Tag Archives: COVID

(Re)Adapting to In-Person Classes

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This fall, many young children may be returning to in-person classes or preschool after a long time away, and some toddlers may be joining their first group activities with peers. Parents may worry about how their child will adapt. We can support the transition by: getting ourselves ready, choosing the right program for the moment, preparing children by teaching social skills and self-help skills at home plus talking to them about what to expect and what will be expected of them, then supporting them through all the new experiences in the first few weeks of class. We should expect that it will not all go smoothly and all children will have some rough days at school – because that has always been the case!

I know this feels like an unprecedented situation, and yes, COVID is unprecedented. But parents have always worried about sending their child off to school and wondered how they can help with the process. Those steps that parents have been following for decades all apply here, and we’ll throw in a couple COVID specific tips in our suggestions about what you can do to increase the chances that the transition to in-person learning will go smoothly.

Prepare Yourself

If you are anxious, your child will pick up on that, and they’ll be anxious too. So, before you start talking to them about going to classes, do whatever you need to do to build your own confidence that it will be OK. Get support from others if needed.

If you’re worried about COVID – remind yourself that even if children catch COVD, they typically have mild cases. (Yes, there are exceptions – some children who get very sick – but the chances are small.) The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends a return to in-person school. You can also think about layers of protection – all the things you can do to reduce the risk for your child. [If you’re evaluating whether or not to return to in-person classes, here are factors to consider.]

If you’re worried your child won’t adapt well to being around other children, listening to other adults, or being away from you, keep in mind that children are very resilient – they often adapt to things much easier than adults do.

Ideally, you should work on your worries out of sight of your child. But, if your child notices your anxiety, then trying to pretend it’s not there can actually cause them more worry than if you just calmly say “I’m feeling worried now – here’s what I’m doing to calm myself.”

Planning for Success

Jumping from social isolation at home to a full-time program could be overwhelming for some children. Some parents are choosing to start small with a program that meets for only a few hours a week, and gradually build up to more. Some are choosing to start with a parent-child class or a cooperative preschool where they can stay with their child in the new setting to help make the transition to being with other kids and adults easier. Some will choose full-time school but simplify the rest of the child’s schedule to keep things manageable.

When looking at programs, I would consider their COVID protocols: Vaccines for the adults, masking for everyone over age 2, increased ventilation / more outside time, and social distancing can all reduce the risk.

I would also look more broadly at their approach to scheduling and rules. I would look for one that has a nice balance between providing structure with predictable routines and a little flexibility to adapt to your child’s needs of the moment. Our children really need both predictable routines at this time and responsiveness to their needs as they re-adapt.

Preparing Your Child

While returning from COVID is new, asking kids to adapt to new situations is not new. So there are a lot of things we know to do to ease transitions into toddler classes, daycare or preschool.

  • Teach self-help skills. Help your child learn how to put on their coat, take off their coat and hang it up. Help them learn how to open their string cheese or yogurt containers by themselves. Teach handwashing skills, and also practice how to use hand sanitizer.
    • During COVID, teach them how to wear a mask, how to take it off to eat, and put it back on, and what to do if their mask gets wet or dirty. (Early in COVID, many parents wondered if they could ever teach their child to do something “as weird” as wearing a mask – but remember, that’s not weird to a kid. It’s no weirder or harder to learn than how to wear pants in public.)
  • Teach and practice social skills: how to make friends, how to invite someone to play with you, how to ask to play with a toy someone else is using, taking turns, and so on. Set up playdates where your child can practice these skills.
    • During COVID, teach them about “giving space” around them rather than crowding other kids. In dance classes and sports classes, teachers have long used the idea of “bubbles” – imagine you have a big invisible bubble around you and so does everyone else and you can’t bump inside anyone else’s bubble. You can teach and practice this. Be careful not to give your child the message that it will always be dangerous / scary to be close to other people. Just say that right now with COVID we need to make extra space.
    • It always helps to teach emotional literacy skills – how you can tell how someone else is feeling. During COVID, be sure teach your child to watch for body language and tone of voice since they can’t see facial expression for people who are masked.
  • Create routines. What routines can you establish at home to make it easier to get out the door in the morning? If you’ll need to be up earlier in the morning than you’re used to, do you need to adjust bedtime? Learn about what routines they use at school and try to have similar practices at home. (For example, washing hands before snack time.) If your child will use new tools at school – like a backpack or a lunchbox or water bottle – get them early and practice.

