Oksana Hagerty, PhD, Educational Developmental Psychologist and Assistant Director of The Center for Student Success at Beacon College, talks about mental health in teens, children, young adults, and parents in the time of the Coronavirus quarantine.
What are the top questions you’re hearing from parents? It’s a very stressful time.
Dr. Hagerty: You know, this is the time of so-called ‘forced socialization’, we have to spend more time with our children than we ever did before and we discover that maybe we don’t know them as well as we thought we did. “What do I do?” I hear this struggle so much. “Is this really how it’s working in the classroom?” All these questions are very present now because these are the discoveries, we each would probably never have made. These are the questions that I get. “What’s the best way to do it?” Well, slowly— This is not the time to set up the best ways. This is the time to implement what works. We’re beginning a new life. This is a recipe for disaster to me. What you need to do, is what works in your family. Several things have worked and I’m sure every family has some successes and can make the best of those. This is my advice because I hear it a lot— “how do I do it?” Do the best you can. Find how can you do what you’ve done before an make it work now.
How you handle this as a parent right now could set up your child for later in life when they could be anxiety-ridden and have their own problems, right?
Dr. Hagerty: You know the best, and I always give this advice, is, in the morning for example, when you prepare your kid for school– If you run, scream, yell, throw stuff, their mornings will always be associated with running, yelling, screaming, and throwing stuff. Now about change, if now you respond with some heightened anxiety, and we all have anxiety I understand, but it’s how you behave about it– if you scream, yell, run, this is something that will always be associated with change. It will become aggressive; it will become nonproductive. So, mind not only what you fail, but what it looks like, what you project, and what your child sees in you. Even if you’re anxious and worried about finances and what comes next and what will happen, you have to project strength and confidence for your child. This is very, very, very important.
What should parents watch out for to know if their kids might be going down a mentally bad path? You can break this into ages, young children, teenagers and maybe college kids.
Dr. Hagerty: Especially I would talk about teenagers, adolescents and those students who are preparing to transition to college. If you see your child change their plans, like, “Oh, maybe I shouldn’t go to college” or “maybe I shouldn’t pursue that major” or “maybe I should change something”, “maybe I should downsize.” These are signs of withdrawing and these can be the first signs of depression and anxiety. When people are depressed, they tend to exit the contexts and activities that they’re usually doing healthily in. So, whenever you see that your child is downsizing, changing plans, doing fewer things less often, these are the bad signs. Something that you really need to do is encourage your child to engage in as many activities as possible and to still read, communicate with friends via electronic means, do whatever is possible but not hide, not try to push through, not change plans. Because life will go on, we’ll have fall, we’ll welcome winter, everything will get back to normal. We just need to hunker down for these several months. Just don’t allow this to change your life forever. This is my advice.
How do you explain this to a younger child? Not three or four- they’re probably not going to even understand and are probably going to enjoy having their parents home. But what about eight, nine, or 10-year-olds who fully understand what is happening?
Dr. Hagerty: To me, it seems that if parents do not allow anxiety and depression into their households, children of this age won’t feel it. We need to be aware of that fact; that in this age, parents are the main conductors of anxiety and depression in their houses. We have to be careful about what we allow in the house because children of this age are pure reflections of us. So, if you see that in your child— it’s probably that your child sees it in you. You have to adjust, you have to change, and you have to use a more positive language to be more confident, get up at seven, take a shower, exercise, smile, dress up, have breakfast to show your child that life goes on. This is very important.
What should parents not say?
Dr. Hagerty: “It’s going to be bad now.” Parents should never say that, because look when we appear that it’s going to be bad, it is bad. It’s probably something off our behavior because we have the resources and we know that we had them before we had these dramatic changes. We’ve had other dramatic changes before– and we know somewhere deep down in our head that it will be fine in the end. But children don’t know that. They’ve never been through anything like this before and while we play the game, they don’t. They take it seriously. So, what my suggestion would be is don’t talk about, how, “Oh, our life will never be the same again”, “It’s going to be bad”, “We’ll all die” and things like that. Don’t do it because they listen to you, they trust you and they will think that these things are true. So, just don’t do it.
