The Child Mind Institute on supporting children during Covid-19 | Homeroom with Sal

Hi everyone, welcome to the daily homeroom!

Uh, for those of you all who aren't familiar with what this is or might just be showing up off of Facebook or YouTube, uh, this is Khan Academy's way of making sure that we all stay connected during school closures. Obviously, Khan Academy, we're a not-for-profit mission: free world-class education for anyone, anywhere. We could have never predicted the situation that we are all in now. But over the last many years, we've been building resources in math, in science, and humanities, in English and language arts for early learners that have been free and are free, that are not commercial. They're supported by philanthropic donations from folks like yourself, and we've always intended them to be used in conjunction with physical classrooms so students could learn at their own time and pace and master concepts. Uh, and also used by students when they're outside of the classroom, be that tutor that their family could otherwise not afford, or if they don't have access to certain types of classes.

And it's translated into the languages of the world. So we could also imagine there's parts of the planet that don't have access to schooling or the types of schooling that we would want for our own children. And that's where Khan Academy, we've also seen playing a role. But when the school closures started happening, we realized that it's our duty to step up and to do more. And so we want to provide more supports for all of you: students, teachers, and parents.

We've been running webinars for parents and teachers to try to understand, how do you navigate school closures? How do you do this somewhat ad hoc homeschooling all of a sudden? On top of that, we've been doing this daily live stream which is really just a place to talk about anything, stay connected. It could be of topics of interest and topics that you're struggling with. I encourage everyone, whether you're watching on Facebook or YouTube or some, we're always learning about new ways people are watching this, to put questions on the message board. We have team members who are going to be surfacing them to us.

And we're also going to have, I'm going to introduce them in a second, some experts on child psychology, especially for students with special learning needs so definitely put those questions as well, but we'll answer all and any questions. I do want to make a special shout out to all of you who've helped support Khan Academy not only over the years but especially over the last few weeks. We are a non-profit that runs through philanthropic donation. We were running at a deficit even before this crisis had hit. And as you could imagine, over the last few weeks, our server utilization is 2x, 3x of what it typically is. So we need that support even more now than ever. A special thanks to Bank of America, AT&T, Novartis, and Google.org for being some of the first corporations to step up.

But we need more. We're still running at a deficit, so definitely get those questions—questions literally about anything. I like some of the fun and frivolous ones as well. And they can also be serious ones about education or about the coronavirus or whatever. But with that, I'd like to introduce our two guests for today.

We have Laura Phillips, who's a clinical psychologist—a neuropsychologist, I should say, at the Child Mind Institute—and we also have Dave Anderson, who I believe is going to be joining us as well. Laura, maybe a good place to start is what are you seeing out there now that a lot of, you know, we have this forced social distancing? What do you see as the major issues that parents are coping with, students are coping with?

Sure, so parents have had to turn their homes into their kids' classrooms. Um, and it's—my patient population tends to be kids who are struggling with learning disorders or ADHD. And this is particularly challenging for all students now to have to pivot and shift their learning to their home environment, but it's particularly challenging for kids with learning disabilities who really do need explicit, teacher-directed, recursive learning approaches that just aren't feasible right now through remote learning.

So parents are really having to step up in a way that they've never needed to before and provide the support that teachers are traditionally providing their students without any training, and it's a really big ask. I say to all the parents with whom I work, it doesn't matter how bright you are, what a rock star you are at your job, how well you know your student and your student's learning profile, how well you parent your individual student—teaching them is a very different thing.

Um, and a lot of what teachers end up actually doing in the classroom is really behavior management, um, and modifying the way that they present information in a way that makes it engaging and appealing to their students. And parents now have to be the ones doing that without, uh, the training and the experience that their teachers do. So a lot of the questions that I'm getting really is about how do I keep my student engaged? How do I manage my student's frustration? How do I manage newly occurring or long-standing oppositional behaviors in the context of frustrating academic situations?

And so what are these techniques? What are some, you know, I've experienced some of that in my own household. I think this for all students, not just special needs students, but it might—some of this might be more pronounced with those students. What are some tangible things you would tell parents who maybe are having trouble keeping their kids motivated or engaged right now?

Well, the first is to cut yourself some slack and to cut your kids some slack because this is really hard. No one has ever needed to do this, with the exception of parents who have opted to homeschool their kids before this occurred. But this is a completely unprecedented and challenging and stressful situation for kids and for parents who are having to manage, uh, to balance the responsibilities of working from home with raising their kids and now with schooling them.

