"Hospitals see high rates of mental illness in children during pandemic" https://newschannel20.com/news/local/hospitals-see-high-rates-of-mental-illness-in-children-during-pandemic

Of all of the failings in not evolving with the science with regard to the COVID response, what we've done to children is probably the worst of them.

We have deprived children of their education, their ability to socialize and develop relationships, access to experiences necessary to their development, etc.

We have also trapped countless children in their homes with the very people that physically and/or emotionally abuse them and neglect them, children are also absorbing the stress and pain of the adults in their homes.

All the while, adults are telling themselves the lie we've told ourselves for decades: "children are resilient". Anyone that has any experience with kids and trauma knows that isn't nearly as true as we'd like it to be.

And just because kids can adapt, doesn't mean they should have to. The massive amount of trauma we have heaped on kids during this pandemic is beyond excessive.

Not only can the kids not handle this level of trauma, but adults don't even realize that they are traumatizing a generation of children and they are completely unprepared and uneducated as to how to fix it.

How many parents know about Trauma-Informed Care? The ACEs? How many pediatricians will be able to acknowledge that these kids are traumatized and how many parents will seek out help in providing healing?

We are so focused on surviving the right now, we haven't even scratched the surface of what we will have to deal with when we all emerge from this season having survived it. Kids as always will seem fine on the outside, but that doesn't mean they aren't unscathed inside.

How will parents be able to discern between what is poor behavior and what is actually a trauma response as a result of the stress their kids endured during this season?

And how will that impact the parent/child relationship long term? These kids growing up and resenting their parents for not seeing how this time impacted is going to be a very real thing down the road.

There are a lot of phrases as a society I wish we'd do away with, but at the top of the list is the trope that "kids are resilient". They aren't that resilient, adults are just terrible at seeing the pain of children because they don't verbalize it well.

How stressed are you? How much are you talking about it in front of your children? Do you realize that your kids are absorbing that energy and they aren't emotionally mature enough to handle it? Now imagine MILLIONS of kids experiencing this at once and zero adults noticing.

The child therapy industry is about to experience a big boom, because the fallout from what we inflicted on kids, what we took from them during this crisis is the kind of thing they never fully recover from. And there were ways to stop it- and we didn't do it.