Infant Mental Health in the time of a Pandemic

This past year has been extra stressful, especially if you’re a brand-new parent trying to navigate how to raise an infant in times of COVID-19.  It is entirely understandable if you or your family members are feeling frustrated, highly anxious, and exhausted about the current situation.  You may also be worried how social isolation is affecting your young one.   Here is what professionals in the field of Infant Mental Health knows about the power of early childhood relationships.

Infant Mental Health is a field of study that focuses on an infant’s (age 0-3) social-emotional development through the context of their early caregiver relationships.  An infant’s developmental need is to extend their inner emotional world into our world through their relationship with you, as a caregiver.   That means, for us as caregivers, we must practice self-care to take care of our big emotions.  In turn, we can share back an emotional world that feels safe and secure to the little ones.  Here are some recommendations on how to remain responsive, and provide a safe emotional space for your young child:

  • Encourage your child to do things that they find challenging or difficult.   When we are feeling drained because of remote work or inability to see our friends and family, it is easy to drop our own expectations of what can be accomplished in a day.  However, for a young child, they are learning through engagement with you.  There is exciting, novel play that can be accomplished in 2-3 short minutes.  These small interactions build frustration tolerance and self-esteem in our little ones. Try challenging them to re-build a block tower that fell over or ask them to point out a new animal in their bedtime book before you call it a day.

 

  • Try to create/recreate intentional routines to help your child feel safe and secure.  Don’t feel bad about abandoning old routines that don’t work because a playground is closed, or daycare closed unexpectedly for a possible COVID outbreak.  Take an intentional moment to think about what you need in the new daily routine.  If you are feeling well fed and well rested, your young child will have more opportunities to connect with you throughout the day.  Schedule in downtime to allow yourself some quiet.  Even if your child is only taking one afternoon nap now, there can be an hour of calm activities (reduce access to noisy toys, art materials, etc.) planned intentionally where the morning nap used to exist.  Routines are as diverse as families, so the only thing that is truly important is that it works for you and your family members.   
  • Think about screen time through a new lensCOVID-19 has greatly challenged parents’ ability to follow their own screen time rules.  Before being hard on yourself for letting your child watch their favorite show, let’s take a look at what is really going on.  Children learn through what we call serve and return interactions.  For example, your child hands you a block and smiles (the “serve”), and you place the block on your head like a hat and laugh, and then hand the block back to your child (the “return”).  Modern television programming often has these serve and return interactions built into the script.  How else can we promote serve and return interactions?  By putting our own cell phones and computer screens down.  To try something new, think instead of how to reduce your screen time by perhaps putting your cell phone on top of the fridge/out of reach while you are preparing dinner.  This should open up more opportunities for engagement through increasing your eye contact and connectedness throughout the otherwise typical activity. 
  • Navigating the transition into post-pandemic social environments.

As in-person work demands increase and daycare centers re-open, there may come the challenge of separating from your young ones, possibly for the first time.  Parents can try to be aware of their own worries and how that may inadvertently be perceived by your young ones.  Infants and toddlers experiencing separation anxiety may respond well to the use of familiar objects they can carry with them into a new environment (a favorite book, blanket, or water bottle).  Keep in mind that when kids go through a challenging adjustment, their tolerance for frustration will decrease overall.  Limits they used to accept may result in tears or power struggles.  If possible, start with outside social exposure slow and build up over time.  Give your whole family some extra time to complete transitions as energy will be running low and frustrations may be high. 

  • Ask for help! One of the best things we can do for our mental health is take a break from our parenting role and responsibilities.  Infants and young children mirror our emotional states so if we are feeling stressed out, they will absorb feelings of stress.  The good news is that young children learn so much from other trusted caregivers.  In fact, some research recommends as many as 4 regular caregivers be involved in taking turns providing serve and return interactions with our young children. 

For more information, please check out some of these resources. 

Zero to Three Link COVID guide

https://www.zerotothree.org/resources/3210-tips-for-families-coronavirus

World Health Organization – The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Mental Health

https://www.who.int/pmnch/covid-19/toolkits/child/mental-health/en/