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Helping seniors cope with loneliness During COVID-19

Families are staying at home and practicing social distancing, limiting seniors’ ability to spend time in person with friends and family. For seniors, these changes are understandably causing feelings of loneliness. To prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus, communities around the world have temporarily closed churches, community centers, and activity groups.

The impact of loneliness on seniors

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought more stress than happiness to many individuals. Parents without the skills and training in education have turned into substitute teachers and kids are trying to cope without traditional classroom strategies and extracurricular outlets.

Kids are feeling lonely and isolated, they may have the traditional technology to talk or text with friends, but children need to spend quality time with friends to feel connected and supported. They are also experiencing a sense of loss when missing out on milestones and rites of passage like dating, going to parties, hanging out with friends, prom, graduation, sports, there’s no way to mark time with the traditional milestones. Kids feel they are “missing out on life” with no way to measure these significant moments.

WHAT CAN HELP?

Acknowledge your feelings. You need to make time and listen to kids talk about how they are feeling. Don’t dismiss their emotions, acknowledge that this is difficult.

Practice routine and structure. Set up a schedule especially during the weekdays for your child/children to wake up, shower, participate in their school schedule, exercise, recreational time etc. to provide a sense of normality. This will also be helpful when kids can back to school, and they will be better prepared to deal with routine and structure.

Find new and creative ways to celebrate milestones.

We are seeing this all over the country with drive by birthday parties and parking lot graduation ceremonies. It’s vital to create memories in non-traditional ways.

Encourage creative ways to safely socialize.

This could be through Zoom, FaceTime, or even supervised physically distanced in-person gatherings outdoors.

Take control. With so much taken away from our children, their school, friends and even proms and graduation, it helps to allow them some choices. Allow kids to choose the family’s meals, pick what movie you watch, or even the game on game night.

Exercise over screen time. With so many children forced on laptops or other devices for distance learning, it can become tiresome staring at a screen all day. Get adolescents and teens moving, this is helpful for their bodies but more importantly for their minds.

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