to send your child to school, it is a very individual and personal choice that parents are making. And children will have strong opinions as well about what they would like to do, what they think would be best for them, you know, what their risks will be. And I think you can have a very open discussion about that.
CHRIS
Let's say the caregivers of children have had a conversation and decided, yes, it is right for their children to return to school. Presumably, the children don't yet know this. So how does a parent approach the conversation with the child or children in a family where they are breaking the news to them? Or possibly delivering the great news? I mean, I guess it depends on the child's attitude toward return to school. But actually delivering the news, how does that conversation go? Do you have any suggestions on that?
DR. SLONIM
In terms of having discussions with your child, there are a number of different parenting models that you can follow. As I say to parents, all parenting models that are mainstream right now, they always start with that validation empathy step. That is the first step. So listening to your child and hearing their perspective and validating whatever their concerns are is the jumping off point. And, you know, maybe those concerns or their wishes about going back to school map on really well with what the parents are also thinking, but maybe they don't. And then that requires more of a collaborative kind of problem-solving approach. I always say, you know, for parents think about having decisions that are adult decisions, decisions that are collaborative, child and adult together decisions, and decisions that you don't care so much about and that your child can make on their own. And I say give them tons of these, but these are things that are not very important. So you're actually giving your child a sense of control. If you are choosing to make it a collaborative adult-child decision, maybe for an older child or a teen, then you can have a collaborative problem-solving decision about that. So you would have the, you know, listening to your child's concerns and try to work through that and think about possible solutions. If you do see it as an adult decision, again I would still suggest to parents that they present it in a way where they're listening to their child, listening to their child's concerns.
AMELIA
My name's Amelia, and I'm going into grade 10. I feel like I have mixed feelings on it because part of me really does want to go back, and I'm excited and it's been a long time since I've seen a lot of people. And I know it also is—it can be really bad for some people's mental health, like, being isolated for so long. But at the same time, I definitely have more anxiety. There is the general worries that you have every year, like who you'll have classes with and what teachers they'll have. But now there's also the added stress of COVID, and making sure you're taking precautions and making sure you're, like, being extra safe.
AMELIA
I have asthma, pretty severe. I've had it all my life. And it's definitely nerve-wracking, going back and knowing that, like, I'm at a much higher risk. Like, there's a lot of immunocompromised kids. And it's like, I feel like people don't really realize it. And in a school filled with 1,000 or so kids, there's a very high chance that someone could get it and then die. And that's kind of scary to know that there's a possibility that we might lose some of our peers.
CHRIS
What are you saying to parents to prepare their kids for school?
DR. SLONIM
To prepare your child for school, what we have to do is we have to reframe the message that we've been sending kids. So we have been, for many months, as parents, as communities, sending the message that the world is unsafe in a way, right? Don't touch other people, wear a mask, don't go here, don't touch the playground. These are all messages that inherently make children a bit fearful about the external world. Now we have to reframe the message, and we have to not be unrealistic, but basically, I think, say that, you know, it's okay to go to school because everyone is working together to make school safe for you. So teachers, parents, the principal, doctors, nurses, everyone around you is working together to make the school safe by doing—and then you can get into all of the, you know, we're going to continue to wash our hands, we're going to continue to wear masks. All of those things that they will do that will help them keep everyone safe at school. So, I think that communication has to be reframed.
DR. SLONIM
The second piece is to really normalize all of these worries and validate these worries. Okay, so from an emotion focus family therapy perspective, EFFT, we talk about validating, meeting the emotion as a first step. And the rule is three because's. So "I can understand why. It makes sense that you'd be worried because —" and then it's because, because, because. For example, "You've been away from school a long time. Because you haven't seen your friends for a while. And because you don't know who's going to be in your class." I'm just guessing as you would as a parent, right? Guess and they'll correct you if you're wrong. And really normalize, you know, it's okay to feel worried. Many kids will actually have lots of different feelings at the same time, which is normal too. We would expect, for example, them to be a little bit excited and a little bit worried. That's okay. You know, that's completely normal.
ELLON
My first name is Ellon, I'm going into grade eight.
CHRIS
And how is this year going to be different from other years?
