Woman's Hour - Woman's Hour Parenting Podcast

Episode Date: August 19, 2020

Advice on supporting your child's mental health during the Coronavirus pandemic

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray here, welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for parents. Now, children in Scotland are back to school. In England and Wales, they're due back at the beginning of September. But I doubt there's a parent in the United Kingdom who isn't worried about the effect the long separation from friends and education has had since the start of the pandemic and the lockdown in March. Barnardo's have published some research which says more than a million parents have said they feel their children would benefit from professional treatment to help with their mental health. Well, it won't, of course, be available to everyone.

So how can parents best support their children and harrod rudkin is a child psychologist amanda naylor is the head of see here respond at bernardo's in england amanda what concerns have you been hearing from children so already the service has only been launched a month and already children are referring themselves. They're telling us of increased anxiety, increased sleeplessness, feeling overwhelmed by big feelings which are translating in sometimes into quite difficult behaviours within the home. We're also hearing from children who've taken on caring responsibilities for adults who may be shielding or caring responsibilities for younger siblings. From our black Asian minority ethnic children, we're seeing increased hate

crime and increased concerns around how disproportionately their health is being impacted by COVID-19. So really significant issues that are affecting children that would normally not require any additional support, but because of these unprecedented times, would really welcome and benefit from some localised support that really practically helps them get ready to get back into school and some level of normality. And, Harrod, when parents are worried about this,

what sort of signs of distress should they be looking out for in their young children? So when we're looking at our children, we need to be taking into account things like tearfulness, them feeling quite withdrawn and not wanting to be part of family life or go outside the home and we also look at things like appetite and sleep as well as indicators of what's going on for our children but the great thing is most children are quite happy to show their emotions and I think the harder job for a parent is to how to manage those emotions when they're being incredibly angry or quite explosive or ratty or surly. So I think the problem is that our children show us our emotions a bit too much sometimes. How do you manage ratty and surly

and all the difficulties that they can throw at you? It's not an easy job and I think if you ask any parent around the world at the moment they probably aren't feeling at the top of the game, because we have been chucked a lot of emotions by our children. And of course, the kinds of, I guess, dissipating experiences that school and peers provide, we haven't had that. So it's all being funnelled towards us as parents. So I think a lot of what we need to do is just contain those emotions. We can't make it all better. We can't give answers. We can't create certainty. But what we can do is contain our children's emotions. We can say to them, I completely understand why you're feeling this way.

I feel like this too. How can we make it better right now? And when it comes to the practicalities, like Amanda was speaking about, it's about going for a little walk together, just sitting and being together, I don't know, Skyping, grandparents, anything that just helps you to give a little sense of relief in that moment. One of the things that must have caused terrible trouble at home is what's been happening with the exams. I mean, this is obviously older children, both late teenagers. How can parents best support children through the trauma they've been through obviously older children, both, you know, late teenagers.

How can parents best support children through the trauma they've been through for exam results? It's incredibly difficult. And I think teens have been particularly challenged by lockdown because, of course, they're on the path towards independence. The whole point of being a teenager is to break away from home gradually and gently as you move through adolescence. And they've been foisted back into the family home with potentially annoying siblings, irritating parents, not seeing their friends. They've had a tough time anyway. And then for that to have ended with a slightly, I know it hasn't been haphazard, but a slightly difficult exam process. I think their sense of unfairness is going to be enormous. And as parents, again, we can't make it all OK. We can't say it's going to be all right.

All we can do is contain their emotions, help them to see that everyone is in this together. And what are the certainties in life? What can we count on? It can be our friends and the fact they are going to a certain university even if it's not the one that they wanted to go to um so it's about clinging on to the certainties we have and just tolerating the uncertainty and the unjustness of all of this amanda i know you've launched see here respond with the department of education what are you hoping it will do to help so see here respond is for families right across eng England and we've contracted with 57 different local grassroots

charities and larger national charities as well to make sure that we connect families to services that can help at this time. It's a huge front door. So all families need to do is come to our landing page, See, Hear, Respond Benidols, where they'll find a free phone

number or a web form to gain contact to us and and they will be met with a ben idols worker who will talk to them about what it is that their family specifically needs we can work with children we can work with the adults in that family if it's going to benefit children to really think about how to do as as suggested some of that containment and how we enable children to get into a place where they feel able to return to school able to reconnect in communities and really start to think positively and move forward from COVID-19 into what should be a more positive future. Angharad I know a lot of parents are frightened of the pandemic

and are frightened of going out and are maybe frightened of their children going back to school. So how can parents who are anxious about the virus allay the fears of their children going back to school? I think, again, we have very few answers, don't we? And our children take, they use our emotional levels to manage theirs. So if we're incredibly anxious, they're going to be incredibly anxious. So even if you don't feel particularly safe and secure sending your child back to school, act as if you are. Smile when you're talking about school,

be very lighthearted when you're talking about washing hands and stuff, letting them know it's very important, but try not to emphasise the risk for them because this is their lives and while children are forming their view of the world, they're going to be doing it in a very different context to how we'd hoped. So what we don't want is our children being incredibly anxious going on because this could go on for another year or two at least. So really be quite smiley, quite confident, quite happy and hopeful when you're talking about going back to school with your child, even if your feelings are quite different.

Use your friends and your family to then talk about your worries. But your children, they need to have your hope and your confidence and your belief in a brighter future for them in order for them to feel equipped to go on. Anne-Harrod Rodkin and Amanda Naylor, thank you both very much indeed. And we would like to hear from you on this question.

How are you managing to ease the worries that your children might have? What are you actually doing to help? And how are you keeping yourself fit enough to do it? Send us a tweet or, of course, an email, and we'd love to hear from you. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been

doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.