Preparing them for Class

Talk about what to expect at their class, and what will be expected of them.

  • There are lots of great books and TV episodes about starting preschool. Some good book options include “Rosie goes to Preschool” by Karen Katz. (video) “Maisy Goes to Preschool” by Lucy Cousins (video), Lola Goes to School by McQuinn (video), Pete the Kitty’s First Day of Preschool by James Dean (video). Or watch “Learn what happens when Sadie starts school.” These provide good starting points for conversations and for pretend play.
    • Note: Many books address separation anxiety and other fears. If your child is already fearful, these can be reassuring. But if your child is feeling confident, don’t read these books – you don’t want to introduce anxiety! Some examples: Bye Bye Time by Verdick (video) is great for kids who are just a little anxious – it helps you develop a ritual for goodbye time and a plan for them for what to do if things are hard. “Llama Llama Misses Mama” by Anna Dewdney (video) is about a llama who has a really rough first day at school – it’s a perfect book to read after your child has a rough day. “The Kissing Hand” by Audrey Penn (video) is about a raccoon child who is very reluctant to go to school – if your child is already reluctant, it offers good tools. Or watch Daniel Tiger Goes to School.
    • Here are recommendations for kids starting kindergarten or first grade: https://www.thoughtco.com/childrens-picture-books-about-starting-school-627520
  • Talk about what to expect at their school. Visit the school, if possible. Or, at least look at pictures or a video tour if available. Visit the outside of the building and walk around. Show your child pictures of the teacher. Get some materials like they’ll have in the classroom – like markers – and practice using them at home. There’s an idea called a social story which was created for kids with autism – where you create your own little book with pictures that clearly describes what to expect, what’s expected of them, and what they’ll do if something is challenging – I find these can benefit any child, so you could create one for your child.
  • Teach and practice how to interact with a teacher. Explain that the teacher is there to help them and will take care of them. Explain that the teacher is in charge. Teach how to get the teacher’s attention and how to ask for help. Teach them that sometimes they have to wait for a grown-up to be available to help them. Play listening games (like Simon Says, Red Light Green Light, or Copy the Rhythm I Clap).
  • Pretend play. Pretend to be going to school – who will play the parent? The child? The teacher? Play at things like: waiting in line (with stuffed animals), doing circle time, taking turns, asking the teacher for help, saying goodbye at drop-off time.

When Classes Begin

  • Don’t make too big a deal of the first day. That anticipation and excitement can turn into anxiety.
  • Don’t introduce all new clothes and shoes and backpack on the first day. Let them wear familiar and comfortable items. Pack their favorite foods, and pack the exact same lunch for the first several days so they know exactly what to expect. Ask your school’s policy about “transitional objects” – for some children, having a toy from home or a picture of family or favorite book, can help them adjust to all the new things around them.
    • Note: pre-COVID, this was often a stuffed animal, but during COVID, only send things to school that can be easily cleaned.
  • Allow extra time to get there – you want time to relax beforehand, remind your child what to expect, and get there with everyone calm. (Note: this is especially true if you have a child you think of as shy – I call them “slow to warm up.” These children do best when they can arrive a little early, before most of the other children and settle in. They don’t do well running in frantic and late to a full and busy classroom.
  • Build a relationship with the teacher(s), other kids, and other parents. When your child sees that you feel comfortable interacting with them all, they will feel comfortable too. Let the teacher know what things most engage and calm your child. (When my child was three, I told his teacher(s) that any time Ben was feeling worried, all they had to do was ask him about the planets, and give him nine objects to line up to show which was closest to the sun and which was furthest… it was guaranteed to calm him any time!)
  • For drop-off programs, ask if it’s possible to stay a while at drop off time in the early days. (It may not be possible during COVID.)
  • When it’s time to leave, keep your goodbyes brief, radiate confidence that they will be OK. Do say goodbye – don’t try to sneak our when they’re not looking. Tell them what they will be doing while you’re gone, and when you’ll return. (Be sure to honor that promise, and be prompt and predictable for your return.)
  • Make your goodbye ritual simple and sweet. Make sure your child is either settled into an activity or knows that to do next, or hand them off to an adult for care so that when you walk out the door, your child has something else they’re focused on other than your absence.
  • Remember that fear of strangers is developmentally normal for all children 7 months and up, and that separation anxiety is common in all toddlers around 18 months. If you see them, they’re likely not due to coronavirus or anything you did or didn’t do. And any advice that you can find for separation anxiety at any time will apply, whether or not it’s COVID specific.
  • Resist the rescue. If your child is sad/crying when it’s time for you to go, be caring and validate their feelings but stick to the plan and leave. Trust the teachers to be the professionals they are and manage the common challenges of separation anxiety. Typically a child who cries at drop off times cries only briefly and will soon calm down.
  • After class, give your child a chance to debrief and talk about how the day went.

