How do parents face the quarantine? Expert #600: Your mindset will also affect your child's mindset

Under the pandemic, the "should be collected" order and decisive action, on the one hand, make most people feel at ease, everyone is eager to return to normal life and work track as soon as possible; on the other hand, it has also caused many people to be nervous and uneasy, "What if I go to the isolation point?" "If my child goes to the quarantine point, how can it be good?" ...... In response to these problems, Cheng Wenhong, deputy director of the Department of Children and Adolescents of Shanghai Mental Health Center and director of the Department of Medical Psychology of Shanghai First People's Hospital, brought some "psychological massage" to parents.

Q: How can I face the fear of "isolation"?

A: "Isolation", if replaced by the idea of "recuperating for a while", may give us peace of mind and reduce the fear of "abandonment and discrimination". If we can have family care and work plans in place, it will also allow us to reduce a lot of worries. As the saying goes, "be prepared", under the epidemic situation, it is recommended that everyone try to do how to prevent infection, and prepare after infection (including how to arrange life, family and work affairs during the quarantine period), so as to minimize the damage caused by "unfortunate recruitment".

Anxiety often comes from being out of control of current and future difficulties, losing one's habitual lifestyle, and being frustrated by desires and being easily angry. Therefore, lowering expectations of the usual standard of living, opening a self-help mode, avoiding the idea of disaster, and finding a "sympathetic" recuperator in an unfamiliar environment, hugging for warmth, supporting each other and caring for help, will help to "land safely" during this special period.

Q: If there is no condition for accompanying the epidemic, how to deal with the child going to "quarantine" alone?

A: Children who rely on adult care, alone in an unfamiliar environment, can easily cause anxiety and anxiety among their families and children, especially children who are prone to anxiety, slow adaptation or have physical diseases. If your child is infected and needs to be isolated, if possible, with family members or other familiar caregivers. If this is not possible for some special reason, parents can make some emotionally stable preparations with their children in advance, for example: "Because the virus will hurt people, there are few beds, you can't let mom and dad accompany you, we will keep in touch with the aunt and uncle who take care of you, and when you are well, we will pick you up and take you home, maybe a week or a few weeks." "Children learn and develop positive adaptability from their parents' positive response tone and attitude.

During the separation period, as far as possible, let the child bring his favorite items, which can be a beloved safety toy, or a family photo, audio recording or video to accompany the child. Staff at isolation points should arrange for children of similar ages to be together as much as possible, plan some age-appropriate activities and daily care, provide children-friendly meals and special needs, and give love and care to substitute family members, and can also allow children to have video conversations with parents on a regular basis.

Q: Sealing control at home for a long time, watching children study at home, always uneasy, what to do?

A: Children's home online classes for a long time, it is easy to cause parents and children's boring and irritability and learning difficulties, and the friction between parents and children increases. The intensity of these reactions depends on the parent-child relationship, parent-child relationship, learning ability, and the presence or absence of psychological problems or diseases.

The most common difficulties for children isolated at home include: not adapting to screen-screen learning, self-disciplined learning in a non-classroom environment that leads to learning difficulties or excessive worry about not learning well; not being able to move with friends; and children who like to be outdoors feel uneasy. In extraordinary times, mobile phones and computers may easily become the "good friends" of children's social and emotional discharge, work and rest are easy to be irregular, like to be in their own rooms, etc., and the continuous supervision and accusation of parents is easy to ignite children's negative emotions.

In extraordinary times, it is recommended that parents blame less, look for problems and difficulties, and seek solutions. Regular work and rest at home, role models for active life and work, etc. all help families to get through difficult stages. At the same time, parents and parents can communicate more, maintain communication with teachers, understand the child's social and learning characteristics, timely discover the child's difficulty type, and find ways to help the child break through the difficulty. If the child's behavioural problems are significantly beyond that of his peers, and if he or she is emotionally distressed or significantly interferes with learning and getting along with his family, he or she can actively seek the help of a child-adolescent psychiatric/psychological specialist.

Of course, during the period when parents are at home, it is best to learn more about the psychological development knowledge of children and adolescents at different stages of development, as well as the scientific knowledge of related psychological diseases, which is conducive to the scientific treatment of children's psychological behavior problems, just as the so-called "knowledge is in hand, I have the power".

Q: I was quarantined, but there are children in the family who are taking the middle school entrance examination and the college entrance examination, and I am very anxious, how to alleviate it?

A: Parents are isolated, but children face the middle and high school entrance examinations, which is really worrying. Some children are more comfortable with reviewing at home for the exam, while others are not. There are a few suggestions for everyone:

1. If parents have gone to the isolation point, they can find relatives, teachers, friends and other people who parents and children trust to care more about their children, including asking for help from neighborhood committee volunteers to solve life difficulties;

2. Parents actively adjust their emotions, take care of themselves, call their children regularly, and avoid passing on their anxiety to their children, which is conducive to children's more secure learning;

3. Children enter puberty, into the stage of independent learning, in addition to learning ability, intrinsic interest-based learning motivation, stable emotions, good social interaction is an important guarantee for the child's efforts, so parents need to know more about the child's interests and motivations, care about the child's social and emotional health, the family and the child to form a proper expectation of the college entrance examination;

4. For students who are not adapted to home learning, parents can take the initiative to care about the possible learning difficulties and related interference factors of their children, actively communicate with teachers, and find various resources to help;

5. After returning home after the end of the isolation period, during the preparation period, parents try their best to build a stable and less changeable, less concerned about interference, comfortable and less irritable family environment, parents encourage and support each other, do more pleasant and relaxing activities, care about the reasonable nutrition of children, and the whole family smoothly adapts to this stressful day.