 Allison, can you hear me or I can hear you, but I guess I was doing a whole introduction and no one could hear me because I was on mute. I apologize about that. So I'll just start again. Hi everyone and welcome to our virtual program. With coronavirus fears challenging times. We're all navigating through and serve me. For ourselves, our loved ones and our community, we are very thankful to have Sarah, a licensed clinical social worker with us today. She is the director of the East mountain youth lodge at Hackensack meridian carrier clinic. A residential treatment program providing long term treatment for adolescents. Who struggle with emotional behavioral psychiatric and addiction issues. Sarah is passionate about helping teens and family strengthen the relationships and is also passionate about animal assisted therapy. Sarah oversees the animal assisted therapy program for the East mountain youth lodge that uses horses, donkeys and goats to assist youth and families in achieving. Treatment insights and goals so just a few items before we get started. All lines should be muted. If they're not, please make sure your line is muted. And if you're on the computer, please also make sure that your camera is turned off. Again, if it becomes a muted, make sure to mute it. Also, if you're on the computer and would like to submit a question or a comment, you can use the chat feature that should be up at the top of your. Screen, we are hoping for no technical issues, but please bear with us if there are any. So, at this time, I am going to turn it over to Sarah. Thanks Allison and thank you so much everybody for calling in. I really appreciate your attention for a few brief minutes tonight. To talk about what is happening in our world and obviously these are really unprecedented times. All trying to navigate and the times are creating significant changes in our daily lives are routines and our overall sense of safety and security. So I wanted to start I'm going to give a very brief introduction to what I why I think these times are different and then go through. 9 specific tips on how to help kids navigate these times and then I'll do some questions and answers at the end. I may mention a bunch of websites and resources and those, I believe, will be posted at the end by Allison. So I appreciate that. So, I just wanted to talk for a minute about what makes this pandemic different from other times of severe stress and trauma. And typically a trauma or a grief response is experienced by a family, maybe a community, a house of worship, a school, and may even make national news. However, most of the time, not all the time, but most of the time, we are able in our grief to see outside life continue as normal. So in other arenas, like for example, if there is a traumatic loss in your family, your children may be able to go back to school and see normal life continuing. You may slowly begin to re and integrate into normal life outside of your grieving, which may look like a return to work or going back to the gym or even just watching social media and talking to your friends and seeing that life is continuing. What is and it helps us in our dysregulated state to see outside of ourselves a sense of normalcy and begin even in little ways to return to a sense of normalcy where people are much more regulated. But what is happening now is in our personal dysregulated state, which most of us are struggling and fearful and concerned and our lives have been changed in some very significant ways, which is what I'll refer to as being dysregulated. Our emotions are not balanced all the time. When we look outside, that is also the state of everything else around us. So there is a great sense of collective fear and dysregulation really everywhere we look and a lot of places that we look to for normalcy for a sense of normalcy have either been closed down, have gone virtual are not occurring at the current time are not open. So that is really causing a great amount of distress for a lot of us. And it's very hard to regulate our emotions when we can't see a sense of normalcy outside of ourselves. So I just want to hold that as a context for the tips I'm going to give. And I want people to think about ways that they can and do see regulation, because any amount of regulation, which are balanced emotions, we can provide for ourselves or each other is going to help the greater good, so to speak. So let me start with the first tip. And again, this is how to help kids cope with COVID and the implications. But to start with, given that context, I want people to hold on to a simple belief that we are all doing the best we can. And others are doing the best they can to. So any reminder for people to be kind and gentle to themselves and others right now is a good place to start. The human spirit holds extraordinary resilience to get their difficulties. We see this all the time. One of the most critical things that I can suggest in how to help kids is to make sure that we are taking care of ourselves. Because again, the reason for me to start with talking about how dysregulated our communities and our country and some parts of our world are right now is that we need to show some semblance of collected, organized thoughts and feelings to help our kids. The kids absorb how we are feeling and right now most of what they are taking in is fear, people that are highly concerned and scared and worried and lots of grief and loss and change and things that are not normal. So the more we can show a sense of calm, the better. And the only way for us as caregivers and adults and caring adults role models to do that is to prioritize self care. So while kids are looking to parents to gauge how scared they should be, it is very important for parents to take the time to make sure that they can regulate their emotions when they're talking. And I know this is hard to do and it's not going to go well all the time. But if you are able to prioritize some self care tasks and strategies, things that you do that make you feel better. So you can enter into some of these conversations with a little bit more regulation and balance. The better your kids will will fare sometimes. So that's tip number 1. Take care of yourself. Tip number 2 is to consider your child's state of mental and emotional development. Kids of different ages and maturity levels handle different types of information from simple to more complex. The more you can tell the truth in a way they can understand the better. I wouldn't recommend not talking to your kids