Handling the Challenges

You may be one of the lucky few parents that everything goes well for and your child sails on through with no challenges. Or you may have a toddler who bites his classmates. If that happens, it’s not your fault and it’s not because of COVID isolation – it’s because sometimes toddlers bite their classmates. If your seven month old cries when strangers hold them, it’s good to know that 7 month olds have always been prone to fear of strangers. If you have a child who has a hard time sitting still for story time – maybe it’s because they didn’t have to sit still during quarantine… however, there have always been children who had a hard time sitting still! And the teachers will work with your family through the challenges, as they always have.

Be careful not to catastrophize. If your response to every setback is stress, anxiety, and “why does everything always go wrong?” that makes it worse. Try to have a resilience approach – “this is hard right now, but we’ve faced hard things in the past, and we’ve made it through, and look how much we learned.”

Some things to be aware of: if your child is having big feelings, it’s important to acknowledge them, not just try to distract them away. Regression is normal – for example, a child who was potty trained may have accidents – don’t punish or shame, just acknowledge the issue and say “let’s try to do better tomorrow.” If your child is really clingy, maybe they just need more snuggling for a while – soothe and reassure them. If they are misbehaving, remind yourself: children who are loved will always try to do well if they can. If they are misbehaving, ask yourself – is there a skill or support that they are lacking? If so, help them build it. Ask yourself – could it be that they have an underlying need that is driving the misbehavior? If so, meeting that need may resolve the issue.

Be patient and remember that any challenges are just a phase. Just keep doing your best every day and encourage them to do their best, and you’ll make your way through to the other side of this challenging time.

More Ideas

Coronavirus and the Return to School

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As a parent, and as a teacher, I look at all the information on rising case rates with the delta variant, and I worry – is going back to in-person school a reasonable choice at this time? I think the answer depends on a large number of factors. I’m going to walk you through questions to consider, using three examples: my current home of Kirkland Washington (in King County), and my home town of Cheyenne Wyoming (in Laramie County) and Dallas Texas. All numbers current from the week 8/16-20/21.

The questions to consider are:

  • Chance of Exposure: how common is the virus in your area? How contagious is it?
  • Reducing Community Spread: the more people in the community that have some immunity through vaccination and/or previous infection, the better, because that means fewer people in the community who will catch and transmit the virus.
  • Risk Reduction: what is being done in the community / school to reduce children’s chance of catching coronavirus?
  • Disease Severity: if a child does get coronavirus, how sick will they get?
  • Your Goals for Your Child’s Learning this Year

It’s worth noting at the top that the American Academy of Pediatrics has urged a return to in-person schooling, saying “the benefits of in-person school outweigh the risks in almost all circumstances.”

What are the current infection rates?

So, first, let’s look at: how common is coronavirus in the community – this shows how likely it is that you could be exposed. In King County, over the past 7 days, there were 180 cases per 100,000 or ~1.8 per 1000 in 7 days. In Laramie County, they report 508 cases in the last 14 days in a county of ~90,000 people, so the equivalent of ~2.8 per 1000 people in 7 days. In Dallas, they’re currently reporting 1000+ cases a day, the equivalent of 2.7 per 1000.

