Talking to Kids about Covid-19

Let me preface this by saying I’m in no way an expert on anything medical.  So, if you came here for anything actually related to the virus, now would be the time to move on.

Instead, I’ll be talking about talking to kids.  I’m not a trained expert there either, but—as a dad—I do it a lot with the 9, 7, and 5 year-old kids here: Daize, Towser, and Tawnse respectively, (all aliases).

Why do I bring the virus up at all?  Shit happens.  We went to an author’s talk a few days ago where the first question an audience member brought up was the virus.  Yesterday, Daize and I walked into one grocery store in the midst of a run and rode by another grocery with cars lined up down the block waiting in line to park.  (Thank you so much SFMTA driver who opened your doors and let us hop back out of that area!  Public transit rocks!)  The gang and I talk about things as they come up, so guess what?  With all the local happenings we’ve talked about Covid-19 a number of times over the last few days.


Then today, I read the NYT article on talking to kids about Covid-19, and whoa!  That thing was a doozy!  Well—deep breaths—I guess it wasn’t soooo bad except for my perception of its tone.  To me, it has a total ‘children as other’ tone.

That tone—and how we avoid it—is really what this whole article is about.

I don’t think about kids as ‘other’.  I think they’re perfectly capable of having conversations about the world around them regardless of their age.

Here’s how I conversed with the kids about Covid-19.  I told them what it was.  I told them what the virus did and how.  I told them what the effects would be if my partner and I caught it.  I told them how bad the effects would likely be if they caught it.  (Data so far suggests symptoms aren’t as bad in kids).  I explained what I’m most afraid of.  (My biggest fear is everyone else overreacting.)  To that end, the first time we discussed the virus, after the author’s talk, I explained that there might be runs on grocery stores.  I wound up being a bit prophetic there as Daize and I ran into a couple of said runs the next afternoon.  Finally, I asked if they had any questions.

For the kids part, Towser and Tawnse could have cared less.  That doesn’t mean they didn’t hear though.  I’ve talked to them enough to know the information went in.  They’re churning on it.  When/if it becomes important to them, they’ll have the information.  They’ll also be more than willing to talk to me about the whole thing again even if they have to bring it up.  I know this because we’ve talked about lots of things.  I know this, because like any close friends, the kids and I know each other and know how we communicate.

Daize, however, had an opinion.  She was miffed someone had asked about the virus at the author’s talk rather than the author’s latest book.  She was already peripherally aware of the virus, (who isn’t?), and really wanted that time back to talk about books.

And that was it!

 I’ve done the exact same thing with sex, with menstruation, with abortions, with heroin addiction.  The kids have taken it all in stride.  I think the reason they have is because they’re people, just like everyone else regardless of age.  I think we all understand the conversations we take part in.  We process the information in our own way.  We move on.

Do my talks with the kids always go uneventfully?  No.  One night when the oldest kid, Daize, was six, I found her in bed crying.  When I asked her why, she said, “I don’t want to be buried underground in a box when I die.”  We’d discussed death.  We’d discussed that some cultures bury their dead.  She was processing.

The beauty of it, to me, was that I got to participate as she processed.  I told her that frankly, sometimes I had the exact same thought, and it scared the shit out of me.  We talked about what other cultures did with their dead.  We talked about different belief systems: souls, reincarnation, and what have you.  As we talked she stopped crying.  She’d found out even more information.  I got to talk to her about what was stressing her.  We talked about our feelings.

So, far from tailoring my conversation to the kids’ ages, or finding out what they know before I begin to talk so I can ‘safely’ edit my content, (as the NYT seemed to suggest to me), I just dive in to conversations with the kids like I would with any other person.

I also dive in listening, of course.  I have a conversation, not a diatribe.  Do I find out what the kids think?  Eventually.  Conversations with the kids are just like conversation with older people I care about.  They’re never one and done.  I’ll find out—sometimes minutes later, sometimes weeks—other things that the kids thought, or other questions they had.

I find out because we keep talking.  We never leave the conversation as, “Harumph, well, we’ve got that sex topic in the bag now…  Moving on..  Nothing more to discuss here…  Tally-Ho and all that balderdash!”  We leave our conversation as, “Cool, let’s talk about this again sometime if something comes up or if there are any questions, or just because.”  And, since we’re out living in the world, of course things come up again.

I’m actually nervous about what might happen if I don’t talk to the kids directly about things while they’re young.  Right now, we have open lines of communication.  Will we always?  I hope so, but I can’t know.  I figure everything we get to talk about now builds a little bit more of a structure we can use to talk about things later.  I will have told them my thoughts, they will have told me theirs.  Hopefully, we’ll both have built trust that lets us keep right on talking over the years.

So yup, I think folks should talk about things as they come up, and occasionally years before the ‘cultural norms’ (whatever those are) dictate you ‘should’.  For the kids and me it’s worked out great.  They can understand what I say without me sugarcoating it, or oodling it out.  They have thoughts and views of their own.  Those thoughts and views are frequently different than mine.  That’s good!  They let me get to know the kids and how they think.  That alone makes it all worth while to me.  We talk, we cope, we talk some more.  We live and we grin.