and sometimes people want to protect and shield their kids from tragedies and and pandemics and things that are very upsetting and challenging. But they know what's going on because they're absorbing the energy and they're hearing information and it's much better to tell them the truth in a way that they can understand. So the best way to provide information to kids and here's a little recipe is to give some facts, some feelings, some actionable steps and lots of hope and encouragement. So those would be the main ingredients to communicating with kids about this pandemic and it may look like this. For younger kids, there is a virus that is making some people sick. Doctors are working very hard to find the right medicine. So those are facts feelings. It is very scary and sad that we can't see our friends and you can't go to school right now. Some things that we can do and these are the action steps. Washing your hands will stop the germ from spreading and then some encouragement and signs of hope. We think that the scientists and doctors will find a way for us to manage this soon and we can get back outside and you will be able to see your friends. And for now, I think it's really fun a lot of times that we get to spend this time together, although everybody might not believe that or feel that way. But something that feels hopeful and encouraging. So let me move on to tip number three. Take time to really listen to the concerns and fears of your kids and try to validate their feelings. This is a scary time for everyone. Acknowledge how this can be scary. Listen to your kids. Don't avoid the topic and don't jump in too quickly to try to reassure your kids. Really listen to what they're thinking about what there's something called frightening fantasies. And when children, when children are listening to a lot of things that are scary and adults around them feel fearful, they will begin to make up information if we don't share the information with them. And oftentimes what they make up or imagine or assume is far worse than what is actually happening and the pandemic's bad. They may come up with things much worse and they may be concerned about themselves, their caregivers, the family members that they love their school. So you want to really listen and once they tell you ask for more, what else are you concerned about? You may not have all of the answers, but you can get the answers. You want to really listen to what are they hearing, ask questions about what are they hearing? What are their friends concerned about? What kinds of information have they heard from other sources? Take as much time as you truly need to listen to everything that's on their mind about the situation. Allow the kids, allow kids to feel their emotions. Try your best not to shut this down or interrupt this too quickly with reassurance. Let them talk it out and feel it out. And again, ask what else, tell me more, is there anything else? Then once you've listened to everything, give some facts in a way that they can understand. Don't give too much information. Watch for your child's cues. If they start looking off into the distance, they begin to play. They tell you they've had enough depending on their age. Listen to those cues and when they've had enough, that's the end of the conversation. Follow up with the recipe, which is some facts, some feelings, some action steps and lots of hope and encouragement. And remember that it may not be a one and done conversation. Kids are continuing to absorb a tremendous amount of information, maybe on a daily basis, just like the rest of us. So you may, and you know your families, so you may have an agreement with your children that if they have any questions or concerns or thoughts, they will bring them to you. You may decide to have a weekly COVID meeting where you open it up for conversation and you talk about everything that's of concern. Make sure when you have a discussion that there's closure to it and also try to avoid discussing it constantly. So have a set time, talk about it and then close it up. Okay, this was a good discussion about the pandemic. Let's move on to the next thing we're going to do, like getting ready for dinner or going outside to play. Is there anything else you want to say about it? No, okay, let's move on. Let me move on to tip number four. Let kids know and make sure that you reassure them that there are many, many people, adults, doctors, scientists, medical professionals who are working very hard to try to fix this problem. All over the world, people are trying to develop solutions, be comforting and reassuring and remind kids again about action steps. What can we do to stay safe? And we all hear these things every day. They're on TV. They're in literature. They're online. Wash your hands. Maybe kids can help wipe off counters and doorknobs, buff into it, clean X and throw it away and continue to social distance. Those are the things that we can do to make sure the virus doesn't spread further while these people are working on a solution. Tip number five, remind kids about what is staying the same. So much feels different right now and their lives have been interrupted in so many profound ways, especially with the closing of school, with virtual school, with social distancing from loved ones and friends. It's really a tough time and we're more on edge because our lives have been disrupted. So I think to remind kids that some things have stayed the same. What are those things? Make a list of those things. Any rituals or routines that you have at home or in your family that are continuing. I think it's important to mention those things. Also, and I'm sure everybody's heard this, this is still tip number five. If you don't have a schedule or a routine, make one up and there's a ton of. Ovid schedules online that you can look at, but to try to take a scenario that can feel very disrupted and chaotic and put some organization to it is really helpful for kids. So if you have a wake up time and outside time, breakfast time, virtual school time, recess, what are you going to do then after school? What do you do? It could be things you typically do, but putting them down on a piece of paper as a schedule is really helpful for kids to feel there is a plan and there is a routine and things just aren't completely chaotic. So that's tip number five. Tip number six, ask your kids for ideas about what could help them stay in touch with their family and friends to remain connected. I know there's a lot of ideas out there. People are