The High Cost of Fear

Adults and children alike have suffered through 2 years of COVID intrusion and dread, Putin’s aggressive invasion of Ukraine, supply chain disruptions, run away inflation, increased market volatility, mass school shootings and finally interest rate increases. As adults we don’t like what’s happened. We understand, though, the importance of changing our usual behavior to accommodate to the demands and change COVID dictates. For children their understanding the reality of COVID is limited by their age and the cognitive stage they are in.

When a 6 year old is told they can’t go to school and have to learn remotely, when they are told they can’t see their friends in person and when they are told they have to stay distant from others what sense can they make of that? Their first instinct is to think it has something to do with them — they are bad or they are being punished or they are sick. A ten year old has more access to logical thinking and has somewhat outgrown the experience of everything being about them. They can understand that protection is needed against a lethal virus ad safety measures of mask wearing, etc., are protective and necessary if not liked. And a fifteen year old not only understands the logic of health issues. She or he might even dream up ways of coping with the unwanted demands COVID has placed on his friends and family. In essence, the internal world of children in fear and uncertainty is more agonizing and anxiety provoking because they can only understand what is happening in very limited ways. When the mass shooting of young children in Uvalde, Texas, is broadcast on TV over and over again, when children see their parents and family’s expressions of shock , loss and outrage, what do they feel? More negative experience with a limited understanding of how to process what they experience. No doubt many children will develop fears of going to school. If they go to school they may spend precious energy on guard and in a state of worry about what may happen—many saw the young 11 year old with blood smeared over her face and wonder if and when that might happen to them.

Parents, teachers, family and friends do their best to help children be less fearful. How that support is taken in and metabolized may be anyone’s guess. I don’t think there is an easy answer for children who have been deeply affected during their developmental years. Mental Health Professionals may help because they understand the cumulative effects and potentially long lasting effects of widespread social trauma. As COVID improves, as gun laws are hopefully passed, the momentum is to forget the past to march forward. The only effective way to move forward is to understand and work with the difficulties of the past and THEN move forward.

Maggie Baker, Ph.D.
Psychologist/Financial Therapist
Author/Narrator of, Crazy About Money:
How Emotions Confuse Our Money Choices And What To Do About It.