Changing
TIMES
Especially for Our Children by Roselyn Poon People often say there are two guarantees in life: death and taxes. I would like to add a third to the list, namely change. Now, there is every-day change like the weather, then serious change as in relocating the family, and then we have the mother of them all, global change, á la COVID-19. Change is not something we humans cope with very well at the best of times, let alone when the world is tilting its axis. I’m not interested in exploring the ramifications of some of the obvious changes that are occurring around us right now; rather, I want to check in on the little ones: the children. I have often heard adults remarking:
‘The kids will be ok, children are resilient, they adapt quickly, they will get over it by the morning." I pose the idea that maybe kids are not as good at coping with change as we believe they are. Could it be that children don’t know how to express their fear or their concern, so it stays bottled up and we super clever adults assume that silence is acceptance, and that everything is cool, when in fact it may be far from it? Think about how difficult it is for you to sometimes voice your feelings, thoughts and fears, and you have decades of life experience and vocabulary to draw on.