utilizing virtual technology to stay in touch. And it's true. It is not the same. Kids miss their friends. Kids miss their families. But any ideas they have that may be satisfying to them, kids love when they get to implement their own ideas. So let them come up with ideas to stay connected. Tip number seven, be a role model for the behaviors you wish your kids to follow, especially when it comes to social distancing. Model and teach stress management, but model and teach social distancing as well. So if kids can't see their friends but they see you outside chatting with a neighbor, it may just be more difficult to explain that. If you do some things to manage your stress that the kids can also participate in, that's a win-win. So role model going outside, playing with your pets, playing a game with them, cooking, baking, breathing exercises, writing in a journal, writing a story together. Also set kids up for success. So if you believe it will be really hard for them to social distance, if you take them to like a park or a playground, I would avoid those situations. It's going to cause more angst and anxiety for everybody. So tip number eight, and some people may not agree with this, but I'm all for this. This may be a perfect time to grant some special privileges. If there are things that you and your children or your family have talked about possibly doing, if it's buying a certain video game system or potentially fostering a kitten or a puppy, maybe learning how to ride a bike or something that you were kind of holding off on, this may be a great time to consider jumping into that. There's nothing like something exciting to distract kids from what they're struggling with. So also anything that might help kids feel a better sense of control. So these special privileges might involve repainting their bedroom or redecorating their room or some kind of project around the house that gives them some sense of control over their environment could be really helpful. It also takes up time and it's something to work on together. And the last tip is just thinking about the best way to decrease the potential for long-term impact of trauma in kids is to really remain connected to them about how they are feeling and coping emotionally. And again, to give them the opportunity to express their concerns, express their feelings, give information. And for you to be looking for persistent signs of things that are unusual and that don't get better. Some people wrote in questions about kids being anxious. I'll talk about that a little bit in a minute. But please remember what your resources are. So reaching out for mental health support from a professional could be really important. Again, if you see symptoms or signs of something that's persisting that doesn't seem to be getting better over time. There are a lot of virtual supports right now to help people feel a little bit more connected similar to this phone call. There are houses of worship, local mental health centers, school systems that are all putting on programs virtually to try to share information and give out information. And I hope people will continue to look for those resources because there's a lot out there. And this is a really, really important time for people to utilize them. So those are the nine tips. Allison, do we want to go to some questions? I almost did it again. Started talking, being on mute. I just want to point out and sorry, I don't know if you want to add in, but this slide that's up right now is the barn animals, the barn style. Dress reduction tips. So I don't know if you want to add anything about that. I can't see the tip. I can't see my screen, but I can say that one of my favorite personal favorite things to do is go out and be with the barn animals. Again, I'm a huge believer in the power of animals to help soothe and decrease stress and anxiety. So if people feel like they have something special also that helps sort of bring down their escalated heightened emotions, please spend time doing that. I know by heart, I think what those pictures are, and it's one picture of the two horses chilling out, but they're facing away from each other. So they're kind of social distancing. I think there's a picture of the goats just taking in the sun, which is such an important thing for us to do to just be outside and enjoy nature. And one of the donkeys I think is rolling in the dirt and just having fun and just to be able to go outside and let a little steam off and roll in the dirt is good for everybody. So those are messages from the animals. Let me get into the 1st question. Some people submitted questions about how to help children grieve loss of life, but also of lifestyle that they're used to seeing friends and loss of rituals like birthday parties, proms and graduations. What is the recommendation to assist kids in coping and grieving? It's a great question and obviously things. This is such an extremely stressful time for everybody. The changed lifestyle has been referred to as people grieving their, the loss of their freedom loss of financial stability loss of employment. There's so many losses going on. And that's all in addition to the actual loss of life due to COVID. So there's a lot of grief and grieving. I think it's a good framework. So I want to talk for a second about the stages of grief. And the stages are shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing and acceptance. So all of those stages help people begin to reorganize around a new normal and they are not necessarily linear steps. So you can go back and forth. And I think using an example of a child that isn't able to see their friends. They may be in shock over that. It's a surprise. Then they're in denial. That can't be true. Then they're angry. Sometimes the kids that stage lasts a long time. Then there's some bargaining going back and forth. Then there's the sadness. They may do behaviors to test and then hopefully eventually as they go through these stages, they get to acceptance, which is how they begin to reorganize around this new norm. And this can take time. And as people's grief deepens or they feel it in certain ways, they may go back to one of the old steps and then start moving forward again. There's a couple of websites that I want to recommend to people that talk a lot about how to help kids grieve in the time of COVID and their grief websites, but they've updated a lot of information around COVID. So one is called the Duggee Center. It's D-O-U-G-Y. I think it's the Duggee Center, but it's the National Center