So the first thing is really cut yourself some slack. This is not the time to strive for perfection, and the most important thing really is to maintain physical and mental health right now. And after that, communication with teachers is really critical. A lot of the students with whom I work have a lot of either environmental modifications or homework or schoolwork modifications that the teachers can really help parents understand what level of independence they should be expecting of their students, how much time should they expect their students to be able to work independently on a task without a teacher, a parent stepping in, and either monitoring, prompting, or checking in on them.

Or some students might even need a parent sitting next to them the entire time to keep themselves on task, but the teacher is going to be the best person to inform what the child's capabilities are. Um, that's going to vary depending on the child's age, depending on the child's learning profile. Um, so again, I would really turn to the teachers and have them partner with the teachers so that you really understand what your role should be in supporting your students.

And make, to the extent that you can, maintain structure and consistency. Um, you know, which might mean starting the day at the same time kids to be, I think, waking up at the same time that they historically wake up, having good meals at standard times, going to bed at the same time—setting your kids up for success with respect to going sufficient sleep, eating well. If your children are prescribed medication, making sure that they continue to take their medication as prescribed, making sure that they have the tools that they need to complete the online work—so whether that is a computer or laptop, knowing how to use the various online platforms that schools are rolling out.

Um, and schedules—I think schedules are really, really critical for students with anxiety, for students with ADHD who have a hard time not knowing what’s going to come next. Um, and yeah, you look like you're about to pop into something. How do you know? You know, as you mentioned, and I completely understand, you know, sometimes you mentioned parents might have to sit down next to their student or they need to understand from their teacher.

But what we're seeing—in fact, I think this is the majority situation—is parents are also having to work right now, and then they're not getting a lot of information in some cases from, you know, because teachers are still trying to figure out, some districts are still figuring out the virtualization plans. And in many cases, the special needs students, they haven't even gotten that far to think about that yet. So what do you tell those parents who they're, they're trying to work simultaneously, but you know their student might need someone to sit down? How do they navigate that?

So shifts, I think, are really important. Um, partnering with your partner and trying to tag team so that one person can feel like they're getting work done while supporting their students. I think that that part of co-parenting is really critical, and I understand that that's not feasible for a lot of people. But, um, that's one thing that I think can help parents feel as though they're still keeping up with their work.

Although the reality is no one's going to be as productive as they would be under ideal circumstances, and these aren't ideal circumstances. Um, but again, I would encourage parents to really talk to teachers and to turn to resources like you. You provide really nice, um, uh, I think, uh, complementary educational programming that can supplement a lot of what schools are rolling out.

I'm finding that schools really vary in the amount of direction, um, and structure that they're providing in their rollout of the curriculum. Some schools have a very strict schedule and they have online class discussions throughout the day. Other schools have just sent home packets of information, which can be really overwhelming for students to sit down.

So when that's occurring, I encourage parents really to do a lot of chunking for them, trying to break down these larger packages into smaller, more manageable chunks so that their kids don't feel overwhelmed and then, um, avoid any of the tasks and alternating it with more appealing activities that they feel like they have some sort of reward at the end of engaging in something that's really stressful and frustrating for them.

And what do you say, you know, I'm getting some questions over Facebook. One from Elizabeth Henlon says: any advice on probing with children who aren't innately talkers but clearly dealing with difficult processing?

I'm not sure that I understand that question, like processing what's going on in the world right now, or you know, they're all of a sudden their school has been closed. How do they cope with it?

Yeah, they're not talking to their friends as much. They're, you know, their parents are stressed. They're watching the news. People are—things are going on.

Yeah, so kids don't—kids do well when they have information. Being in the dark is stressful and anxiety-inducing for anybody. So I do encourage parents to give kids information that they're seeking in a developmentally appropriate way. Um, I think that one way to manage that is is to really try to help have kids lead the conversation by asking questions. That way you can answer their questions, um, hopefully satisfactorily without providing perhaps more information than they're seeking, which could inadvertently make them more overwhelmed or anxious by the situation.

Um, but I think it's important to shed light on the situation for kids, um, and also help them understand that the things that you're doing are, are intended to make them feel safe. Um, this is a problem that adults are working on, but there are concrete things that kids can do, like staying away from, staying out of school right now, washing their hands frequently, um, and following those rules as a way of really helping to keep themselves safe, which makes them feel as though they have some control over the situation.

Yeah, and Dave, uh, do you have—what's your sense of these things too? How would you tell—I know we talked about a couple of days ago. How would you think about coping with some of these things? And I have this other question from someone who's talking about having trouble concentrating in studies because of social anxiety. How does that play out in this type of a situation?

