Dealing with Coronavirus can be tough for everyone – kids, young people and adults – from all walks of life. For children with “big feelings” and challenging life events, it can be even harder.

Here are some ideas about how to answer children or young people’s questions or respond to their worries. A few general principles in how to do this are as follows:

1. Try to ask a question or two before you respond to a child/teen’s concerns – you may be able to get more information about exactly what they are worried about and therefore answer more helpfully.

2. Express care and sympathy rather than “buck up and deal with it”

3. Answer with a matter of fact, calm and confident voice and facial expression. If you can’t do that, step away and say “I think I might just need some adult time for a moment, and I will come and talk to you again in a few minutes”. Then take some time to talk to a friend/family member/take a deep breath and look after yourself. Then come back to your child/teen and provide some answers.

4. Remember (as you will see below) if children/young people continue asking lots of questions which you have gone over with them before, it’s okay to put some limits on the time you spend talking about it. If it is appropriate, you might say something like: “That’s a problem for adults to solve and there are lots of clever adults working on that right now. You don’t need to spend much time thinking about that”. You might also say something like: “We’ve spent enough time talking about this for now, it’s good for our brains and bodies to have a break from thinking about worrying things and problems, let’s go and do something else”. At this point, gently try to distract the child/teen with another activity.

In the last few weeks I’ve presented at a number of school “acquaintance” and “orientation” nights to parents of primary and secondary students – and one of the topics I cover in these seminars is sleep: how much children and teens need and how we support them to get enough.

It’s only a small part of the talk (I discuss a range of factors which are associated with success and wellbeing for young people) but I thought I’d do some reading to make sure I was across any significant developments in the science of sleep for young people.

Once I started reading, I went down the “reading research rabbit hole”. I spent a few hours (and missed some of my own sleep time ) reading some interesting new studies and reports – as well as some old ones I’d missed.

I thought some of them might be worth sharing with you in this article. Here they are, in no particular order:

Like almost all Australians, I spent the Christmas/New Year period watching fire apps, bushfire news and feeling devastated for the families who have been impacted.  I know that many of our Calm Kid Central members/families who receive these articles - particularly those who live in the Gippsland regions, KI, Adelaide Hills - as well as others - have been significantly impacted by fires, with some of you experiencing massive stress, trauma and fear.  I'm so sorry for what you and your children have experienced.  All of us at Developing Minds have been feeling distressed and worried for people around Australia, including our Calm Kid Central members from bushfire affected communities.  

I also know that many other of our families who have not been directly impacted by fires, also have children who are experiencing stress and anxiety from watching the news, living in smoky cities or hearing conversations by their friends and family about bushfires.  Children with existing emotional health challenges are sometimes particularly impacted by disasters such as these, as it simply adds "one more thing" to their existing worries.   Children with "big feelings" are also of course more prone to feeling worried and concerned for themselves and others.

One of the most powerful ways to help children act more calmly, more often – and to reduce angry behavior – is to coach them in developing frustration management skills.   

These skills include the following: 

• Using appropriate language to express their feelings and descires

• Asking for help when needed,

• Using self-soothing strategies,

• Switching attention away from difficult situations,

• Noticing “angry” (blaming, non-empathic, catastrophic) thinking

• Using calm sentences to remind themselves that frustrating situations and behaviours from others are not terrible, not always intentional, often understandable and can be managed.

• Identifying potentially frustrating situations ahead of time (and planning for them);

If we want children to get better at these frustration management skills, we need to tell them why they matter and how to get better at them – and to do this when children are feeling calm. We also need to give children opportunities to practice these skills in low pressure situations.  

If you noticed my italics in these last two sentences, you’ll see that children do not normally learn these skills “in the heat of the moment” when they are angry or frustrated.  Instead, they learn these skills before and after frustrating situations, when both we as parents/caregivers - and children - have the time and state of mind required to talk and practice efficiently.

There is no doubt that biological factors play an important part in causing or contributing to anxiety in young people.  Some research has suggested there is a genetic component to anxiety (e.g. identical twins are more likely to have similar rates of anxiety than non-identical twins).  Other areas of research have identified physiological differences (for example heart rate reactivity, a number of brain structures/processes) between more and less anxious children.  There are other areas of research which have found differences in infant behavior between children who then grow up to be more or less anxious. 

All these fields of study put together indicate that at least some tendencies towards anxiety in humans is “hard wired” into some young people much more strongly than in the average young person.

However there are other research studies which show that aspects of a young person’s environment (in other words what happens to and around them) also influence their anxiety.  Studies have found factors such as early traumatic life experiences, friend and peer relationships, school life, sleep quality, nutritional intake, exercise and technology use – also contribute to how much anxiety children and young people experience.  

Not surprisingly therefore, most psychologists believe it is a combination of biological and environmental factors which cause anxiety in young people.