Surviving Being Cooped Up with Your Kids During Coronavirus Isolation

Are you stressed trying to figure out helping our kids during coronavirus and how you are supposed to do it all now that we are in self-isolation due to the Coronavirus? How do we deal with challenging behaviors and try to work, cook, teach, and generally survive. We talk with Carol Lozier, a licensed clinical social worker with over twenty-five years’ experience counseling children and families. She specializes in adoption and foster care issues, and is the author of the book The Adoptive & Foster Parent Guide.

Listen

Hit the Highlights

During this strange time we are living in of self-isolation, no school, and for many of us working at home or being out of work, we are not surprisingly getting a lot of questions from parents about how to survive and how to cope with challenging behaviors.
We are seeing and hearing about a lot of acting out behaviors but also some improved behaviors.
Why are kids acting out?
- Disruption in routine
- Parental stress (both foster parents and birth parents)
- Anxiety (their health, their parents and sibling health, when will things return to normal, etc.)
Disruption to visitations for foster kids
Some kids are doing better with self-isolation. Why?
General Tips for handling this time of self-isolation:
- Routine- doesn’t have to be rigid, but kids need to be able to predict their day. For kids who are struggling, make it a visual schedule stuck to the refrigerator.
- Give yourself and your kids some grace-relax expectations-especially as they relate to school work
- Find an activity/project that you are really interested in and that the kids can get interested in such as cooking, gardening, craft project, photography, planning your vacation, learning about Africa, and make that your family focus rather than worksheets. Tons of resources for free right now online
- Get outside when possible a couple of times a day.
- Schedule a quiet time every afternoon where every family member is alone and quiet. May have to be creative on space.
Specific Ways for handling:
- Tantrums
- Sibling fighting
- Arguing for screen time
- Inability to entertain or work by themselves-constant need for attention

All kids, even those without early life trauma, are struggling.
Talking with kids about this virus. How to explain to kids under 6, elementary school age, middle schoolers, high schoolers.
How to reestablish rules and a routine if you let it slip during the first days or week of the isolation due to coronavirus/Covid 19?
Importance of alone time and quiet time, but how do you get it.
How to balance working from home with kids?
Stress of becoming our child’s main educator. How do parents who are not educators cope with the stress of becoming their child’s main source of education.
How do you help kids cope with all the losses associated with the self-isolation due to the coronavirus, such as school plays, sports, graduations, spring break trips, etc.
How to help tweens and teens cope with being isolated from their friends.
Tips for single parents.
How much screen time is acceptable? Does it matter if the screen time is educational? Can we relax the rules a bit or a lot. Especially for those of us trying to work from home?
Additional tips in addition to the first 5.
- Routine
- Give yourself and your kids some grace-relax expectations-especially as they relate to school work
- Find an activity/project that you are really interested in and that the kids can get and make that your family focus. Tons of resources for free right now online
- Get outside when possible a couple of times a day.
- Schedule a quiet time every afternoon where every family member is alone and quiet. May have to be creative on space.
- Focus on eating healthy (most of the time) and getting enough sleep.