Hearing Children in the Time of COVID-19
Always concerned about the well-being of our children , I thought I'd share some tips to help your children get through these strange and psychologically challenging times more calmly, away from school, friends, and for you, work. This is the modest contribution of the Caramel & Cie team.
COVID-19, an over-publicized event that is disrupting the lives and routines of all children and their parents, can indeed generate anxiety in each of us, as it did on September 11, 2001, with the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan attacks… I therefore called upon Agnès Bailly, a psychoanalyst and psychologist specializing in the treatment of children, to get her opinion on how to approach the subject of COVID-19 with our children.
I hope you enjoy this short article, which I personally really like because it goes a little further than just giving advice!
Rafaela Garcia (founder of Caramel & Cie)
Becoming a partner in children's issues
"How do you explain Covid-19 to children?" I was asked. I would turn the question around: How do you welcome their unique and personal questions, at the time that will be theirs?
Trying to explain things with "ready-made" knowledge might not be suitable for your child and could stifle their questions, preventing them from expressing what's bothering them. No doubt they have something to say.
Children's books can help parents broach a sensitive subject, provided they remain open to the unexpected questions the child might ask. It's about being attentive enough (and we can't always be) to listen to what they say, what they tell you spontaneously, when you least expect it and are least available. Yet it's precisely then that they'll ask their question, which may seem trivial or completely out of sync with what's happening.
A little 5-year-old boy I was seeing at the very beginning of the epidemic told me:
– “I’m afraid I’ll miss my dad’s birthday tonight… I have a cold.”
– Me: “Did you hear anything on the radio?”
– “I’m afraid of the virus… it’s deadly, you know.”
Reassuring him with a scientific discourse would not have allowed him to then ask me his question.
– Me: “Do you ever wonder about death?”
– “Yes! Since I was 3 years old.”
– Me: “Something serious must have happened at that moment?”
– “Yes, but I forgot…”
I advanced cautiously:
– Me: “Have you heard about the attacks?”
– “Yes! That’s what I forgot!” he said with genuine relief.
Since then, he has come to talk to me with greater freedom about his questions surrounding death and his discoveries for "coping with it".
While this little boy is able to name what he's experiencing, this isn't the case for all children. Since every child is more or less deeply affected by their parents' anxieties, it's not easy for parents to hear their worries. There's no single right way to answer children's questions. The important thing is to remain as open as possible to their questions and to become a partner in the process: to answer them with our own vulnerabilities and our own questions, in a way that isn't anonymous. This matters far more to them than ready-made answers.
Agnès Bailly, psychoanalyst,
member of the School of the Freudian Cause, 75010 Paris.
