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One in Five- Post-Pandemic Parenting: Connect to Protect
Emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic will come with its own set of triumphs and challenges for parents. From preschoolers, to elementary school kids to adolescents, to college age young adults, the call on parents to adapt to changes in growing human beings is constant. But what happens after a trauma? How will parenting change? Outside of normal developmental changes, how can parents guide their children through post-pandemic life?
One in five children is living with a significant mental health illness (Center for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2021). That is an astounding statistic. Most children and teens don’t receive mental health treatment or care until 8 to 10 years after they begin experiencing symptoms. Beginning with the definition of trauma as “direct personal experience of an event that involves actual or threatened death. or serious injury, or other threat to one’s physical integrity; or witnessing an. event that involves death, injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of another” (American Psychological Association, 2015). Working from this point, COVID-19 created a world-wide collective traumatic experience. Every individual is unique and will respond to a…
