By Brooks Kaskela, an employee of The Adoption Exchange
Idon’t know about you, but this time during the COVID-19 pandemic has been interesting for me. Sometimes I feel surges of productivity and focus, and sometimes I don’t. I miss my friends. I miss my random warm encounters with coworkers in the office. I miss my yoga class.
If I let myself, I can get lost in the big questions of what will this mean for human interactions around the globe and the little questions of when can I start serving clients in their homes again? I get nervous if I need to go to the grocery store, wondering what unseen risk may be floating in the air or on a surface. I am having trouble finding resources I need for my children’s online schooling and well-being. Do any of these resonate with you? Does it stress you out just to read this?
If so, breathe. Look around you. Identify five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste. This is a simple grounding technique (5-4-3-2-1) that can be used at any time.
Have you heard of protective factors? There are various compilations of these, but they all have similar trends. Strengthening Families, a project through the Center for the Study of Social Policy, has identified five protective factors that we can build to enhance family well-being. When we look at our collective experience during this time of uncertainty with these protective factors in mind, it is no surprise that we may be struggling. The five protective factors are:
- parental resilience
- social connections
- concrete supports for parents
- social and emotional competence of children, and
- knowledge of parenting and of child and youth development
Most – if not all – of these are being impacted in all of our worlds right now. My personal experience during this time makes me realize that this is how so many of the families we serve feel all the time. That awareness takes my breath away.
The families that we serve do so much for the children and youth in their care, and I am consistently and genuinely amazed by their dedication, persistence, and advocacy for their families. Even when there is no pandemic running rampant, they face challenges with isolation and a lack of social connection due to their physical location, their children’s behaviors and needs, and the burden of too many appointments in their already busy lives. They are constantly navigating unpredictable circumstances, making it difficult to maintain parental resilience and security for children. Children and youth with a difficult past have an increased need for routine, consistency, and predictability, and this is a challenge to attain and maintain in our ever-changing world. These individuals are wired for safety and can find themselves in states of hypervigilance without it, just waiting for the unseen danger to emerge. It is difficult to give children and youth the tools that they need when caregivers have a hard time finding the tools and information they need. Life is hard, even without a pandemic on our hands, but even more so for some of the families we serve.
My personal challenge is to maintain awareness of my new insight into the world of families caring for children and youth from hard places as we move forward in striving to meet their needs. Will you join me? Let’s remember these protective factors, both for ourselves and for the families we work to support. How can we be proactive about strengthening these factors? Despite the challenges we face, we can be intentional, focused, and effective. The children and youth in our community need us to be. They need us to strive to understand their path, their needs, their strengths, and to walk alongside them on their journey. Together, we’ve got this. We can make change for the betterment of their future – as well as our own.
The Adoption Exchange has compiled a resource page to provide additional support to families during the pandemic. Be sure to check back often; this page is updated as new information becomes available.