孩子們呆在家是否也感到了普遍的壓力?

孩子們呆在家是否也感到了普遍的壓力?

As the pandemic continues, children are still mostly at home. Summer activities are canceled or up in the air, and many children are suffering confusion and stress. Parents may be stressed themselves, but there are ways to help kids feel better.

隨著流行病的繼續(xù)，兒童大多仍呆在家里。夏季活動被取消或懸而未決，許多孩子正遭受著困惑和壓力。父母自己可能也有壓力，但是有一些方法可以幫助孩子感覺更好。

During the first few weeks of staying at home, Maryam Jernigan-Noesi's 4-year-old son Carter was excited. His working parents were around him most of the day, and it seemed like a big extended weekend. But after a few weeks, she says, things changed.

呆在家里的頭幾個星期，瑪麗安·杰尼根-諾西4歲的兒子卡特很興奮。他工作的父母整天都在他身邊，這就像一個漫長的周末。但幾周后，她說，情況發(fā)生了變化。

"In terms of getting dressed and brushing teeth and that type of routine, he was a little slower to do that... testing the limits with mom and dad," she recalls.

“在穿衣服、刷牙和其他例行公事方面，他做得稍微慢了一些……挑戰(zhàn)了爸爸媽媽的極限，”她回憶道。

Carter was used to a two-hour nap at school. But now at home, he didn't want to nap. And at night, it was hard for him to get to sleep. "So in some cases, he was in bed just wiggling and twisting and turning," Jernigan-Noesi says. He would tell his parents he wasn't sleepy and couldn't fall asleep.

卡特習慣了在學校小睡兩個小時。但是現(xiàn)在在家里，他不想睡午覺。到了晚上，他就很難入睡了。“所以在某些情況下，他只是在床上扭來扭去，”杰尼根-諾西說。他會告訴父母他不困，無法入睡。

As a child psychologist, Jernigan-Noesi knows that when children are emotionally distressed, they may revert to behaviors from earlier childhood.

作為一名兒童心理學家，杰尼根-諾西知道，當孩子們在情緒上受到困擾時，他們可能會有些童年時期的行為。

"So, Carter, for example, who hasn't been rocked to sleep in a while, wanted to sit in my lap and be rocked in the chair that I used to breastfeed him in and rock him to sleep when he was much younger," she says.

她說:“比如卡特，他已經(jīng)有一段時間沒有被搖晃著入睡了，現(xiàn)在他想坐在我的大腿上，坐在我給他喂奶、搖他入睡的椅子上，那時他還小得多。”

A number of Jernigan-Noesi's friends tell her their children, 8, 9 and even older are suddenly clingy, following parents around the house.

杰尼根-諾西的一些朋友告訴她，他們8歲、9歲甚至更大的孩子突然變得黏人了。

"It's almost as if they did not want to do anything independently, which was uncharacteristic," she says.

“他們幾乎不想獨立做任何事情，這很不尋常，”她說。

Model calm

靜下來(為孩子)做榜樣

So what are parents to do?

那么父母們該怎么做呢?

That's because, she says, children and teens pick up the level of stress in their parents. "They don't always understand what's going on, but they can feel the tension." So, the more calm a parent can be, the more they're reassuring their child, she says.

她說，這是因為兒童和青少年會受到父母的壓力。“他們并不總是明白發(fā)生了什么，但他們能感覺到緊張。”所以，父母越冷靜，就越能讓孩子安心，她說。

Of course, staying calm clearly isn't always easy and often requires a conscious effort.

當然，顯然保持冷靜并不容易，通常需要有意識的努力。

Focus on what's working

專注于所做的事

Another way to help: Shift focus from your child's worrisome behavior. Instead pay attention to what's going right and reinforce it.

另一種幫助方法是:把注意力從孩子令人擔憂的行為上轉(zhuǎn)移開。相反，要注意哪些是正確的，并加強它。

Create soothing spaces

創(chuàng)建舒適的空間

Some parents have found it helpful to help their children create soothing spaces just for them, places they can go when they need to feel better. Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman lives in Silver Spring Maryland and has two children, Evelyn, 10, and a son Sagan, 7. Not long after the pandemic began, Evelyn built a fort for herself "a little cozy corner in her room that's totally enclosed with a Harry Potter cape and a Portuguese flag and some other fabric," says Pavao-Zuckerman. "When she's just feeling anxious or upset, she goes and sits in that little corner."

一些家長發(fā)現(xiàn)，幫助他們的孩子創(chuàng)造一個舒適的空間是很有幫助的，當他們需要感覺更好的時候，他們可以去那里。巴尼特·帕沃·扎克曼住在馬里蘭州銀泉鎮(zhèn)，有兩個孩子，10歲的伊芙琳和7歲的兒子薩根。大流行開始后不久，伊芙琳為自己建造了一座堡壘，“房間里有一個舒適的角落，里面全是哈利波特斗篷、葡萄牙國旗和其他一些織物，”帕沃·扎克曼說當她感到焦慮或不安時，她就會去坐在那個小角落里。”