Tangible Actions and COVID-19

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:04 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Anchor lead: You can help your children feel they’re helping with the pandemic, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Staying at home is helping everyone in the pandemic by reducing the chances for more people to become infected.  Rachel Thornton, a pediatrician at Johns Hopkins, says that’s just one message parents can give their children to help reduce their anxiety about COVID-19.

Thornton: Helping them understand all the things they can do to help keep everyone in their family safe is empowering. And they’re simple things that a lot of kids are already familiar with from childcare settings for those kids who are in childcare settings because every winter during flu season they get the hand sanitizer out, everybody practices washing their hands a lot, the sneezing in the elbow, all of those kinds of things are things even the young children can start to work on and master. And it gives them a sense that they’re also helping to keep everyone they care about safe.   :31

Thornton says pointing out all the things kids are doing right, such as having virtual play dates or sharing with siblings, also helps. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.