Families are Stressed—How can we help?

"Parent stress increased substantially during COVID-19 and has not returned to pre-COVID-19 levels," wrote researchers from the Department of Pediatrics, Children’s Hospital of Richmond, Virginia Commonwealth University," in April 2021.  And as recently as January 5, 2022, an article in the Wall Street Journal declares that, "the COVID-19 surge is making life unpredictable as families worry anew about providing care and instruction for their kids if sent home."

Families have been dealing with stress for a long time, and problems with inequitable resources are becoming more pronounced. How can early childhood programs and practitioners help?

A recently created Out of the Box Training, "Developing Empathy to Promote Equity," provides many tools and ideas staff can use to make empathy a key component in working with today’s stretched-thin families. An article used in the training explains that:

"The ability to take the perspective of children and their families and respond to their perspectives should be at the heart of our work…These approaches in empathetic classrooms support compassionate interactions with families, place-based learning opportunities, and shared decision making."

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