HEALTH PLUS MED­ICAL COR­RE­SPON­DENT

“De­spite glob­al progress, one per­son still dies every 40 sec­onds from sui­cide,” said WHO Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al, Dr Tedros Ad­hanom Ghe­breye­sus. “Every death is a tragedy for fam­i­ly, friends and col­leagues. Yet sui­cides are pre­ventable.”

Sui­cide is the sec­ond lead­ing cause of death among young peo­ple.

Re­cent­ly, our coun­try lost a 14-year-old stu­dent. Ref­er­enc­ing the Sun­day Guardian ar­ti­cle, “Ac­cord­ing to the po­lice re­port, the stu­dent and a rel­a­tive al­leged­ly ar­gued over his school­work be­fore she left the house to pur­chase food. Up­on her re­turn about an hour-and-a-half lat­er, she found him with a ban­dana wrapped around his neck and tied to a door­knob.”

COVID-19 has test­ed our emo­tion­al grap­pling as adults, but it has al­so af­fect­ed our chil­dren dras­ti­cal­ly. Par­ents may not be fa­mil­iar with how to help their chil­dren man­age if they them­selves are hav­ing a dif­fi­cult time ad­just­ing and cop­ing with the new re­al­i­ty that COVID-19 presents.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­cent Na­tion­al Sur­vey of Chil­dren’s Health, CDC stat­ed that:

- Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4.4 mil­lion chil­dren aged 3-17 years (7.1%) have been di­ag­nosed with anx­i­ety re­lat­ed dis­or­ders.

- Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1.9 mil­lion chil­dren aged 3-17 years (3.2%) have been di­ag­nosed with de­pres­sion.

Anx­i­ety wors­ens in chil­dren as they may not al­ways com­mu­ni­cate their wor­ry or fears di­rect­ly to their par­ents. It is well doc­u­ment­ed that par­ents miss the symp­toms when they them­selves are en­veloped in their dai­ly strug­gles and are not open-mind­ed to no­tice short-term be­hav­iour­al changes. These symp­toms such as ir­ri­tabil­i­ty, mood swings, act­ing out, changes in sleep pat­terns, or bed­wet­ting, can be per­ti­nent hints of a “stressed out child”. Oth­ers have trou­ble com­plet­ing as­sign­ments or con­cen­trat­ing on ex­ams. Some chil­dren have phys­i­cal ef­fects, in­clud­ing stom­ach aches, headaches, asth­mat­ic events, skin al­ler­gies, alope­cia or dis­rup­tions in their men­stru­al cy­cles.

Many anx­ious chil­dren keep their wor­ries to them­selves and thus, the symp­toms are missed or de­te­ri­o­rate in­to de­pres­sion.

Here are a few help­ful strate­gies to help your chil­dren con­quer these anx­i­eties.

Be an in­ten­tion­al lis­ten­er.

Be avail­able to just lis­ten and find out what is on their minds. Lis­ten to un­der­stand their con­cerns. As you lis­ten to their sto­ries of the day's events, be sure to ask your chil­dren what they think and feel about what is hap­pen­ing. If your child seems to be wor­ried about some­thing, ask about it. En­cour­age them to put what is both­er­ing them in­to words. Be will­ing to ex­plore those emo­tions and con­cerns, val­i­dat­ing what they feel. Some­times just shar­ing the sto­ry with you can help light­en their load.

Of­fer re­as­sur­ance and com­fort.

Some­times when chil­dren are wor­ried, what they need most is a par­ent’s re­as­sur­ance and com­fort. It might come in the form of a hug, some heart­felt words, or time spent to­geth­er. It helps chil­dren to know that, what­ev­er hap­pens, par­ents will be there with love and sup­port.

Show your care and un­der­stand­ing.

Be­ing in­ter­est­ed in your child's con­cerns shows he/she is im­por­tant to you too, and helps him/her feel sup­port­ed and un­der­stood. Re­as­sur­ing com­ments can help — but usu­al­ly on­ly af­ter you've heard your child out. Say that you un­der­stand your child's feel­ings and the prob­lem.

Keep things in per­spec­tive.

With­out min­imis­ing a child's feel­ings, point out that many prob­lems are tem­po­rary and solv­able, and that there will be bet­ter days and oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties to try again. Teach­ing chil­dren to keep prob­lems in per­spec­tive can lessen their wor­ry and help build strength, tenac­i­ty, and the op­ti­mism to try again. Re­mind your chil­dren that what­ev­er hap­pens, things will be okay.

High­light the pos­i­tive. Ask your chil­dren what they en­joyed about their day, and lis­ten when they tell you about what goes great for them or what they had fun do­ing. Give plen­ty of air­time to the good things that hap­pen. Let them tell you what they think and feel about their suc­cess­es, achieve­ments, and pos­i­tive ex­pe­ri­ences and what they did to help things turn out so well.

Sched­ules are busy as par­ents cope with the ad­just­ing en­vi­ron­ment of COVID-19 but make sure there’s time for your chil­dren to do things they feel good do­ing. It may be con­quer­ing a dig­i­tal game, build­ing a lego sky­scraper, cre­at­ing jew­ellery de­signs or learn­ing the lat­est dance moves. En­gage your chil­dren in cre­ative ac­tiv­i­ties that will give need­ed time­outs from the stress­es of the up­com­ing ex­ams.

Don’t fix every­thing.

You can help re­duce wor­ries by help­ing chil­dren learn to deal with chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tions. When your child tells you about a prob­lem, of­fer to help come up with a so­lu­tion to­geth­er. In most sit­u­a­tions, re­sist the urge to jump in and fix a prob­lem for your child — in­stead, think it through and come up with pos­si­ble so­lu­tions to­geth­er. By tak­ing an ac­tive role, chil­dren learn how to tack­le a prob­lem on their own. Prob­lem-solve with chil­dren, rather than for them.

Most im­por­tant­ly, keep in mind that chil­dren mir­ror what be­hav­iours they ob­serve so the fi­nal and most im­por­tant strat­e­gy is:

Demon­strate Re­silience.

Some­times chil­dren need par­ents to show them how to let go of wor­ry rather than dwelling on it. Know when it is time to move on, and help chil­dren shift gears. Lead the way by in­tro­duc­ing a top­ic that is more up­beat or an ac­tiv­i­ty that will cre­ate a lighter mood. Your re­sponse to your own wor­ries, stress and frus­tra­tions can go a long way to­wards teach­ing your chil­dren how to deal with every­day chal­lenges.

Be aware that your own re­ac­tion to glob­al events or news af­fects your chil­dren too. If you ex­press anger and stress about a lo­cal or glob­al event that's be­yond your con­trol, chil­dren are like­ly to re­act that way too. But if you ex­press your con­cern by tak­ing a proac­tive ap­proach to mak­ing a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence, your chil­dren will feel more op­ti­mistic and em­pow­ered to do the same. Be­ing a role mod­el for your child is pos­si­bly the best way of help­ing your child cope with un­nec­es­sary stress, so recog­nis­ing your own deficits and seek­ing help if nec­es­sary is cru­cial.

The best way to teach re­silience is to mod­el it. The most pow­er­ful lessons we can teach our chil­dren are the ones we demon­strate in our dai­ly habits and be­hav­iours.

Look out for HEALTH PLUS every Tues­day for more in­for­ma­tive and health­ful ar­ti­cles. If you have any ques­tions or con­cerns re­gard­ing this top­ic, please email Guardian­Health­Plus2020@gmail.com