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Parenting is rewarding, but it’s never an easy task — especially in a pandemic. Hard as it already is for adults to grasp the whole situation, it can be even harder for children.
In this episode, Melanie chats with Dr. Robert Friedberg about parenting during a pandemic and dealing with anxiety.
Parents face the challenges of protecting their family and their children while coping with this crisis. Whatever the magnitude of the problem, it is important to deal with it the proper way. And it is best to have an expert offer advice.
So we chatted with Dr. Robert Friedberg, who is a tenured Full Professor, Head of the Pediatric Behavioral Health Care Emphasis, and Director of the Center for the Study and Treatment of Anxious Youth at Palo Alto University.
He is currently at work on a major research project studying intolerance of uncertainty and COVID-related thoughts in children and parents.
Dr. Robert Friedberg shares how contextualizing things in the way we look at the crisis helps in finding solutions to the problems surrounding us at this time where our kids’ mental health and social health are concerned.
As the level of anxiety in many children is varying, he suggests ways of letting them understand things in degrees their young minds can grasp.
As to parents with perfectionist tendencies in dealing with the matter, he shares how not to beat themselves up too hard. To him, there is always a positivity amidst uncertainty.
What You Will Learn From This Episode
- Contextualizing things when dealing with this pandemic
- How to deal with a child’s anxiety at this time of COVID-19
- How to minimize the effects of social isolation brought about by this pandemic
- How to help a child who has special needs deal with the current situation
- The paradigm shift at this challenging time – looking through the lens of positivity
“There’s a lot of chaos about everything. It’s the context in which you’re teaching kids to be more brave than sort of changing how you usually do this.” – Dr. Robert Friedberg
“The first thing is sort of to validate that that’s a loss and to allow kids some time to vent about that or to grieve that loss of the graduation celebration or whatever they have lost regarding that. And then secondly, to problem solve, what else can we do? And again, it’s the same. You don’t have to have brand new skills for the most part as parents, you just have to apply the same skills you use in situations where kids have been disappointed before and use those again, but in the context of the pandemic.” – Dr. Robert Friedberg
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Timestamps:
03:39 – How to set expectations for your child during uncertainty
06:59 – The idea of thinking about the term “control”
09:39 – How to get kids to acclimatize to the new normal
13:22 – Why it is important to be aware of the frequency, intensity, and duration of a child’s constant talk about death
15:56 – Talking about parents tolerating risk-taking and helping kids rate risk-taking
18:48 – How to deal with a child’s experience of disappointments over not having a graduation and the possibility of not getting to college at this time of a pandemic
20:38 – How to use sibling model sensitively when dealing with multiple child’s opposite reactions to this crisis
23:03 – How to decrease your child’s anxiety about the whole situation
25:17 – Why parents need to have a break
29:28 – How can parents help a child with special needs (like autism) deal with this situation
32:21 – Looking through the lens of positivity
34:41 – What is this thing called tunnel vision
36:33 – Dealing with parents’ perfectionist standards
40:03 – How much screen time should you allow your children at this time
41:03 – The need to have constant risk-benefit ratio analysis for your family
42:55 – Creative ways to organize play for your child
Resources:
- Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher by Lewis Thomas
- Freeing Your Child From Anxiety: Powerful, Practical Solutions to Overcome Your Child’s Fears, Worries, and Phobias by Tamar Chansky, Ph.D.
Connect with Dr. Robert Friedberg
- Palo Alto University Website
- Email: rfriedberg@paloaltou.edu
Connect with Melanie
- mentalhealthandwealth.com
- melanielockert.com
- Contact: mentalhealthandwealthshow@gmail.com
