When Tamar Canady thinks about the upsides to the coronavirus pandemic, she thinks about how she and her 15-year-old daughter sleep in more these days. Ella Canady, like many teens, often hides her emotions. But recently at her home in Phoenix, she's had some uncharacteristic breakdowns in front of her mom. She misses her friends. And school — the real kind, not the kind where she sits in front of a computer for five hours daily.
That's why children from families who are already vulnerable — with the tightest finances, facing job losses, food insecurity, housing instability or fractured relationships — are likely to fare the worst and will need the most help. Without solid emotional and financial supports, those children are likely to face the biggest blow to their social, psychological and academic development.
"I don't think this is going to have an everlasting effect," said Seth Pollak, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the Child Emotion Lab. Much of his work focuses on how disadvantaged children develop. But he suspects affluent, college-bound students will emerge just fine.
For some kids who associate those hallway interactions with stress or anxiety, quarantine has actually provided some relief, said Tim Kearney, chief of behavioral health at Community Health Center, Inc. in Middletown, Connecticut. The organization serves students' mental health needs at about 100 school-based sites across the state.
"I don’t know what to do with myself," said Tran, who found herself too out of sorts to even doodle. But she held up a painting from a previous week, where the prompt was to place a lighthouse in an incongruous setting. Tran painted it into a meadow. It's actually good advice for everyone. Kearney said adults can best help their kids by staying focused on the present, and by getting physical and mental exercise daily.
Kids of low-wage workers need more supportKearney and other child psychologists worry most about children from the most challenging circumstances. The study was designed to track families where at least one parent worked in the service industry — in normal times. But the arrival of the pandemic allowed researchers to survey families before and immediately after the public health crisis shuttered most of the American economy.
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