Before COVID, our teen was struggling. Soon, it became a living nightmare – Sydney Morning Herald

“It just exacerbated everything,” says Maryanne. “She started self-harming, just feeling awful… Because she wasn’t at school, she had no routine, she had no reason to get out of bed, or leave the house.”

Originally from Sydney, the family – there’s also Carrie’s brother, eight, sister, 12, and dad, Reg* – had not long before moved to Toronto, Canada. There, last month, they sent Carrie to a psychiatric ward in a Toronto hospital, for five weeks, where she spent her 14th birthday.

It left Maryanne not only feeling cut off – she was unable to visit Carrie for five weeks, because of the pandemic – but distraught.

“You’re helpless, you just want to be able to fix them,” she says. “And I’m so super motivated, and smart, and strategic, and no matter what I did, it didn’t help.”

Maryanne, who says she had never struggled with mental health issues before this, says she now has “a whacking bit of PTSD”.

“I just keep waking up, dreaming of my kids covered in blood,” she says. “COVID, for us, has been like a living nightmare.”

She’s far from alone in struggling with how to parent a child during COVID-19, because of her own mental health, and worrying about what long-term effects her daughter might suffer.

A new study by the Australian Childhood Foundation (ACF) has found that a quarter of parents surveyed nationally – 375 of them, over three weeks in June – felt they were “failing their children”, during the pandemic. More than a third said they had lost confidence in their parenting. And 40 per cent worried that their own stress and mental health was adversely affecting the wellbeing of their children. And almost a third of parents were frightened that COVID-19 would have lasting mental health impacts for their children, including heightened anxiety and stress.

“One of the things they’re saying is their kids are a bit more emotionally volatile, more teary, they want more reassurance, and they’re struggling to calm them down,” says Dr Joe Tucci, a psychologist and CEO of the ACF, who co-wrote the study. “The strategies they used to use aren’t as effective as they’ve always been.”

The result has been a huge loss in parenting confidence in a remarkably short period of time.

“You’re talking about something that’s happened in the course of months, rather than years,” says Dr Tucci, noting this usually only happens during “major traumas”. “Like September 11,” he says, “those really massive events, or the bushfires.”

Because she wasn’t at school, she had no routine, she had no reason to get out of bed, or leave the house.

At the same time, the mental health of many Australian children has suffered as a result of COVID-19.

“We’re definitely seeing an increase in stress and anxiety for a proportion of children,” says Kirrilie Smout, a clinical child psychologist in Adelaide, and founder of Calm Kid Central, an online portal that provides children and parents with mental health support, including the opportunity to ask psychologists questions and receive answers within 48 hours.

Many children are anxious, she says, about their health, their family’s health, and their parents’ financial stress and job status, in addition to feeling grief and frustration over the loss of milestones, like school graduation ceremonies, and outdoor activities. There are also, she says, growing numbers of Australian adolescents who are self-harming.

And, for children like Carrie, who came into COVID-19, with pre-existing mental health challenges, she says, the impact is often more severe. For a large part, this is because the coping strategies they would have been able to use before the pandemic – physical activity, accessing mental health professionals, social events – have been taken away from them.

So what can parents do now? Regardless of whether their children are experiencing severe mental health struggles, or more moderate ones?

“You know, look after yourself, it’s the old idea of ‘Fit your own oxygen first on a plane [before fitting others’],” says Smout. “It’s really important for your child that you develop advanced self care skills here. You can’t just go ‘I don’t matter, I’m going to have to manage.’ You do have to say, ‘I’m not going to do the dishes tonight, I just need to go for a walk.’ Look after yourself; your children will suffer if you don’t.”

This is particularly important now, she says, citing a recent University of Melbourne study that looks at child and adolescent mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“If parents have had an increase in their emotional challenges over the time [COVID-19], then it’s much more likely that the children will, too… It does have a clear and negative effect, when parents are really stressed [for a prolonged period].”

Helping your child address their own struggles starts with simply listening to them.

When it comes to those children who are experiencing grief over missed milestones, finding a way to mark them – by, for instance, printing a public roll call of all the year 12s in the local media – can be helpful, says Dr Tucci.

And parents in Melbourne who are currently grappling with a second lockdown, he adds, should, once lockdown ends, put in place “structured opportunities for engagement”, so their children can meet up with their friends.

And, adds Smout, parents should acknowledge whatever loss and grief they may be feeling.

“One of the mistakes we can make as parents is, ‘Cheer up, cheer up, it’s fine, you’ll be OK,’, and really not allow the child to talk about their sadness and worry,” she says. “Be prepared, as a parent, for your child to be sad, and to be worried. It’s an important part of helping children recover…. [to give them] a chance to process [their feelings].”

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This is a lesson that Maryanne has learned.

“I think my, ‘Let’s talk it through, and work out a plan’, basically just disempowered her,” she says of Carrie. “She’d been trying her hardest, [and then] to have the pressure of my desperation for her to be well; I think that was just too much. I think most parents do that.”

As a result of her now listening to her daughter, rather than trying to “fix” her – in addition to the “awesome” stay in the psychiatric ward, which provided Carrie with the right medication and strategies to cope with her emotional struggles – Carrie is feeling much better.

And this illustrates, says Smout, what she thinks will be an upside to this unfortunate perfect mental health storm, for many people. “I’m optimistic, and I believe that we will see an increased sense of resilience in children over the long term,” she says, adding the caveat that children with low resources, or who have parents with significant financial hardship, however, are more likely to experience ongoing challenges.

“I think that children, having got through this situation intact, will look back on it and feel stronger about what they can cope with, and feel more resilient, and be more prepared for coping with difficult times.”

Maryanne is now seeing a counsellor, with her husband, to help navigate their trauma.

But the experience has left her, nevertheless, with a profound new faith in humanity.

“I was like, ‘Look at all this love this kid has got, and all the love that we got’, and that actually really helped,” says Maryanne, referring to the many notes that friends and family emailed to her, which she printed off and put together in a book, and delivered to Carrie as a birthday present, while she was in the hospital.

“I’ve always been really compassionate and empathetic, but… it’s changed my way of looking at all humans. You don’t realise how big your circle is, the impact that people have on your life, and your children have had on their lives, until they reach out.”

* Names have been changed

Lifeline Australia 13 11 14 ; Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800