Helping Your Child With Autism Cope With COVID-19

The following much needed article is excerpted and adapted, with permission, from the amazing Janeen Herskovitz’s podcast “4 Ways To Help Your Child With Autism Cope With COVID-19.” This information is so important right now, and I am grateful to Janeen for allowing me to share it here. It has been really helpful to me personally – not only in helping my son Christopher, who has severe autism, but also in helping me handle the current situation. Janeen is a licensed mental health counselor and the owner of Puzzle Peace Counseling, LLC. She is also a fellow autism mom and a great resource for autism families. You can listen to the full podcast here, or read the transcript in its entirety here. 

This recent pandemic is certainly stressful for parents. But like most things in life, it’s even more so when you have kids on the autism spectrum. This is due to their need to know what’s coming next, their desire for routine and sameness, and difficulty self regulating. So lets dive into things you can do to help your child cope with all the changes that are going on right now:

Manage Your Own Emotions

Our kids take their emotional cues from us- they can’t regulate their emotional state if we can’t regulate ours.

Check in with your body from time to time. We hold emotions in our bodies. So throughout the day, be sure to bring awareness to the part of your body where you may be holding tension –  jaw, shoulders and neck are the most common. Take a few moments to stretch, loosen your jaw or drop your shoulders.

Talk things out with friends or your spouse – or a therapist – if you’re feeling overly anxious. Many therapists are currently doing online appointments and working with you on cost. There’s actually never been a better time to start counseling.

Go for a walk outside when you feel overly anxious or angry at your family members because they’re all on top of each other at home. Self care is so important right now. 

This is no time for perfectionism and balance is going to be key. If you don’t want to homeschool your children, with all the bells and whistles and lesson plans, then don’t! It’s really okay! They will survive even several months of no school so don’t let the rhetoric of your child losing skills get to you. They will be okay and they will catch up. Keeping them safe and comfortable while this is going on is your main goal. For some kids, school is a comfort and the work will help get their mind off of things. You know your child best, so rely on that and follow your instincts.

Presume Competence In Your Child

Just because your child can’t respond appropriately or put together the questions they are wondering about, doesn’t mean they aren’t worried. The kids who we think are not paying attention, or don’t understand, often do, so it’s best to err on the side of caution and explain what’s going on. I’ve heard many stories about parents thinking their kids didn’t have a clue what was going on in the world, only to find out later through either their speech or an alternative means of communication, that they were very aware and angry that their parents hadn’t helped them understand things better. So, be age-appropriate with your child, and provide them with accurate information and encourage them to express their feelings about it.

Kids who have good verbal skills often don’t know what it is they are worried about and sometimes don’t have the executive functioning skills to ask the right questions, so it’s best to explain to them in simple terms what is happening without alarming them. Remember, we need to express seriousness without causing panic. So your own self regulation is going to come into play here. Our 24 hour news cycles have been really good at showing us worst cases and trying to keep the public informed, but if you have the news on constantly, this is not only going to increase your anxiety, but also your children’s as well. Get enough info to stay informed, but stop when it feels like too much. And shield your kiddos from it. The info they receive needs to come from you, the parent. 

Explain What’s Going On & Answer Questions As They Come Up

Help our children focus on what they CAN control, rather than what they can’t. Social stories are a great way to explain this. While there is a lot of good info out there on explaining this to children and with our kids on the spectrum, you can expect that they might ask many more questions and want as much info as possible. Our kids can be very literal in their interpretation of the world and many will have difficulty understanding something they cannot see. So this would be a great time to talk about germs and viruses and how just because we can’t see them doesn’t mean they don’t exist. You could even explain how microscopes are used to determine if someone has the virus because it helps the doctor to actually see it.

Keep in mind that you can’t talk your child out of however they are feeling, but you can validate their experience and comfort them. Validating might sound like saying something like: ”You sound very worried about this. Tell me more about what you’re worried about.” Then, you can put their minds at ease with a combination of reassuring them that you will keep them safe and healthy, and that all the decisions begin made (to close schools, etc.) are to help keep them safe. If they get stuck on why they can’t go to Chick-fil-A because they are used to doing that every Tuesday night, validate their disappointment and make sure they feel heard. Then remind them of why the restaurant seating is closed and what the alternative could be. That might mean going through the drive-thru and doing take out, or it could mean cooking chicken nuggets and French fries together. If nothing else, this will be an opportunity to help them learn flexibility, which can be really challenging for our kids. Above all, remind them this situation is temporary and will go back to normal.

Provide Structure

Structure helps us feel less out of control when the world around us is unpredictable. This could look like a schedule for the day, or a planned activity. But please use structure to help your child, not add more pressure to you or them. There are some parents planning every moment of every day, out of fear, and this approach is only going to add stress to your day. This might not be the best time to teach your child a new skill – they are dealing with a whole lot more – the change in routine alone could take them several weeks to adjust to. So be patient. It’s okay if your kids have more screen time than usual. It’s okay if you‘re allowing things you don’t usually allow – but try and provide a balance. Maybe bedtimes will be a bit more flexible, and maybe rest is what your kids might need some days.

This might sound contrary to many things you’ll hear from educators or other professionals because we’ve been taught in the world of autism that we need to provide direction and teaching moments during every moment of the day. But this is not my philosophy, nor have I found it helpful. Know your kid – and I know you do. So following your instincts, based on what you know about your child, will give you the best outcome. 

 

Janeen Herskovitz is a licensed mental health counselor in the state of Florida and owner of Puzzle Peace Counseling, LLC. Her son Ben was diagnosed with profound autism in 2001, and since then it has been her life’s work to help other parents with similar struggles.She founded Puzzle Peace in an effort to provide families with all of the things she wished were available when going through the most difficult parts of her own journey. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Special Education and a Masters of Arts in Mental Health Counseling. She is a fully trained EMDR Trauma Therapist, a provider for the Heartmath stress-reduction program, and is trained and serves ad an ambassador parent for the Son-Rise therapy method for autism from the Option Institute. She is also a Topic Expert contributor on Autism Spectrum Disorders at goodtherapy.org.