Can 'masked childhood' break a child's psyche: a psychologist's answer
'23.10.2020'
Source: Inosmi.ru
We are worried about how to protect risk groups from the coronavirus. But few people think about the psyche of children and adolescents. But they are paying the most for what is happening. The short experience they got in the spring has already left their mark. And psychological problems are not the only thing that threatens children locked at home, psychologist Pavel Koutzka is convinced on the website Inosmi.ru. Next - from the first person.
The new type of coronavirus has succeeded in something that I cannot remember in my practice. Now almost nothing else is being said and tough measures are being taken to stop its spread. We save lives, and all other values in the blink of an eye seemed to have ceased to exist. The real serious threats to humanity - pollution of nature, greenhouse gases, endocrine disruptors, and more - have never even been able to come close to such intensity.
A reluctance to see risks and prevent worst-case scenarios is literally striking. In addition, now we are saving the lives of people with many chronic diseases, mostly very old ones, and the future of our children, that is, those we should take care of first of all, is in jeopardy.
Most likely, the point is not that we give preference to the old and spit on the young, but that there are victims of the coronavirus already here and now, or we are expecting them in the coming weeks and months. And children will get sick or natural disasters will begin in a few years, even decades. Diseases and deaths that happen sometime there do not bother us, and those that happen already here and now frighten us. Even too much.
We figure out how to protect risk groups, how to help doctors, businessmen and so on, but who is thinking about children and adolescents today? I want to draw attention to them, because they are the ones who pay the most dearly and will still pay for what is happening, and this is not about money.
So far, the restrictions are not as tough as they were in the spring, but we are already close to them. Children again do not go to school, and in the name of the "health of the nation" they were forbidden to sing and play sports together. They have lost the opportunity to attend clubs, and who knows if they will not completely lose contact with their peers. But what they can and even must do is spend their time in front of monitors.
Until spring, we listened to complaints about how much time children spend on gadgets, and experts warned how much it hurt them. It was emphasized that they walk little, move little, and online contacts cannot replace friends. And suddenly it turns out that now we should be happy when they don't look up from their gadgets. What will be the consequences of the current measures? It may be worth considering what a mark has already been left by the short experience of the children in the spring.
Anxiety and addiction
I know a family in which a four-year-old girl suffered from panic attacks in the summer due to unwashed hands. Although the parents were not zealous with disinfection and did not tell her too much, from the very beginning they tried to calm her down. Most likely, she heard about it on TV, although it is not known exactly. One way or another, but it was enough for her to touch at least the railing, and she already felt bad. I'm not even talking about the fact that then she began to hysterically lick her hands to wash them. During the spring restrictions, the security hotline reported an increase in calls. The children were afraid, hard to bear the isolation at home and uncertainty caused by not knowing what will happen next.
I also know a family of very conscientious parents of a five-year-old boy who took quarantine seriously and indeed very limited contact. After three months of isolation, they learned that their child “forgot how to play” with peers, and is even afraid of them. Many kids missed their friends at the start of the spring lockdown. If the isolation had lasted a couple of weeks, then they would generally happily return to their friends, or the alertness at the first meeting would quickly be replaced by their usual behavior.
In general, we can say that the older the child, the more brothers and sisters he was surrounded by, the better he endured isolation. But if children (primarily between the ages of three and seven) were deprived of social contacts for a long time, then they were filled with confusion and isolation. It seemed to them "strange" that they were seeing their peers, and they did not know how to behave. Difficulties manifested themselves in varying degrees, and in some cases developed into a phobia.
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Friendship is very important for children. They enjoy communication that teaches them social interaction. In psychotherapy we are often faced with social helplessness, which is rooted in a lack of communication with peers in preschool age. Three months for a five-year-old child is a very long time! Do not be mistaken that children will endure a significant restriction of social contacts without consequences.
I know a family in which a 12-year-old boy, when schools closed, spent all day at a computer or mobile phone. He sat over them (and is now sitting again) all the time, except for a few hours in the early morning and at noon, when he fell asleep from fatigue. The family has long faced a problem: the boy was already spending too much time with gadgets, but in March the situation just got out of control. When my mother turned off the Wi-Fi, he was so furious that she, fearing for his and her health, chose to turn the network back on. According to her, there is no force capable of tearing him away from the computer, and now he refuses even to eat with the rest of the family. This is an extreme case, but all families face children's addiction to online games and social media. Some children also visit pornographic sites.
You will say that parents should restrict or forbid them, and you will be right. But in practice, this is not at all easy. When parents try to streamline the use of gadgets, their children respond with hatred, quarrel with brothers and sisters, threaten with physical violence, threaten to report to the guardianship authorities or even suicide ... , and after a while the child they knew returns. But not everyone has the strength to withstand it. In addition, you need to be careful: addicted children, when they turn off the Internet or take away their gadgets, fall into real despair. A desperate child is capable of desperate actions.
School at home
But psychological problems are not the only thing that threatens children locked at home.
