talking to your child about coronavirus (COVID 19)

It feels to me that the word of 2020 is unprecedented! I’m sure that you’d agree. We are in unprecedented times, times that change rapidly and times in which we don’t always have the answers, yet times which demand our best attempts at providing them.

By now no doubt your children have asked you many questions about the Coronavirus. If they haven’t please assume that they’ve heard a lot and potentially have lots of questions. As adults we know that the absence of information can lead to rumours and fear. This is also true for your children. At school, as you can imagine rumours have abounded! Your children have asked us many heartfelt questions, and as a staff we have approached answering them, while providing reliable information, using the following approach as recommended by Ambulance Victoria.

Not being afraid to discuss the Coronavirus.
Being developmentally appropriate
Taking cues from the children
Being reassuring
Focussing on what you are doing to stay safe.

Can I please be as bold as to suggest that if you haven’t already had conversations, now is the time to be prepared. The following provide some very helpful tips and tools when having these conversations, the first link is an engaging cartoon:

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/02/28/809580453/just-for-kids-a-comic-exploring-the-new-coronavirus

https://www.unicef.org.au/blog/news-and-insights/march-2020/how-to-talk-to-your-children-about-coronavirus

https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/coronavirus-how-talk-child.html

Possible School Closures:

There has been a lot of discussion about possible school closure and Hannah has been providing regular updates regarding this. If this in case does happen, it would be worthwhile thinking about

Creating a space for your children to do their school work. As with adults, this space needs to allow good posture (not on a bed!) and be relatively clutter free so that your children can concentrate.
Creating daily routine & schedule. In order to provide sufficient stimulation and variety at school, we regularly swap activities, the speed of this depends on the age of the student. For our Foundies, especially at this time of the year, activities can last for 20 minutes, for our Senior students, approximately 1 hour. While the teachers will ultimately provide the content of the learning, it will be up to you and your children to set the schedule. This would be best done together. You then of course can add in some very special and unique home activities such as cooking, kitchen chemistry etc.
Breaks – in the daily routine, it is essential that breaks that allow for physical activity are built in! A well planned schedule, with breaks, will ultimately need to provide a balance of academic, creative, social – not just for your children but equally important for you as well. We all can’t work 24 hours a day, especially when we have additional stressors
Working with other families – have a think about how this could occur – in person, on line, via phone? Technology may be our best friend yet!

The below link provides some great study tips, I especially like the “Try active Studying” section! For younger students, parents could use some of these questions as prompts!

https://www.oxfordlearning.com/tips-for-studying-at-home/

While caring for your children, it is also so important that we do our best to care for ourselves. This can be particularly challenging when we as adults can have our own stressors. These may include work, caring for elderly or vulnerable family members, having family members in other countries etc. This is definitely the time to reach out and to strengthen family and community support.

As always we are here to support both you and your children so please let us know if there are things that we can do.

Take care,

Wendy White

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