ELLON
Oh well, this year is probably going to be different because we're going to have to wear masks at school. And I'm pretty sure all the physical activity is going to be different. And you probably might not be able to go out for lunch.
CHRIS
How do you feel about going back to school?
ELLON
I think I'm going to enjoy it because I'm normally very bored during this quarantine, and it's going to be nice to see my friends who I can't normally see.
CHRIS
So do you have any anxiety about going back to school,
ELLON
I might have some anxiety. Like, in case if I do catch it, then that would be very scary. I don't want to catch any—I don't want to put my family in danger. My dad, he has something and it's like, if he gets sick, then it's harder for him to stay alive. And it would be very bad if I caught COVID because I see him every day, and if he caught COVID that wouldn't be good because he's immunocompromised.
CHRIS
Presumably—and you've brought this up a little bit, but presumably, there are things that the parent can do to prepare the child for this new environment. So what are some of the things that a parent can do to prepare the child?
DR. SLONIM
Absolutely. So first of all, parents are the models for their children, right? So the number one thing that you can do as a parent to prepare your child is actually to think about your own anxiety and your own concerns about school. So that big thing that you're worried about, you need to actually talk about it. You need to talk about how you're coping with that, and what things you can do to help you feel less worried about whatever it is, you know? So you can have those conversations around dinner. You can even make up some things that you may not be worried about. But there's small things that you are using to model how you talk about feelings, how you deal with feelings, how you cope with feelings at home.
DR. SLONIM
And so the other thing we find is anxiety is contagious. So the second thing that parents can do other than model some of their worries is actually cope with their worries themselves. So whatever you need to do as a parent to decrease your anxiety and to feel like your anxiety's manageable will help your child. And we find that when parents model very adaptive, healthy coping strategies, then their children have the ability to do the same.
CHRIS
What's an example of a healthy coping strategy in this case?
DR. SLONIM
For example, I can think of one individual that I have been working with where I tell them, you know, you need to really think about how you're consuming the media and the news. So what do you want to get out of the news? Do you have a purpose? What is the information that you're looking for? Listening to the news in the background all day long is not healthy. Typical relaxation strategies that parents and families can use, you know, parents can model deep breathing, parents can model exercising, getting proper sleep, eating well, those are kind of basics. They can also model ways that they tell themselves things that are helpful. So how do they talk back to their thoughts, right? Well, I tell myself these are the ways that we're keeping safe that are going to help everyone be safe at school. I tell myself that this is actually very unlikely to happen when thinking of you know, that individual case that's come up on the news. So they can model those kinds of coping thoughts, especially for an older child. For younger children, I think it's really important to speak to their imaginations. So, you know, let's think of someone really brave in your family who did something really brave, and think about what that was like. Or let's think of your favourite superhero, and pretend that we're that superhero and we can face anything.
CHRIS
Okay, so let's move on. What's the third one?
DR. SLONIM
Parents need to get their kids back into routine. So we know that in the summer, bedtimes start to get later, kids start to not have as much structure in general. And this has definitely increased since the pandemic; we haven't have had as many activities happening. So parents, a couple of weeks before school starts, you need to start getting your child ready to have some structure to their day: regular mealtimes, regular bedtime, and a sense that things are happening at specific times during the day. One thing you can start doing is school-like things, like either reading to your child or having them read a little bit on their own every day would be a nice way to ease in, back into things that are schoolwork-like.
DR. SLONIM
The other thing is social interaction. If your child has not been having a lot of play dates or activities, I think this is a really good time to encourage them in a socially-distanced way to really get back to connecting with some of their friends that they haven't seen for a long time so that they feel like these people will be familiar when they go back, and they will have people that they can talk to and play with and rely on for support. The other thing that works really well with children because they have such great imaginations, is to actually visualize and start thinking, like, what will this look like? And so what will your classroom look like, do you think? What will it be like to be at school? And you can start having these conversations with them. You can even go to the school, you know, look at the school, get used to walking to school again, to get them back into that pattern, and to have it be something that they're getting a little bit of what we call exposure to before starting.
CHRIS
Would you actually walk to school with your child? Like, in the days before?
DR. SLONIM
Yes, absolutely I would suggest that. Actually, I'm definitely trying that out with my son who's now going into grade five. He's going to have his first year walking to school by himself, and we're going to practice it the week before. He's going to be armed with his phone. He's going to have all of the safety plan outlined. And yes, we're definitely going to practice that, going back and forth from school.