How contagious is coronavirus?

The original COVID-19 strain had an R0 of around 2 – if there wasn’t any immunity in the people an infected person came in contact with, each sick person could get two other people sick (who then infect four people and so on).

The Delta variant is much more contagious. If there’s no immunity, one sick person can infect 5 or more other people, who then infect 25 or more people and so on.

With Delta, if there was no immunity and no attempts at prevention, the spread would be very rapid. Thankfully, we can gain some immunity through vaccination or some immunity through previous infection with COVID, and we can reduce risks with practices like masking, distancing, and ventilation.

What percent are vaccinated?

The best protection against COVID is the vaccine. In King County, WA, 71% of the total population has received at least one dose. (On the Eastside of Seattle, WA, vaccination rates are high: amongst people over 12 years old, 91.7% have received at least one shot. And amongst our elders – the most vulnerable to COVID – over 95% are fully vaccinated.) In Cheyenne, 35.4% of the total population is fully vaccinated. In Dallas, 54% one dose, 38% fully.

Vaccines do not completely prevent infection. But they significantly reduce the risk.

May be an image of text that says 'Breakthrough cases are not driving the US Covid-19 surge Reported cases among not fully vaccinated AK 96% Reported cases among fully vaccinated AZ 94.1% AR 96.4% CA 98.6% CT 99.9% DE 99% DC 98.7% ID 98.8% IN 98.9% ME 98.7% MA 99% MI 98.4% MO 96.8% NE 99.6% NJ 99.8% NM 98.9% OK 99.2% RI 98.3% OR 98.1% TN 99.7% UT 96.8% VT 98.4% VA 99.3% WA 98% Source: Kaiser Family Foundation Note: Case data recent months, as of July Vox'

If someone does get a breakthrough infection, the illness will be much milder, and they’re much less likely to be hospitalized or die. (In the U.S., there have been ~8000 fully vaccinated people who have been hospitalized or died, but that is a small number amongst the 166 million people who have been fully vaccinated. With Delta, the numbers are increasing, but still the chance of severe illness or death is lower amongst the vaccinated.)

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What percent have a previous COVID infection?

If someone has already had COVID, they may have immunity against it. (One study found that 92% had immunity 6 months after infection.) It’s recommended that those who have had it also add the layer of vaccination. Amongst people with previous infection, those with no vaccination were 2.5 times more likely to get re-infected than those who had also been vaccinated.

In King County, there have been ~127,000 confirmed cases. That’s about 4% of the population. In Laramie County, there have been 9832 confirmed cases. That’s about 10% of the population. In Dallas County, 287,000 or 11% of population.

Risk Reduction

Look at what is being done in your community and in the child’s school to reduce the risk of transmission. Think about layers of protection – covering coughs, masks, hand-washing, increased ventilation / outdoor activities, and social distancing. (Here are recommendations from the AAP – American Academy of Pediatrics.)

In the parent-child classes that I teach and at my son’s school, we are: requiring vaccines for all adults in the classroom, requiring masks indoors for everyone over the age of 5 and recommending for age 2 – 5, creating routines for frequent handwashing, increasing ventilation and the amount of time spent outdoors, splitting kids into cohorts or setting up rotation between activities to increase social distance. We also live in a community where a large percentage of people are masking everywhere they go, so I know our children have less community exposure in many places. I am feeling fairly confident about our protocols.

I would feel much less confident in Cheyenne. Their school district website does not mention COVID vaccines or describe any protocols other than saying they will decide on August 20 whether or not they’ll be requiring masking. I’ll also say that as we’ve been around Cheyenne this week, few people are wearing masks. And in Texas, there are battles between school districts, courts, and the governor about whether schools will be allowed to require masks and a lot of political and popular rhetoric about masks as an imposition on personal freedom.

What if a child gets COVID?

So, I can look at how likely it is my child might catch COVID and what all steps are being taken to reduce the risk, but I also have to ask what the impact would be if these steps did not prevent infection.

For most children, COVID is a mild infection with cough, fever, and body aches, or no symptoms at all. (More about symptoms.)

