by Andrew Skoirchet, M.D. with Alexandra Harrison A Harrison: The colleagues I rely on most in my therapeutic work with young children are teachers. I know that teachers write about teaching and what it is like to be a teacher much better than I ever could, but as an outsider, I would like to offer some observations from my long collaboration with teachers.  In addition, the current health crisis brings us time to reflect as well as bringing us new challenges. I would like to take advantage of both of those opportunities. Preschool teachers, and perhaps teachers of older children also, ha ..read more

Panel on school reopening I participated in a great panel at the Cambridge Ellis School last night. It was a remote meeting for parents and teachers in preparation for the opening of school during the COVID-19 crisis. The panelists included Dr. Michael Yogman, the school pediatric consultant, Tal Baz, an occupational therapist and specialist in sensory processing, Dr. John Mazzotta, and me, the school child psychiatric consultant.  Most of the questions the parents sent to the coordinator before the meeting concerned safety. That is what would be my primary concern if I were sending chil ..read more

  I wanted to offer you some more thoughts about parenting during COVID. In Wordsworth’s famous autobiographical poem, The Prelude, he talks about “losing the props of my affection” when he was 8-years old. In saying this, he refers to the death of his mother. I have always thought that this way of describing parental function as “propping” was such an apt way of describing the way parents support their children in a quiet, typically unacknowledged, way. It reminds me of a preschool child sitting in a parent’s lap during a remote learning session, an elementary school child’s parent helpi ..read more

    This image may seem anachronistic in the context of a discussion of remote learning, but you will see that it is actually very much to the point. I am suggesting that what is missing in remote learning and to a lesser degree in physically distant in-person learning is what is called “socio-emotional” learning.    This kind of learning takes place in relationships. It begins in the infant-parent relationship, demonstrated by Tronick’s still face paradigm (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apzXGEbZht0). It continues in preschool, where—supported by their teachers– children ..read more

During this time of social isolation and being cooped up with young children in small spaces, many parents describe their struggle to find an ever-elusive balance between working from home and childcare. Parents feel guilty about doing an inadequate job for their employers and feel guilty about not paying enough attention to their children. Co-parenting has also become more challenging—the question of who takes charge of the kids while the other is working can easily morph into the question of whose job is more important! If the children are fortunate enough to attend a school with online mee ..read more

Translated by Sundas Saboor Breastfeeding-in-the-Time-of-COVID ..read more

Translation by Sundas Saboor Pregnancy-in-the-Time-of-COVID-in-Hindko ..read more

Tamil-blog-trans-preg ..read more

We have talked about infants and young children in the time of COVID. It is important now to talk about the experience of school children and adolescents. These kids have some of the same problems we have discussed in relation to younger children, and they have some different problems. The particular challenges faced by older children include school and academic work, friendships, screens, and obstacles to independence. I will tackle them one at a time. School has become transformed from a classroom full of peers and a teacher to a computer screen. For some children who struggle with social ..read more

Talking to parents the past couple of weeks has impressed upon me in full force the stress we are all under. It is clear that it is not “business as usual” on the home front. The stresses are mounting. Parents are worried about poor work performance or even losing their jobs. They are stuck at home with their kids . Both parents and kids have lost the supervised time away from home that work and school provide, plus the structure, intellectual engagement, and relationships with peers, teachers, and colleagues. School systems vary in the degree to which they conduct remote academic and social p ..read more