Let's say we know that after the spring lockdown, there was an explosion of domestic violence in some families. Therefore, I do not understand why the work of the Bodies of Social and Legal Protection of Children was limited. When, if not now, is it even more necessary for social workers to come to families where children of dysfunctional parents sit at home all day? By the way, it is also difficult to explain the reduction in visiting hours of other organs. After all, the shorter the reception, the more people will be packed into the reception. Is not it?
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Distance education is also a problem. For example, because it really reveals the imaginary scissors in education: the only child in the family, who has his own computer in his own room, and behind his back his parents, will be able to learn much more than at school. But many children do not have such conditions. Not everyone has internet and a computer at home for every child. I guess even rental laptops won't solve the problem. Not every parent is able to help a child install the necessary programs, log in to the system, register at various “mitts” and “teams”. The laptops provided to such families will be used for gaming and viewing, at best harmless, games.
For the good of the elderly?
The principle arguments for hard restrictions are: protect the elderly, not flood hospitals. But in the spring it was not only possible to successfully suppress the spread of the infection, but also to introduce "new tones" in the life of the elderly.
“My daughter and son-in-law practically did not meet with us in the spring. We told them we weren't afraid, but they refused anyway. When they finally arrived in June, the grandchildren were distant. My heart bleeds when I think about it. "
“When the grandchildren wanted to come to visit in the spring, the daughter-in-law took up arms against them:“ Do you want to kill your grandmother? ” I have no words".
One client told me about the suffering of her grandmother, who was locked in a nursing home. All visits were banned in the spring and extremely limited contact with other residents of the house. Therefore, the grandmother, who is hard of hearing and seeing, and therefore cannot use the telephone or video communication, sat in her room all day long. Unfortunately, she can no longer even do needlework, which she was fond of before. My client would go to wave her out the window, and then they both cried.
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A friend complained that she was not allowed to say goodbye to her friend, who was dying in the hospice. "No, it shouldn't be that easy!" - she recalls with bitterness and tears in her eyes.
According to the Office of Health Information and Statistics, in the spring, elderly people in social care facilities died more from loneliness than from coronavirus. In the first half of this year, 5441 people died in institutions, of which 77 from complications caused by the coronavirus. At the same time, in total, in comparison with last year, the number of deaths in institutions intended for the elderly increased by 425 people ... Probably, the greatest tribute was collected by isolation.
Turning point
We are going through a turning point in many respects and, perhaps, someday we will say “before the crown” and “after the crown”. On the other hand, our fear of impending death is superimposed on the established tendencies: the ousting of death from our lives and the exaltation of security and longevity. For the sake of their safety, we prefer not to let small children go outside alone, and we follow older children using different applications. We adults are also limited for various reasons.
For example, on excursions around the flooded quarries "America" I am overwhelmed with mixed feelings: rocky slopes, a crystal clear lake below - a magnificent view! I just want to go down, take a closer look, swim. But no: for our own safety, it is forbidden, and the fine is 50 thousand crowns. Why can't we be responsible for ourselves if we don't threaten someone else's life? Why is the inscription "Enter at your own risk" no longer enough, as before? The tendency to limit the value of freedom in the interests of security has been outlined for a long time, and the only question is where it will lead.
We try to increase life expectancy as soon as possible, as if in itself it guarantees us a quality life. But life expectancy without serious illness does not increase. The last years of life, it happens, are difficult, and not only for the patients themselves, but often for their loved ones.
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Once I talked with a woman who was unable to create her own family, because from 30 to 40 years old I took care of a mother with cancer. “It was very difficult: my mother had several operations, chemotherapy, and then another ... She suffered from pain and could hardly bear it all. When she was alone, it was the worst. Therefore, I only went to work, and then - immediately to her. When she felt especially bad, I took a vacation, ”she recalled.
I know a family that broke up only because their father refused to place his mother with Alzheimer's in an institution. Caring for her completely absorbed him, and he was with her around the clock. Today, the man's adult daughter says that she and her brother essentially "lost their father" at a time when they needed him most.
I do not mean to say that we should not protect the old and the sick, that we should not take care of them. But I want to say that we should not sacrifice absolutely everything for them. I am of the unpopular view today that our primary responsibility is to take care of children, not our parents. The opposite is contrary to nature.
I understand why one should be afraid of overloading hospitals, but I wonder how much are we willing to sacrifice to prevent this from happening? No one would like to be in the place of a doctor who has to decide who to give the best care, and who is standard. On the other hand, when an ambulance arrives at the scene of a major accident, the doctor has to deal with a very similar issue. The decisions of these doctors, which are made around the world today and every day, do not leave us indifferent. But the decisions that the doctors had to make in March in Lombardy still horrify the world.
Life, in principle, is a risky thing, and it ends in death, no matter what we do. Personally, I want to die on time. I would not want to inflict the same torment on my children as the mothers described above, suffering from cancer and dementia. I would also not want to spend my last years in isolation from everyone and everything in the name of caring for my health. I would rather die a few years earlier, thanks in advance to the coronavirus, flu, pneumonia or other disease and the person who transmitted it to me.
Please, even when you are afraid of death, do not forget about children. First of all, they deserve that we think about their health and future.
The original column by Pavla Koutskaya is published on the website Inosmi.ru.
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