By Gail Saltz, U.S. News & World Report, May 8, 2020
IT’S AN EXCEPTIONALLY difficult time right now for everyone. The stress and anxiety of illness, social distancing, being cooped up in quarantine, trying to work from home with children trying to distance learn from home, serious economic concerns and no known end in sight with tremendous uncertainty about the future is a collective trauma of sorts for us all.
As a result, we expect that some of us are going to struggle with mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. In adults, the symptoms of anxiety and depression are often reasonably obvious, such that both the sufferer and someone close to that person can see it.
But for kids, especially young children, the expression of feeling overwhelmed, traumatized, anxious or sad isn’t always so easy to spot. In addition, what is noticeable is often something for which in ordinary circumstances you might think to correct your child and indicate you are disappointed in their behavior. I’m speaking of childhood regression, the return to behaviors that developmentally they had already appropriately moved past – things they had stopped doing.
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