Thoughts on how to talk to children about the Coronavirus outbreak

Over these last days, I have been speaking with parents about how to talk to their children about Covid-19. Some of them who had initially preferred not to address the subject as a way of shielding their child, are now feeling the need to start up the conversation.

I would like to share with you a reflection by Gianrico Carofiglio: “Fairy tales don’t tell children that dragons exist: children already know that they exist. Fairytales tell children that dragons can be defeated”

(Gianrico Carofiglio, La manomissione delle parole, Rizzoli, 2010).

This is why we talk and share stories with children, even when the subject is this unthinkable situation!

So, let’s try to make what we are going through an experience facing the community rather than just the individual.

Reading books and watching films helps to engage with the world of culture and creativity. Children and their friends can be encouraged to read the same book with their parents, watch the same film at home, draw pictures, and make video calls. This will create the feeling of being part of an extended collective conversation!

As always, children are receptive to the way they are introduced to the world around them…in these days, they are living a collective, unexpected, unpredictable and dramatic experience that will go down in history.

They are experiencing that life can be hard, a discovery we would have preferred to delay, had it been possible.

Let’s try to make use of images and stories.

I would start off with the images of the “soot sprites in the dark” from the film My Neighbour Totoro by Myazaki, I rewatched the film on Netflix and found it quite wonderful at this moment. It too explores the subject of illness and features some extraordinary grown-ups with one foot firmly grounded in reality with the other in the world of fantasy, who pass on the idea that the only way to ward off unpleasant thoughts, fears, the soot sprites that jump out of different corners of the house is by having genuine fun together.

Suggested reading for teenagers and adults. Some humorous masterpieces:

Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals 

Elizabeth von Arnim, Un incantevole aprile

Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch: A Fan’s life

Patrick Dennis, Auntie Mame

Bill Bryson, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. A Memoir