A few days before an unprecedented return to class, children and parents may feel anxious about the idea of returning to school. A legitimate apprehension that you must know how to express and above all play down, as explained by Jean-Baptiste Dethieux, child psychiatrist from Toulouse.
Parents or children, who are the most anxious about this comeback?
Parents often wrongly think that the child, because he does not have a representation of the situation, will experience it in a disturbing way. Which is not the case. It is the parents who are worried about not imagining what school and school days will look like. The children, because they will be in a group, will not adapt too badly to the situation. The school will remain the school. They will find a setting, different but certainly not unknown to them, with their friends, theirs teachers…
Approaching this unprecedented return to class, how to approach this return to school with your child, while precisely avoiding transmitting their anxiety?
The more the parent will experience the situation in a restrictive and imposed manner, the more he will send an ambivalent message to his child. Thes parents doiFrit be honest enoughs with them-evens to be able to be with their child. Otherwise, the child will perceive a worry. There is the manifest, explicit discourse, and then there is what we send back without really wanting it, but which the child will feel. In other words, if a parent is worried, the child will feel it and create stress. This does not mean that parents do not have the right to be worried! But they must be able to formulate it and allow themselves to talk about it with their child. The child also has the right to be worried about what he may have heard, seen…
Read also :
Back to school: what the Toulouse Academy plans for the start of the new school year next week
Should we then tell the child everything?
You have to be honest and above all tell him that he has the right to be apprehensive, that it is legitimate, because the virus is dangerous. But at the same time, you have to succeed in dramatizing, by simply explaining that the school is putting in place protective measures to guarantee everyone’s safety. The child should not perceive the outside environment as something threatening and dangerous. All these new things that we will have to do or not do, we must not present it as a constraint but as a necessity for security, his and that of others. Then ask the child how he perceives what is going on, if he is worried himself about going back to school. You have to start things that way.
Read also :
Reopening of schools: the details of the heavy sanitary protocol to be respected
With a speech adapted according to the age of the child …
The answers and the way to react will depend on the age, we will refer to them constantly. The way of apprehending the situation will be different. When the child is small, around 6 or 7 years old, we must try to give him a representation of things. The youngest who have heard of the virus have images in mind. It is therefore important to question them on how they represent things and to try to give them support. To explain the epidemic, we can refer to the flu to give a point of comparison for example, but without being false: it is a disease that can be considered very serious, which must be protected. It comes down to honesty again, so don’t water it down. However, it must also be reassured, saying that this virus affects adults more, so that the child is not directly in danger. This also makes it possible to approach the subject of responsibility, by also telling him that he may not have so much to fear for him but that he has the duty to protect others by respecting barrier gestures for example .
Read also :
Bedtime, meals, screens … how to give children a rhythm 7 days before deconfinement?
Is it important to show, repeat these barrier gestures with him?
We must remember what the gestures are, explain their importance. This will be said and repeated to the child so it must be prepared so that he does not feel lost when performing them at school. It is important that parents take the time to see this with him, by showing the gestures to be made, to wash their hands properly or to cough in his elbow, for example, repeat all the steps to be followed. Again, you have to play down and take things with a smile. This whole process must not be done in a climate of rigor for the child, that he does not feel that as a protocol. So you have to find the right balance between something relaxed but still serious. The child must understand, without being afraid of it, that if an adult puts on a mask for example, it is not for nothing. We show him, we do with him. For the mask precisely, which can be a source of anxiety for children, he must explain the importance, the usefulness of wearing it, show him how the parent puts it.
Read also :
The mask at school: a trauma for children?
This whole process of dialogue must continue after the start of the new school year …
After this return, in fact, it will be necessary to continue questioning the child. I would even recommend going further with the older ones by trying to put themselves in their place. Through the discussion, try to find out how he feels things, how they react by initiating the dialogue: “If I were in your place, I would say this to myself, but maybe I’m wrong, you think what? ” or “I might be afraid of that, were you afraid?”. You have to set up a pole in terms of proposals, direct the conversation on certain themes in this way in order to encourage the child to talk about what is wrong.
–
