Sick teachers, infected children, schools that are closing, health protocols that are constantly changing, tests to be done, endless lines in front of pharmacies, and parents that this fifth wave is putting, more than ever, to the test. How can they get through this together? The decryption of the psychoanalyst Claude Halmos.
franceinfo: How do the children experience all of this? And how can their parents help them?
Claude Halmos: Children live in two worlds: their family and their school; and one often compensates for the other: when things are bad at school, their family comforts them and, when it is rocking, the stability of the school reassures them.
However, the storm is currently blowing over both worlds: parents, like the school, are destabilized by health measures. They have to upset their schedules, endure endless queues, test their children themselves (which worries some). And above all to discover that their children are not as immune to the virus as they might have thought. Which can only be very distressing for everyone.
How do the children deal with all of this?
They are crossed by the anxieties they feel around them, at school and in the family; and abused by the changes in their daily lives, which make them insecure and give them the idea of an unstable world, and an inability of adults to really face it. Some, especially the little ones, feel the tests, which force them to enter their nostrils, like an attack; and their repetition as proof of the existence around them of a serious danger.
And then there are those whose parents, who can’t take it anymore, end up telling the school that they took a test, when they didn’t. Who are destabilized to see them lying about such an important thing, and who find themselves held hostage between the school and them: if they tell the truth at school they betray them. And, if they don’t say it, they’re betraying the school’s trust in them.
How can parents help their children?
Children need more than ever, so that their imagination does not turn it into a horror movie, that their parents explain the situation to them. They need to know the contagiousness of the virus, but also to know that, if it is dangerous, it is not all-powerful, and that the tests are a weapon against it: they prevent it from hiding. .
They need, in order not to feel guilty, to know that they are not responsible for everything their parents have to do for them, at this time: it is not their fault, but that of the virus.
And it is important that the parents do not hide their anxieties from them but on the contrary, to play it down, simply talk to them about it: yes, we are afraid of not being able to go to work, of hurting him by taking the test, etc. But that’s okay, and we’ll get there.
In fact, children need points of support that allow them to find, despite the surrounding mess, a sense of security. And their parents can give them to them.