Do you think we might see a spike of anxiety and depression in teens after this?
Dr. Hagerty: I’m absolutely sure. Interestingly, when I was preparing for this interview, I was reading about depression and anxiety in special situations. Amazingly, I found an article about space missions and what astronauts fail at when they are confined, isolated and live with constant threats to life. This is very similar to what we’re experiencing right now– maybe minus weightlessness, but isolation, confinement, forced socialization, prep life, are things that we are experiencing. Yes, there will be some change because of all this, and we’ll have to change how we act and what we do after this all over, but yes, I expect some deterioration, unfortunately, in mental health.
When it comes to those who are learning disabled, how do you think this could impact them differently?
Dr. Hagerty: Learning disability is an interesting concept because it’s not about what students can do, it’s more about how they do it– and this change, the quarantine, staying home, changed exactly that part of their performance. How you do the work has always been difficult for students with a learning disability and now it will be even more difficult. They’ve worked with teachers at school and now they have to go back home. There will be some assumptions coming from parents about what PE students can and cannot do or what they should be able to do because “I was able to do it when I was in your age” or “how come it takes you five times to read the paragraph for you to be able to answer my question?” This is how it happens with students with disabilities and it works as long we don’t label it as a problem– which parents may do because they are not prepared to see how much struggle students with learning disabilities have to go through to get to the same product, to the same result. So, I think it’s going to be more difficult because some of the struggles that were hidden from parents may now be exposed 24/7 and I hope it won’t break our dreams, our hopes and our confidence that we can make it.
We’ve come under fire a little bit here in Florida because of spring break and the beach is full of kids. How do you get these young people, who are adults, who have experienced freedom from their parents for the first time, to understand the importance of where we’re at right now in the world and what we need to do to make sure we don’t harm anyone else?
Dr. Hagerty: Well, in this age it has been known for students with ADHD that usually any consequence that is not immediate is not really a consequence for them. Something that is going to happen in two weeks, in a month, or in a year, basically does not exist. But I’m seeing that with the law right now, people act this way probably because they are a little scared. Their perspectives have become shorter. They don’t want to think about the future. They want to think about tomorrow maybe or today in the evening, but not about what’s going to happen in three months. Because while objectively we don’t know, and this second it looks a little scary. So in this case, we need to notice changes in plans when you see your child because when your child, despite all the warnings, goes to the beach, it means they probably do not fully understand what impact it may have on some future plans, the full plans they have for the next year.
So, whenever we can visualize it, illuminate it for the child, explain this is what we should be doing. What I love to do when working with students with ADHD, but I guess also in general population, is to catch them being good. Every time you see a child or your adolescents, or your students say something about the future, catch that, and develop that, and talk about that. Don’t force it on the child but be more attentive to your child and whenever you see or hear your child doing something right, something good, something you think is healthy and reasonable, catch it and work on that. So, catch them being good. Spend more time with your child, be more attentive to your child and build on his or her strengths.
How do you as a family adjust to a college kid coming home? Night owls they are studying at night. They’re living a different lifestyle than when they left when they were 18 and a freshman. How does everybody in the family adjust to seeing that and adapt?
Dr. Hagerty: I have a junior at home too and he just told me last week that he never thought in this age that he would have to change, he would have a chance to spend so much time with his family, which was good to hear. I have to adjust to him, but he also has to adjust to me and there are certain rules. In our household the rules are we have dinner together, we go to bed at a certain time, we vacuum and clean the house every three days. What I’m saying is that there are rules to adjust, but not only should you adjust to your child but if you show your child a better way to do things, he or she will also adjust. It’s just reasonable. So, what I’m doing is I’m not changing what I’m doing. I hate power games and there was no power game there. We’re both doing each of our own things, but now I’m seeing that we are kind of, not compromising, but kind of finding these golden balances between what we do and what he does. And that’s how we do it.
Interview conducted by Ivanhoe Broadcast News.
END OF INTERVIEW
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