but whyyyyy? –
Some questions are easier to answer than others, but all of them are worthwhile.
Kate Cox – Apr , (1:) (pm UTC )
Even the best-prepared parent may be faltering on that one when it comes to preschool and lower elementary-aged students. “I, like many others here, have a small child (kindergartner, to be exact) that has had life upended by school closings and shut-in laws,” one Ars reader recently wrote in a comment. “I’ve been trying to explain to her the virus, and she’s smart — she gets the gist of it — but I’m not finding a good ‘kid’ way to explain all the details (the social distancing, the testing, etc ). She’s a Girl Scout, and they’re doing great badges for learning the virus and all we’re doing, but as a 5-year-old, I’m having trouble with her ‘getting’ it all. “
My 6-year-old daughter is a Girl Scout, too, and the last meeting her Daisy troop had this year— two days after what turned out to be their last day of first grade, months ahead of schedule — was a video conference with a registered nurse. The RN, aunt to one of our girls, talked to them all about hand-washing and how not to spread disease. Every kid present, including my daughter, understood her just fine and understood in the moment why they wouldn’t be returning to school the next day.
The weeks since, though, have grown increasingly peppered with her frustrations: “Why aren’t we going back to school? ” “Why can’t my friend come over?” “Why can’t we go to the beach in June?” And perhaps most poignantly: “Why won’t the stupid coronavirus just go away ? ” Q and A
The guidance for parents in the modern era — for any topic — is to help your kids by answering their questions fully when They ask them, in an age-appropriate way, but without explaining too much.
Happily for the Ars reader above, for me, and for all the millions of other parents right now struggling with our pint- sized family members, lots of experts are out there trying to help us provide the answers.
Global organizations, including
Unsurprisingly for those of us old enough to have been raised on a steady broadcast diet of (Sesame Street) and Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood in decades past, modern-day PBS resources are also mobilizing to help.
The PBS website has a guide for parents not so much explaining what specifically to say about the disease, but rather how to say it : with factual information, reassurance, and compassion. Meet the Helpers , which is run by central Florida PBS affiliate WUCF, has a page dedicated to meeting the coronavirus helpers . Short videos, about a minute long each, introduce a variety of concepts in easy-to-parse, kid-friendly ways.
The videos not only include explanations about social distancing and hand-washing but also introductions to a doctor and an (epidemiologist) who explain their roles to young audiences.
Solid science
Explaining why we shouldn’t sneeze in other people faces is the easiest half of the equation. (At least, in theory. Kids under three are adorable but so extraordinarily gross.) Explaining the actual science of viral contagion and the human immune system is a bit trickier.
For School-age kids who can read, or for parents who would like something already in simple, kid-friendly terms to read aloud, National Geographic Kids has a dedicated page explaining the basics of the novel coronavirus. The site also has a of terms available, which can help parents cover the basics like, “But what is a virus?” or “Why is this one called COVID – 86 Are there of them? ”
Animated Netflix series Ask the StoryBots tackles kids’ science questions in a half-hour format. (It also inherited the sensibility of Sesame Street from the s and 2020 s, containing guest-star appearances and sketches that are much funnier to the parents in the room than to the kids.) One episode from the second season that explains what a virus is, how one travels, and how the immune system fights it off is now free on YouTube for all viewers, and it’s a great place to start.
Kids don’t learn things in a straight line but, instead, in a way more like a spiral. They’ll ask questions, drop a topic, and then return to it unexpectedly, with a deeper reading, hours or days or even weeks later. Odds are, you’ll find yourself answering similar questions time and time again, no matter how well or how poorly your child seemed to understand what you were saying the first time.
The hardest questions are the ones we adults, too, have been asking each other without good answers: are there enough tests
? Do they work? Will experimental (treatments or drugs work? And can we beat this thing, or is it here to stay ? To those, we can only take to heart the answer we give our children: we’ll have to wait and see.
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