CHRIS
What are some of the issues that may come up after the start of school? And can we talk about some of those?
DR. SLONIM
I think that children are going to be prepared—have to be prepared, and again this is kind of the realistic part, for the possibilities that they or one of their friends will develop some sort of symptom. And, you know, the fact that there might be some inconsistency to the school year this year, you know? As I say, it's going to be bumpy. That's the word I've been using. There may be times where parents will be concerned and keep their kids at home. There will be other times where maybe they wake up with the sniffles and stay home. And, you know, maybe stay home longer than they're used to. So I know my son asked this very kind of poignant question about, you know, he's 10 years old, and he said, "You know, what happens if my teacher doesn't come to class one day? Like, what does that mean?" And I was just really struck by that question and the implications, and the fact that, you know, an older elementary school child will start being very concerned and worrying about the impact on other adults around them, you know, their families, their grandparents, what have you. And dealing with that anxiety, not only for themselves, but for others will be an important piece. I think there's going to be a ton of work to do in general in schools around ensuring that kids feel comfortable at school, and they feel safe at school, and they feel that they can talk about some of these things with their teachers or other adults at school.
PENNY
My name is Penny and I'm going into grade seven.
CHRIS
Do you feel like you're prepared enough for school?
PENNY
Yes, definitely.
CHRIS
Tell me about that.
PENNY
Well, I think it's better that we're, like, going back to normal and stuff. There are still precautions that have to be made because, like, there's a global pandemic going on.
CHRIS
Yeah. Do you feel anxious at all about going back?
PENNY
Yeah, sort of. My mom's a nurse and a midwife. And so it's kind of hard because I have to be extra careful because I don't want getting her sick and stuff like that, so I'm a bit anxious. I also think we might not be taking enough precautions in grade seven and eight, because the school I'm going to is pretty big and just wearing a mask, you know, some masks you can still, like, breathe. Like, air can still get out of it and stuff like that.
CHRIS
What if you see somebody who isn't observing social distancing or isn't wearing a mask? What are you going to do?
PENNY
I'll just, like, walk around them because I don't know what I'm going to say. Am I going to say, "You're not social distancing! Get back!"
LEVI
My name is Levi, and I'm going into grade two.
CHRIS
Do you know whether you're going to have to wear masks at school?
LEVI
Yeah, I think I am. But I don't know.
CHRIS
And how does that make you feel? How does it make you feel to wear a mask?
LEVI
Well, it's just going to be like—my mouth I feel like is just going to get very hot. Yeah.
CHRIS
Have your parents talk to you about going back to school and how different it will be?
LEVI
No, they have not. I've just been talking to myself about that.
CHRIS
What have those conversations sounded like?
LEVI
I've just been saying this can be a lot differenter than when it used to. The world is kind of changed, and yeah.
CHRIS
One thing that keeps coming up in the conversations, at least in our household, is the issue of masks. How can parents prepare their children for an environment where everybody around them is wearing a mask? And actually, that's a bit weird.
DR. SLONIM
Mask wearing, I think, is weird. And it will differ definitely by the age of the child. I think older children who've been at camps or have been out and about with their parents going into stores or what have you, they're kind of used to it by now. Younger children, especially ones who haven't been engaging in activities and are maybe just starting school, even if they're wearing masks they're not wearing them for that long. So that is going to be an adjustment for them. I think getting them used to masks, making masks normal, practising wearing them at home, making them fun, you know, getting them cool masks, making them touch masks, get involved in choosing masks, all of that will be very important to kind of desensitize them about what masks are. And I mean, I've seen a lot of kids play with masks. Like, you know, hide and seek kind of thing. Because that is what it kind of evokes for young children is like, I can see you, now I can't see you. And so how can we playfully and safely introduce masks in classrooms and really reward kids for wearing them without making it a scary thing?
CHRIS
What if you have a child who doesn't want to wear a mask?
