Dr Colman Noctor: No other children in history have had to live their lives this way

Children are adaptable but they can adapt to what is abnormal and unhealthy as well as the normal and healthy 

Picture: iStock 

With the remainder of primary schools reopening this week, there seems to be some semblance of normality returning. You would expect the national mood to be a little more upbeat. However, over the past 12 months, there have been many false dawns, so a degree of cautious fatalism is understandable. 

This ominous fear of hope was palpable as children approached their return to school. This is not surprising considering that this time last year, Irish children were told that schools would be closed for two weeks. 

Children are not beyond developing cynicism and this has been more evident in recent months as the cumulative effect of lockdowns set in. When I spoke with my son some weeks back about the need for him to engage in some physical activity, in anticipation of the return of his football training, he replied: ‘What’s the point? This is just my life now’. 

His comment stopped me in my tracks. We often hear things like ‘children are adaptable’, which has a certain element of truth to it. But what we tend to overlook is that they adapt to the abnormal and the unhealthy, as well as the normal and healthy. Children have adapted remarkably well to the new abnormal in the past 12 months. They have had to limit their social contact, limit their activity, engage in remote learning and spend every hour of every day at home with their families. 

It is important to recognise that no other children in history have had to live their lives in this way, and for that reason, they deserve a lot of credit. This ‘pause of life’, in moderation, is no harm, but the length of time that their lives have been on pause now has gone on far too long.

Long-term impact on children

I was asked many times for my opinion on what the long-term impact of the pandemic will be on children, and my answer was always: ‘It depends how long it goes on for’. Often it is not the acuity of distress that causes us as much difficulty as the enduring nature of it. Therefore the longer the new abnormal has gone on, the more familiar it has felt. 

We know that if we want to get a parenting approach to stick, you need routine, predictability and consistency and Covid-19 has provided us with all of those things in abundance. The groundhog day nature of the last 12 months has meant that lockdown life has become effectively embedded and familiar, and we have grown accustomed to it. Bad habits tend to stick quicker than good ones, and so the ingrained pattern of lockdown life may indeed have become ‘the new normal’.   But just because something is commonplace or normative does not make it healthy or normal.

As we leave the ‘new abnormal’ and attempt to return to the ‘old normal’ most of us will experience some more uncertainty. Not only because of the risk of Covid-19 surging again but also because the challenge of socialising, mixing, shooting the breeze and interacting has become unfamiliar to us and we have become out of practice in using those skills. 

Remember when you used to return to school after the summer holidays, you would find you couldn’t hold the pen properly, and your hand ached after writing one paragraph? This was because you were out of practice. This didn’t mean that we said ‘OK, this means writing is bad, don’t write any more’, it just meant that writing has become unfamiliar and we need to get back into the practice of doing it.

A similar unfamiliarity is being experienced by children in recent times too, especially as they leave the bubble to return to the pod. As they leave the cocooned safety of the familiar bubble to return to the chaotic hustle and bustle of the classroom and school corridor, this is going to feel unfamiliar. 

Accepting what is unfamiliar 

It is not uncommon to assume that something that feels unfamiliar must be wrong.  When I take my son to get new shoes he tells me every shoe he tries on of every style and size ‘don’t feel right’. It's not that they don’t feel right, they just don’t feel the same as the battered and wrecked pair of tired runners he’s been wearing every day for the last six months.

It is important to remind ourselves that a feeling is not a fact, and sometimes we need to accept the unfamiliarity of something for a period of time until it becomes familiar again. This can be the task of parenting, to persist with the newness of change. To help your child to transition is a common parenting challenge.

But just because children are adaptable does not mean that they are good at change or embrace it. Like us all, children become creatures of habit, and even if the evidence suggesting that the existing habit is unhealthy, and the new suggested habit makes complete sense, it can still be a challenge.

So if your child is apprehensive about the return to the old normal, that’s OK. If your child is anxious about leaving the cocooning nature of the bubble, that’s OK. If you are worried about the empty nest feeling that might exist when your home bubble is burst and your house becomes significantly quieter, that’s OK too. We need to trust that the right thing to do, does not always feel right. What is unfamiliar, is not always wrong.

Too often we say, when I feel it’s the right time, I will do something different, but it is more likely to be the case that when I do something different, and perhaps unfamiliar, then I will feel better.