It's not all physical

                                                        It’s not all physical

 

Kids are back in school.  Well not exactly, mostly they are back in school virtually or online.  The purpose of keeping children out of school is protect their physical health.

But what about the damage to their mental health.   Now that students have  been home for months and away from their peers, there are increasing indicators that children’s mental health is suffering.

Children need consistency of schedules, predictable rules and consequences, and set expectations.   These conditions teach children how to behave, develop self-discipline and impulse control.   Without these guiderails, therapists are seeing an increase in behavioral problems in their pediatric clients.   Having these guidelines is much easier within a school setting.  Children are used to having these kinds of rules consistently enforced and they see themselves and their peers being held to the same standards.

Parenting is not this rigid.  And parents are often juggling work expectations at home, multiple children at different ages as well as the child receiving online instruction.

There are indicators that too much alone at home time is starting to risk a child’s mental health.  One of the first indicators is that the child is more withdrawn than usual.  This issue can be observed when a child withdraws from family and retreats into more screen time with animation, games and non-human interactions.

Families should also monitor eating and sleeping patterns.  Is the child eating or sleeping at the patterns that differ from pre-virus days? Sleeping patterns can have the child up late with screen time, sleeping irregularly and then not wanting to get up.  Everyone seems to have gained weight staying home so much but is the child eating noticeably more or less than usual?

Probably all of us are a bit irritable because of the changes in our lives.   But if a child seems to demonstrate a low mood or being irritable over an extended period of time, it is important to do a mental health check in with the child’s physician.  The same is true if a child seems disinterested in activities that used to engage him or her.

This virus is supposed to be a physical virus, but if we ever needed more evidence that the body and mind work as one, this is it.  It's not all physical.