DR. SLONIM
For some children, a behavioural issue of—you know, where it becomes, you know, just another thing that they can oppose and not comply with at school, again, I would use the same kinds of basic behavioural principles that I use with anything that I want to encourage in behaviour change in children. So talking about rewarding children for wearing them. Depending on the age, you know, explaining why it's so important, having discussions around that, and modelling wearing them. So, like, all of the principles that apply to any sort of behaviour would apply to mask wearing as well. And we want to make it a very positive and, you know, reinforcing thing for kids.
CHRIS
So one thing that we had, like, crazy success with is getting cool masks. So our six year old, like, actually, you know, is understandably reluctant to wear masks, they are uncomfortable. So he's obsessed with Ninjago and Star Wars, and so, like, getting masks that kind of evoke Ninjago or Star Wars has been incredibly—you know, this is like—so all of a sudden, it turns this thing that is actually kind of weird and uncomfortable into, whoa, it's really cool.
DR. SLONIM
Absolutely. Yeah, exactly. My son has his baseball team mask. Like, you can make it cool in every way possible. I always try to empower parents to feel like they can think through these things and have the ability to really understand and know their child and what's best for their child. So yeah, they know their child best, they can think about individually how best to approach these new issues and really realizing we're in a completely new time where we're going to be experimenting, trying out new ways of interacting and new ways of educating. And realizing, you know, as a parent, you make the best decision you can. I always tell parents, you know, it's good-enough parenting, okay? It's not a hundred percent parenting. So you've made the best decision you can under the circumstances, and how can you really support your child in coping with everything that might come up during the year. And really accepting that there's going to be a certain amount of uncertainty to how things go. And that's okay.
CHRIS
We're sending our children into this, like, never before environment that does have legit risks. Essentially, every parent performs a cost-benefit analysis, right? So the cost is well, there's increased risk of actually getting COVID and passing COVID on. On the other hand, the benefit is, well, kids need socialization, and kids benefit from in-person education in numerous different ways. And so, if you're a parent who has made the decision to send children back to school, you've performed this cost-benefit analysis, but you probably have misgivings. And so what do you have to say to those parents who are doing this but who have their misgivings?
DR. SLONIM
For parents who have made that decision and have misgivings I would just say, you know, you've thought about all of these different factors, and you clearly—you know, I always, in the same way that you talk to your child, I always talk to the feelings and the parents, you know? It makes sense that you would feel anxious about this because the government has been telling us for months that we should be in our houses. Like, it makes sense that making this decision is hard, you know? It's a hard decision.
DR. SLONIM
Thank you, Dr. Naomi Sloanim. I think we've done a lot today in terms of—I think we've normalized parents' concerns and normalized child concerns, and also provided parents and children with a road map on how to get back to school in a way that assuages their anxieties. And there's some great advice in here, and I really appreciate your time today.
DR. SLONIM
Thanks so much. Thanks for having me on.
FITZ
My name is Fitz and I'm going into grade one. The coronavirus is a sickness that might be able to kill you.
CHRIS
Are you worried about catching the coronavirus at school?
FITZ
Not really.
CHRIS
Do you feel anxious about the coronavirus?
FITZ
Yeah.
CHRIS
Tell me about that.
FITZ
I don't know what it means.
CHRIS
Anxious? What anxious means?
FITZ
Yeah.
CHRIS
You know, so some people say that sending kids back to school is dangerous because the kids might catch the coronavirus and then pass it on to other people.
FITZ
I feel anxious.
CHRIS
Why do you feel anxious?
FITZ
Because they might already have the coronavirus and they don't know that.
CHRIS
Can you tell me a story about what your family did during the coronavirus?
CHRIS
We got a dog. Her name's Margo. And she's a little black and white and brown a little, and she is a Husky-German Shepherd. This morning we went into the park and my dog ate fries and two pieces of chicken.
CHRIS
How did that make you feel?
FITZ
It made me want some—some chicken.
CHRIS
That's a wrap for this episode of Eat Move Think. We'll post links and highlights on the website at Eatmovethinkpodcast.com. Eat Move Think is produced by Ghost Bureau. Senior Producer is Russell Gragg. Remember to rate and subscribe to Eat Move Think on your favourite podcast platform. Follow Shaun on Twitter and Instagram @ShaunCFrancis—that's Shaun with a U—and Medcan @medcanlivewell. We'll be back soon with a new episode examining the latest in health and wellness.