Um, Dave, what do you think about that?

Right, I mean, I think that, you know, if we talk about anxiety for one second, that's just—that anxiety is often brought on by new situations, new things that are unexpected, things that you haven't encountered before. So kids who have been socially anxious and even have resolved it to some degree may find themselves newly anxious in the midst of a kind of new landscape where they're wondering when they should jump in in online classes or they're wondering how public their comment might be or whether or not others are chatting about them in the background.

There could be a host of new fears associated with that, and in reality, the way that we help kids with that is we help them to think about the fact that whatever they might be afraid of, uh, you know, we try to restructure in the moment that even what they're afraid of the most may not be that terrible.

In reality, you know, the things they care about may still be happening, and we also try to engage in exposure with them where we say, "Look, it may be that you're worried about how a comment might be perceived, but I need you to make two per class" and then let's go back to the evidence and see, you know, how tough that was or how anxious that made you. And over time, we can get somebody from perhaps being anxious to even participate up to what their level of participation might have been before online education.

Yeah, and more questions here. There's one student is talking about how do they deal— they have, they're having depression at the same time they have an SAT and a lot of studies to do. How would you, what advice would you give for them?

Either, um, I think Laura and I can both hit on different parts of this question, but I think it's something where when we see kids who are preparing for the SATs, what we're thinking about—I'll go back to a point that Laura made earlier, which is just about chunking. It's that we know that somebody whose mood might be low needs to not think about the entirety of preparation for the SAT but rather, you know, think about just what they're going to get done today and then how they're going to reward themselves with something that's what we call behaviorally activated, which means we know that it's going to improve their mood to some degree.

So we try to plan out with teenagers, do the work first but in a manageable chunk, and likely a smaller chunk than pre-COVID, and then figure out how you're going to do something for your mood and something to feel connected, you know, afterwards just to keep everything kind of in that variety.

Yeah, I would—I would just add—I mean, I don't know if this is pre-existing depression, but certainly social isolation and the lack of accessibility of things that make us feel good lowers our mood. So another thing that I try to encourage parents to do is the extent that they can, really try to mimic their normal life, um, both with sticking to somewhat of a typical routine and finding ways—even if you can't go outside and have playdates with friends face to face—trying to encourage—trying to schedule virtual play dates.

Um, making sure that you're scheduling time for outdoor activity if you're in a location where you're allowed to go outside, but certainly physical activity we know has mood-boosting effects and learning-boosting effects. So I think, uh, certainly scheduling in time for physical exercise and outdoor time, um, is really critical both to support learning and just to support mood.

And again, really trying to keep the day as close to a typical day as you can. I've had—I heard recently about a father who has a student with, uh, moderate who's on the autism spectrum and—and drives—takes his son for a drive every morning as though he were driving him to school. It's just a way to maintain some semblance of normalcy for him, and it really helps him get into the mindset of being in school.

So that may not apply to the case of the student with depression, but really trying to mimic things that, um, that a typical day is helpful for students.

And what advice would you have? We have a quote.

I'll go ahead.

Oh, I was just gonna say, I will say one other point for kids who are struggling with social anxiety, depression, some of the things that Dr. Phillips and I are talking about are not necessarily intuitive. And the great thing about at least how organizations are adapting to the COVID crisis now is that organizations like ours, the Child Mind Institute and others, have really moved to a telehealth, uh, kind of forum where not only are we working with active patients but we'll also do brief consultations on issues like this just to ensure that families have support during this time because, you know, this is not intuitive how to deal with this crisis in the context of kids who are battling mental health disorders.

And we have a question here from YouTube. Priscilla Cruz is asking, "My child does have ADHD. How much time is enough to homeschool for a second grader without pushing them too far? They're normally in school for six hours." And I think this is a question that all parents are struggling with. Is normally, school is six, seven hours, but what is the minimum and what's maybe the maximum for this type of a scenario?

It's a great question. And again, I would encourage—I think that the teachers can be helpful in at least advising what, I mean, if the teachers have concrete tasks for students to complete, um, we certainly want to—it would be the goal for the students to get through that work, and you might want to consult with teachers about how long they would expect students to either be engaged in that work on a daily basis or how long they would expect that packet to take for the student to complete.

And beyond that, the thing is, especially with very young students, so—and I'm considering even a second-grade student a very young student—so many things are educational even if they're not traditionally found in a classroom.

