Parents and guardians can help build resilience in children and discuss fears and anxieties around the COVID-19 pandemic, says child and adolescent nursing expert Dr Yvonne Parry.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s important to support our children and young people through times of community difficulty, giving them skills to manage adversity, says Dr Parry from the Caring Futures Institute<\/p>\n
\u201c<\/strong>This has been a very difficult year already for children and parents. It\u2019s been impossible for all of us to ignore the effects of the bushfires, drought and now lockdown and global pandemic.<\/p>\n \u201c(It’s) a good time for adults to use this time to engage with their children and families about their concerns.<\/p>\n \u201cAllow them to discuss their feelings by asking them what they are worried about, what is going on, and what lies ahead.<\/p>\n \u201cAlways encourage them to deal with difficult times in a positive way, including keeping in touch with friends and family via phone calls or appropriate digital media channels.<\/p>\n \u201cDifficult times always pass, and finding solutions will help them adjust to change.\u201d<\/p>\n Dr Perry says reputable sites, such as\u00a0state health<\/a>,\u00a0mental health<\/a>,\u00a0coping with coronavirus<\/a>\u00a0information, and\u00a0school or education websites<\/a>\u00a0can offer guardians and carers appropriate information to help support children.<\/p>\n Within the physical distancing, and other COVID-19 restrictions, families can still enjoy outdoor activities and exercise to balance \u2018downtime\u2019 leisure activities, interactive video or board games, and reflective activities such as reading or writing.<\/p>\n Dr Parry, from the Caring Futures Institute at Flinders University, also suggests some other strategies.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Parents and guardians can help build resilience in children and discuss fears and anxieties around the COVID-19 pandemic, says child and adolescent nursing expert Dr Yvonne […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2023,"featured_media":175,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3210,1],"tags":[1075,1148,470],"class_list":["post-174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-healthy-start-to-life","category-uncategorised","tag-children","tag-covid-19","tag-mental-health"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/caring-futures-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/caring-futures-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/caring-futures-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/caring-futures-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2023"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/caring-futures-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/caring-futures-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/caring-futures-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/caring-futures-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/caring-futures-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/caring-futures-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n