孩子们呆在家是否也感到了普遍的压力?

As the pandemic continues, children are still mostly at home. Summer activities are canceled or up in the air, and many children are suffering confusion and stress. Parents may be stressed themselves, but there are ways to help kids feel better.

随着流行病的继续，儿童大多仍呆在家里。夏季活动被取消或悬而未决，许多孩子正遭受着困惑和压力。父母自己可能也有压力，但是有一些方法可以帮助孩子感觉更好。

During the first few weeks of staying at home, Maryam Jernigan-Noesi's 4-year-old son Carter was excited. His working parents were around him most of the day, and it seemed like a big extended weekend. But after a few weeks, she says, things changed.

呆在家里的头几个星期，玛丽安·杰尼根-诺西4岁的儿子卡特很兴奋。他工作的父母整天都在他身边，这就像一个漫长的周末。但几周后，她说，情况发生了变化。

"In terms of getting dressed and brushing teeth and that type of routine, he was a little slower to do that... testing the limits with mom and dad," she recalls.

“在穿衣服、刷牙和其他例行公事方面，他做得稍微慢了一些……挑战了爸爸妈妈的极限，”她回忆道。

Carter was used to a two-hour nap at school. But now at home, he didn't want to nap. And at night, it was hard for him to get to sleep. "So in some cases, he was in bed just wiggling and twisting and turning," Jernigan-Noesi says. He would tell his parents he wasn't sleepy and couldn't fall asleep.

卡特习惯了在学校小睡两个小时。但是现在在家里，他不想睡午觉。到了晚上，他就很难入睡了。“所以在某些情况下，他只是在床上扭来扭去，”杰尼根-诺西说。他会告诉父母他不困，无法入睡。

As a child psychologist, Jernigan-Noesi knows that when children are emotionally distressed, they may revert to behaviors from earlier childhood.

作为一名儿童心理学家，杰尼根-诺西知道，当孩子们在情绪上受到困扰时，他们可能会有些童年时期的行为。

"So, Carter, for example, who hasn't been rocked to sleep in a while, wanted to sit in my lap and be rocked in the chair that I used to breastfeed him in and rock him to sleep when he was much younger," she says.

她说:“比如卡特，他已经有一段时间没有被摇晃着入睡了，现在他想坐在我的大腿上，坐在我给他喂奶、摇他入睡的椅子上，那时他还小得多。”

A number of Jernigan-Noesi's friends tell her their children, 8, 9 and even older are suddenly clingy, following parents around the house.

杰尼根-诺西的一些朋友告诉她，他们8岁、9岁甚至更大的孩子突然变得黏人了。

"It's almost as if they did not want to do anything independently, which was uncharacteristic," she says.

“他们几乎不想独立做任何事情，这很不寻常，”她说。

Model calm

静下来(为孩子)做榜样

So what are parents to do?

那么父母们该怎么做呢?

That's because, she says, children and teens pick up the level of stress in their parents. "They don't always understand what's going on, but they can feel the tension." So, the more calm a parent can be, the more they're reassuring their child, she says.

她说，这是因为儿童和青少年会受到父母的压力。“他们并不总是明白发生了什么，但他们能感觉到紧张。”所以，父母越冷静，就越能让孩子安心，她说。

Of course, staying calm clearly isn't always easy and often requires a conscious effort.

当然，显然保持冷静并不容易，通常需要有意识的努力。

Focus on what's working

专注于所做的事

Another way to help: Shift focus from your child's worrisome behavior. Instead pay attention to what's going right and reinforce it.

另一种帮助方法是:把注意力从孩子令人担忧的行为上转移开。相反，要注意哪些是正确的，并加强它。

Create soothing spaces

创建舒适的空间

Some parents have found it helpful to help their children create soothing spaces just for them, places they can go when they need to feel better. Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman lives in Silver Spring Maryland and has two children, Evelyn, 10, and a son Sagan, 7. Not long after the pandemic began, Evelyn built a fort for herself "a little cozy corner in her room that's totally enclosed with a Harry Potter cape and a Portuguese flag and some other fabric," says Pavao-Zuckerman. "When she's just feeling anxious or upset, she goes and sits in that little corner."

一些家长发现，帮助他们的孩子创造一个舒适的空间是很有帮助的，当他们需要感觉更好的时候，他们可以去那里。巴尼特·帕沃·扎克曼住在马里兰州银泉镇，有两个孩子，10岁的伊芙琳和7岁的儿子萨根。大流行开始后不久，伊芙琳为自己建造了一座堡垒，“房间里有一个舒适的角落，里面全是哈利波特斗篷、葡萄牙国旗和其他一些织物，”帕沃·扎克曼说当她感到焦虑或不安时，她就会去坐在那个小角落里。”