So the silver lining—I mean, there are, I think, a lot of silver linings of this crisis—but there are other learning opportunities that might, um, that students might not otherwise have exposure to. So we have, um, students who are now doing more chores around the house, and they're learning how to help their parents cook, and that's a lesson you have. There's math involved in that, there's chemistry involved in that, there's a lot of executive functioning developing with, um, with organization and sequencing of steps and patience and perseverance and frustration tolerance.

Um, so—so there's learning that's taking place even if it's not traditional classroom-type learning. Um, boredom is actually, I think, a very critical experience for students to—to have that in our culture. They don't have many opportunities to feel, and we know that boredom really is how kids develop and nurture their creativity.

So I think you're going to see a lot of skills coming out of this crisis that might not have otherwise had the opportunity to emerge. And I think that that's something that I really want parents to try to focus on to the extent that they can.

Um, so even if they're not engaged in traditionally academic tasks, there are other ways for them to be learning right now.

All right, and that's useful. And we have this—the last question for today on this topic is from YouTube, Catrin Situ Myang, asking, "How can I manage being a perfectionist? When I'm studying, it makes me stressed because I always say to myself, I must get the best and do the best. How do you cope with that?"

And this is something adults and children I think struggle with or many do.

I’ll start this one. I think—I think one of the things that we talk about perfectionism and, uh, young people or students of any age right now is that, you know, the landscape has truly changed. Many colleges and high schools, uh, are trying to adapt their grading systems right now to, uh, what's going on in online education and may not be able to grade in exactly the same way.

And of course, for people who already were concerned about grades or wanted their work to be perfect, that also means that the landscape for their assessment is changing. That can lead to a lot of anxiety. Um, you know, one of the things I think we're speaking about a lot with families and with educators right now is that as we all adapt to this crisis, it's good to kind of capitalize on what we think is going well or what quality work we think others are producing and not to expect perfect or the same level of work that we would have seen prior to this because people are just dealing with so many more challenges.

So again, you know, I think we'll go back to an earlier point, which is communicating with your teachers about what's expected on assignments is a good thing. But for many folks who opponent perfectionism, we're also trying to include the coping thought that people are more empathic right now, they're more compassionate, they're more willing to possibly grade you positively because they know that you may be dealing with more than you would usually.

So it's not something where every time it has to be perfect. You may actually have a little bit more space. Going back to Dr. Phillips point about silver linings, that's super useful.

And you know, we've gotten questions over, even before this crisis about things like procrastination. And, you know, one of the causes of procrastination is a fear of realizing that you maybe aren't able to do it as much as you thought or might be harder. But with kind of, whether you call it perfectionism or procrastination, it's really, you know, just get started and—and you'll—and then that motion might help unblock some of the things.

Well, Laura, Dave, thanks so much for joining today.

Uh, this was super useful. Uh, I think a lot of people got some really interesting insights into this.

Thank you.

Thanks!

Great! Thanks for having me.

Great, so so thanks everyone for joining today.

Uh, you know, I'll just give a reminder that this is a place for y'all to stay connected, uh, in this time of social distancing. You know, send us requests, send us questions, send us even folks that you might want to see on this forum. We'll try to reach out to them. I think a lot of people are out there in the world today trying to understand how they can help, how they can help you as parents, students, and teachers.

I will remind everyone again, we are not for profit. If you're in a position, please think about donating to Khan Academy. It’s support like that that allows us to support many other folks.

One of the things that you could expect to see over the next couple of days—and actually we've already released it a little bit, but you're going to see a little bit more in the next day or two—is we release those schedules for students of different age groups.

Three weeks ago, and we got a lot of positive feedback from y'all that it was useful to structure the day along the lines that we were just hearing from our guest experts.

What we've launching right now today, tomorrow, are actually learning plans now that it's becoming clearer that Khan Academy is—or that school is going to be out of session, probably through the end of the school year. Students are trying to figure out, and parents and teachers, what could be done not just over those two months but potentially through the summer so that you don't have five months of not just only not learning but learning loss.

And so expect to see some links for learning plans on how you can space yourself out, especially in math if you're a sixth grader, seventh grader, an algebra student, a third grader, uh, to make sure that you are operating at grade level and beyond as we go into the new school year.

And tomorrow and in the next few live streams, we'll go into a lot more depth on that.

Uh, we just published a YouTube video for those of y'all who are on YouTube—uh, it's actually the latest video that we just made public on our YouTube channel, where if you look at that, it explains what these learning plans look like and it has links in the description to the various learning plans. And we're going to be posting it on other social media shortly.

So with that, thank you so much for joining us. This is just a way for all of us to stay connected and stay healthy and stay safe.