for Grieving Children and Families. The other website is called the National Alliance for Grieving Children. And the website is actually childrengrieve.org. And both of those websites have a lot of information about COVID, the losses associated with COVID, and how to help kids. So I think those will be posted and I found both of those websites pretty helpful. Perfect. And they are actually posted for those that are on the computer. They are posted up on the screen right now. But for those not on the computer, if you registered with an email, we can send this information out to everyone. So moving on to the next question, there was definitely a few people that asked questions about how to help specific age groups deal with their anxiety, acting out behaviors, not knowing what to do with their emotions. And to go along with that too, there was also any tips with virtual learning and how to deal with that, that kids are over it or just frustrated by it? Yeah. I really appreciate people submitting the questions. And obviously in this timeframe of 30 minutes, it's hard to get to every question. It's very hard to address individual questions about individual kids and situations when I don't have a lot of information about the child or their situation. But I want to give a little bit of sort of general and then some resources. And I certainly appreciate what people are going through with homeschooling and kids not really being able to go out at all, see their friends. It's a lot. It's a lot for kids and families. But let me start by saying it is important again to look at the age of your child and their stage of development. And that's going to help you understand what kind of information they can take in and the best way for them to understand what's happening. Also, when you're looking at that, there are behaviors that may coincide with the pandemic reaction that are normal. And I think we're all experiencing the level of grief and anxiety and kids may become more clingy. Kids may become more fearful. Kids may be much more afraid of what's going to happen in the future. And some of that is just a normal reaction. I think what we want to look for are reactions that don't get better over time or that you think are really out of the norm for that child or that you feel concerned about. So first, try to remember that kids absorb our anxiety. So the more we are able to stay calm, the better. The more you can keep the lines of communication open over time with kids, looking for these signs and behaviors that are of concern and assessing that at what point you feel professional guidance is warranted. And I would strongly encourage as a therapist that people reach out for guidance because every youth might be reacting differently. And it's really a matter of looking at your child and what's the norm for them and what's unusual for them and what doesn't get better over time. Some resources for addressing various age groups. I just want to throw these out there because there are websites that talk about stages of development and what is reasonable for a youth to be experiencing now in times of COVID. So I want to give some of those websites out. There was a website that I thought was really incredible. It was called 023. They gave a tremendous amount of information related to COVID and how to talk to little kids. There was a comic book that was posted. It's probably in different places, but I saw it on npr.org. The comic book is called Just for Kids, A Comic Exploring the New Coronavirus. Probably really good for kids of latency age, like 10 year olds, 11 year olds. And it really explained in a kind of a cool way what's happening and what kids needed to know. I saw that Sesame Street had a TV special about COVID. I didn't get a chance to watch that, but I do plan to because they're usually pretty good at talking to kids. So I think that may be something that could be helpful to people. UNICEF has a website that has a lot of resources on it. So I would check that out and lots of it is related to COVID, how to help kids, how to talk to kids, how to support kids, and parents too. There was an article published by Harvard and it's called How Can Parents Talk to Children About COVID and Its Impact. The article went into age specific symptoms you might see from kids and how to talk to different kids in different developmental stages. There's a really good article. So there are a lot of resources out there and hopefully some of these can be helpful to you. Perfect. And just want to pay attention to the timer a little bit over. So I'm going to wrap it up with one last question. There was a few questions related to medical issues like diagnosing the virus and compromised youths and having to wear masks. Do you have any feedback on those? I think in terms of the medical issues, it's really important that people reach out to their primary doctor and their medical professional who treats their child, because a lot of kids have compromised health issues and any child that you believe might have symptoms of the virus, I would want you to reach out to your medical provider right away to talk it over because they have your child's medical history and would best be able to answer those questions. And again, I just want to really thank everybody for tuning in tonight and I really appreciate everybody's time and I hope everybody stays well and I'll turn it back over to you. All right. Thank you so much, Sarah. That was very helpful and informative. And I just wanted to share two other resources that one of our participants shared on the chat. So we'll definitely add this to our list of resources and send it out to everyone. But there is a YouTube video how to explain the coronavirus to kids. It's a cartoon. And then there's also for older kids, oops, I just lost it, for older kids, home chats, parents guide to healthy conversations during the coronavirus outbreak. So thank you very much for sharing those resources. And thank you again for all of you for joining in tonight's program. Please watch your email for an evaluation for the program. We'd love to hear what you thought about it and if you have other topics, suggestions. This program is being recorded. So if you know someone that might benefit from it, please check back on our website and it'll be there to listen to. And then we are working on planning additional programs in the future. So please always check our website and keep your eye out for those. And thank you again for joining us and enjoy the rest of your night and staying safe.