For some children, it can be severe, leading to severe illness (including MIS-C), hospitalization or death. Children who are obese, have diabetes or have chronic lung disease are at higher risk. Black and Latino children are also at higher risk.

Let’s take a moment to compare COVID risk to risks that we considered normal in past years. Let’s look at flu which has an R0 of 0.9 – 2. In 2019, when we weren’t doing much to prevent flu beyond typical school hygiene, there were an estimated 12 million cases of the flu in our 75 million children age 0 – 17. So, 16% of children had the flu. There 254 deaths, so a 5 in 100,000 chance of death after contracting flu.

Between February 2020 and May 2021 (source), when many schools across the country were shut down and we were taking many steps to prevent COVID transmission but there were no vaccines, there were an estimated 26 million COVID infections in children age 0 to 17. (There have been 3.7 million confirmed cases, but the CDC estimates that we’re missing lots of cases of kids who are asymptomatic or barely sick so don’t get tested.) There were 332 deaths. That’s a 1 in 100,000 chance of death after contracting COVID. The majority of those deaths were in children with other health conditions.

In academic year 20-21, when adults were at higher risk and couldn’t be vaccinated, many schools chose to stay closed. This year, when any adult who chooses to be vaccinated can be, it was looking like an easy decision to have schools be open. There was the risk that more children would catch COVID than caught it last year, and likely more than catch the flu in a typical year, but it also appeared that COVID was milder for many children than flu. If we were talking the original strain, then personally, as a teacher and as a parent, I would feel quite confident with school resuming in my community with our vaccination rates, masking habits and the protocols in place. (I would not feel nearly as confident in Cheyenne or Dallas.)

However, Delta variant complicates things. It is far more contagious than the original. It also appears that Delta may be riskier for kids than the original strain, leading to more cases of severe illness. So, there’s a lot of uncertainty right now. So, then I have to balance the coronavirus risk with all the other factors.

Benefits of In-Person Schooling

The American Academy of Pediatrics says: “Schools provide more than just academics to children and adolescents. In addition to reading, writing and math, students learn social and emotional skills, get exercise, and have access to mental health and other support services. For many families, schools are where kids get healthy meals, access to the internet, and other vital services… Families, schools, and communities can work together to help ensure students can safely return to and remain physically together in school this fall.”

The final factor for each parent to consider is what are the benefits of in-person schooling and whether they outweigh the possible COVID risks. What are your learning goals for your child. What does your child most need at this time to move forward in their learning and development?

Last year, my kid was quite successful at online schooling. As a child with ADHD and autism, he actually did better in many ways at home than he does in the classroom with his peers. Emotionally, he was more stable, and academically, he was solidly on track. But, I feel like he needs to get back in the classroom with peers. I have confidence about my child’s academic skills in any setting, but he needs to figure out social interaction, impulse control and emotional regulation in interaction with others. And he needs to do that this year – his last year in elementary school before hitting middle school.

Last year, I taught children ages 2 – 7 online. And they did far better than I could have imagined in engaging with the activities, learning the concepts, and even in connecting with the teachers and the other children. But I also feel like it’s time to get them back in the classroom with other children. In a typical year, my programs are play-based. The majority of class-time has children choosing their activities and having lots of one-on-one interactions with other kids and the teachers. We only spend a third of class time in a structured teacher-led format. We do some great stuff in that structured time, but it’s the play-based portions of the class where the most learning takes place. Our online classes were all structured teacher-led learning. (We, of course, encouraged parents to do lots of hands-on projects at home with their children. But that’s different than the free choice, child-led way we do it at class.)

I believe children are remarkably resilient. I believe adults are incredibly adaptable when pushed to be. I’m so proud of everything we did last year, and I think our kids are all pretty much on track despite all the learning disruption. And yet, I think the time has come to return to in-person learning. Yes, the COVID risks scare me. But for me personally – again, in my community with the vaccination rates, masking and protocols, I feel that returning to the class is the right answer.

Your choice for your family in your community with your local protocols may be different. I think, as always, every parent needs to decide what’s best for their child, taking into account the best information available.