Parenting in a pandemic: Tools from a child therapist
Jimmy Fallon joked earlier in this pandemic that the Olympics were cancelled and the medals were given to the parents stuck at home 24/7 with young children. As a psychotherapist with a specialization in early childhood mental health, I'd like to share a few pandemic-specific tools for parents (in addition to their well-deserved medals).
Communication: Generally speaking, don't let young children watch the news. Even if your family is doing well, this kind of exposure can cause increased anxiety, or worse yet, secondary trauma. Kids should get their "news" from their families and other trusted folks. The best strategy is to answer their questions with developmentally appropriate language without elaboration.
Kids will ask more questions when they've assimilated that information and are ready for more. It's a helpful model to speak about the pandemic appropriately in front of them without hiding those adult conversations.
Truly the most frightening thing for children is that which the adults are unwilling to talk about.
Mr. Rogers: Take a page from Fred Rogers and introduce kids to the helpers in the neighbourhood. Show them a photo of [Provincial Health Officer] Dr. Bonnie [Henry] or drive them by the med centre at 7 p.m. for thankful honking and equip them with bells/horns/pots (dependent on your headache level at that time of day). Point out the Pique giving us helpful news, the grocers making sure we have all the food our tummies need, or the scientists working on a vaccine.
Positivity: Young children are generally jolly souls, but this has been going on for a long time now. If we feel that way as adults, imagine what nearly three months feels like when considered in proportion to a life that is only five or six years in total duration (less than half of which is remembered). F-O-R-E-V-E-R.
Help them to envision a positive outcome by drawing pictures of what things will be like when this is over (or at least better)—skiing, family camping, watching a movie with friends at the theatre, travelling to Paris.
Take this vision as a starting point and help their little minds be flexible by thinking of pandemic-friendly alternatives that they could do now (i.e. set up a tent in the backyard, make popcorn and have movie night in a dark den, play shadow tag with friends, or make crêpes while wearing berets).
Regulation through family breathing: Practice this self-regulation exercise as a family when everyone is calm and it will pay dividends when things fall apart during the witching hour (5 p.m., anyone?). Inhale, allowing the breath to linger in places of tension, and then prolong the exhale breathing out twice as long as the inhale. It sounds simplistic, but the neuroscience is no joke. After seven or eight breaths, you'll feel a difference as the release of oxytocin and serotonin balances out the cortisol (stress hormone).
Reach out if you feel as though you need some additional support from a local therapist, the Whistler Community Services Society, or the crisis centre. And don't forget to breathe! (Just not within two metres of anyone else.)
Kristie Baber, MSW, LICSW, CCTP // Whistler
Vail Resorts can learn from Whistler youth
It has been encouraging to see Whistler youth step up where Whistler adults still fear to tread, in both the Black Lives Matter rally recently and the past climate change rally. What remains to be seen is exactly how much this will galvanize their parents and community... or alternatively result [in condescending behaviour from others and being ostracized for] even trying.
One way to find out: Vail Resorts, the most powerful and influential employer in the Sea to Sky corridor has yet to publicly, actively and deliberately disavow the Republican Party of the United States, arguably the single most obstructive force in the world today against progress in both climate change and racial equality. Not only is the company silent, it financially contributes to the Republican Party, in stark contradiction to its stated beliefs.
Vail Resorts is not alone, of course. Facebook is also mangling logic and reason in a similar amoral supplication to the Trump Republicans, yet there at least there are some indications of a grumbling discontent within the actual culture and employees of Facebook.
The thin tenuous leadership of Twitter on this front is in the balance. Imagine if Mark Zuckerberg threw his considerable weight in with Twitter. Imagine if Vail Resorts threw their considerable weight in with Aspen Snowmass.
Is snow sport culture capable of anything remotely similar to even the vague grubbing of Facebook culture?
Now is a good time to find out. Or as Vail Resorts does with Jeremy Jones and POW, the adults will be content to let a handful of children lead where they simply won't rather than can't.
Bruce Kay // Powell River
A sweet day in Rainbow
On behalf of the kids of Rainbow, we'd like to give a huge thank you to Scott Grieve from the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory.
Scott generously donated 60 candy apples to our neighbourhood, with 100 per cent of the proceeds raised from the sale of the apples going to the Whistler Food Bank. We raised $376 and sold out in minutes. Thanks to everyone who came out, it was so nice to see all the kids smiling when they got their candy apples!
Ella Winter, age 9 // Whistler
COVID-19: Did we do this all wrong?
We shut down the world and disembowelled the global economy. Was it really necessary? Was there another way? The damage done will be felt for generations, not just financially but socially.
We have just mortgaged the future of Canada and permanently disrupted the rhythms of normal and healthy human interactions. What just happened?
World leaders pressured by fear: Fear of not looking decisive; fear of not being seen to be strong. For most political leaders, it became impossible to go against the tide of global lockdowns.
At the request of our elected officials nationally and provincially, we have reacted in a way that could only have been justified if many people we all know had been struck down by this virus and fallen seriously ill. But that is simply not the reality we are in.
Our political system and global connectedness has created a "group think" mentality, a herd instinct where we behave like lemmings which is defined as: "act in a silly way, without thinking, and in large numbers, though it may be stupid."
Every country had unique circumstances that required unique responses.
Interestingly, over the winter in Whistler, a lot of people were hit with nasty colds and flu. If a virus emanated from China, it would be logical to assume that B.C. would be an early "hot spot" given our close ties to that country.
In the winter of 2019-20 up until March, YVR received around 100 flights a week from China. All this leads me to believe that COVID-19 probably swept through Whistler and most of Vancouver's population long before March, but with many young, healthy people being asymptomatic, it went undetected as part of the normal flu season.
What we have seen in March and April was the more isolated and vulnerable segments of our population, the elderly, the sick, those in care homes (where over 80 per cent of COVID-19 deaths have occurred) finally being exposed and succumbing to the virus. That was possibly the end, not the beginning?
Don't get me wrong, the tragedy of this is real and the impact on the families affected will last forever, but that is the case with any death whatever the cause.
For a handful of deaths that might have been avoided, we have shuttered the entire B.C. economy, destroyed thousands of small businesses, created immeasurable social and mental anxiety and piled debt onto future generations. We have financially handicapped ourselves with a deficit that will take a generation to pay off. Higher taxes are in our future for a very long time.
Governments will continue to tell us that, "we did the right thing by all pulling together," but they will never admit that maybe they got it wrong.
The one thing this pandemic has exposed is the mismanagement and under-funding of many of the "for-profit" privately run, long-term elderly care homes, not just in Canada, but also all over the world.
This is the true tragedy that will emerge from this whole episode. The owners and operators of [some of] these homes have failed their caregivers, their elderly residents and their families on every level during this crisis.
The correct course of action was to isolate and protect only the most vulnerable parts of the population, while the rest of us kept the economy operating as normal. Our healthcare workers would have still been on the front lines working tirelessly to help those afflicted by the virus, but the vast majority of the working population, as well as universities, schools and daycares could have continued with a routine that was at least close to normal for the past eight weeks.
The onus would have been on the most "at risk" to do the right thing and protect themselves and other elderly people they might live with.
There was no avoiding the tragic deaths that would result from this virus, but how much did we really reduce the death toll through the lockdown? More importantly, what longer-term mental, social and financial damage have we done to the entire rest of the population, the other 99.8 per cent that did not get sick or test positive?
Ironically, our collective response has made us all victims of this virus. There was another way.
Rowndell Tate // Vancouver and Whistler
