Building Our Children's Resiliency During Covid

By Gail Cowan

School is on everyone’s minds these days. When, if at all, will our kids return to the classroom this year? How will they be able to learn if so much of the teaching is done virtually? And how will we survive as parents, caregivers, and educators who must balance the competing pressures of families, jobs, and our own well-being?

These are the big questions of the day for so many of us. At EyesOpenIowa, we don’t have answers to these questions – because there simply are none at the moment. So much hangs in the balance and remains to be seen.

But we DO know a thing or two about education, decision making, and having hard conversations. And in this vein, we wanted to share some tips for surviving this moment of uncertainty, specifically as it relates to the prospect of another year of at least partial homeschooling for so many.

Too often, adults prioritize academic achievement at the cost of other key pieces that are essential in raising resilient young people who are fully prepared for the realities of adulthood.

At EyesOpenIowa, we have studied these resilience factors as a core part of our work in sex education. The basic factors that help young people build resilience in youth and adulthood have been well-documented by numerous organizations and countless studies. While they vary a bit based on what in particular is being studied (e.g., how to prevent child abuse, how to raise healthy children, etc.), several common factors rise to the top. They include (among others):

• Healthy, strong relationships with adults that are built on trust and open communication

• Parental resilience (the ability of parents to deal with stress and adversity in a healthy and effective manner)

• Social connections with extended family, friends, neighbors, etc.

• Social and emotional competence, or the ability to properly label and understand the various emotions they and others experience.

This information can be helpful as a guide for the coming months. While grades and schoolwork are important, they are not the whole picture, and the list above presents some areas of opportunity.

We can choose to lean just a little bit away from the stress of academic productivity during this impossible time and use the moment as an opportunity to:

• Help our kids learn about various emotions that surface during hard times and how to give these emotions the time, space, and attention they need. (There are numerous resources available via a simple google search, such as this article.

• Grow our relationships with our children by having hard conversations – about dating, bullying, sex, bodily development, relationships, etc. (See our previous blogs for tips on having such conversations, starting here.)

• Talk to our kids about how to connect with others in ways that are meaningful to them. We can do this by asking our kids how they feel about being separated from their friends and what they miss the most about social interactions at school. We can give these feelings space, and then we can creatively brainstorm about ways to manage such temporary losses. One idea is to create a “when this is over” jar, encouraging your child to write down whatever they are missing in the moment and put it in a jar as a promise that it will happen in the future.

• Ensuring that we are caring for our own emotions and needs. Very often, parents and caregivers feel that it is better for children not to see us in pain. But the reality is that when we hide our emotions from our kids, we miss the opportunity to show them what being human looks like – and to give them permission both now and in the future to be fully human, messy emotions included. We can also use these opportunities to model what it looks like to take care of ourselves when grief or anger hits us. Such modeling is essential for raising resilient children. (Numerous resources exist for this, too. Here is just one:

One final note: this list isn’t meant to add pressure or make you feel that you have “yet another thing to do.” Rather, it is intended to give you and your kids permission to be yourselves, within your full range of emotions. And to know that when you do, you are preparing them for the future. Although it often feels that we are missing so much of life, the current moment presents an opportunity we may not have had otherwise: to grow deeper, more meaningful connections with ourselves and our children.