Abstract
The COVID-19 health crisis has led to a dramatic change in dynamics and habits of families, which may be a factor involved in the development and maintenance of problems and difficulties in children. The present study is a cross-sectional study that aims to describe and analyze the relationship between the difficulties in psychological adjustment and the change of habits of the infant-juvenile population as perceived by their parents and their stress and resilience during the total confinement of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain, as well as analyzing the course of the changes and the relationships between weeks 3 to 6, that is, the score of different participants in each week of the confinement. The sample is comprised of 883 parents of children and adolescents between 3 and 18 years of age. Children’s psychological adjustment, children’s habits, parental stress, and parental resilience were assessed by parents. The results show that parents perceive a change in the habits and psychological difficulties in their children. At the same time, our results describe parents with a high level of stress and resilience, with differences depending on the children’s ages. The time of confinement accentuates the perception of parents about the psychological difficulties of their children and parental stress, as well as a decrease in resilience. These difficulties are reduced when the parent has resilience competencies. These results show that the resilience of parents mediate the relationship between parental stress and psychological problems of their children. These results shows that COVID-19 lockdown had a considerable effect on families, both on children and parents. Some practical implications based on results are provided.
Highlights
In order to contain and mitigate COVID-19, countries have adopted different health, social and education measures (Imai et al, 2020)
The average parental stress scores were above the normative mean of the evaluation instrument
It may be observed how family members reported the difficulty in contact with peers (M = 3.25; SD = 1.12), sleep problems (M = 2.86; SD = 1.21) and contact with family members (M = 2.8; SD = 1.07) were the most frequent changes in their children’s habits (Figure 1)
Summary
In order to contain and mitigate COVID-19, countries have adopted different health, social and education measures (Imai et al, 2020). It is surmised that such government measures have affected the routines of both adults (Liu N. et al, 2020; Sun et al, 2020) and children (Berasategui Sancho et al, 2020; Orgilés et al, 2020), the significance of the change in routines and the psychological impact that this could have on parents and children is hard to define As already demonstrated, it is influenced by its duration, and other factors, such as fear, inadequate information or modification in the daily lives of children (Brooks et al, 2020; Gómez-Becerra et al, 2020; Sandín et al, 2020). Studies focused on the effects of continual exposure to violence or terrorism, have observed that short-term changes produce longterm collective habituation in children and adults, as well as development of strengths (hope, optimism, gratitude, spirituality or altruism, curiosity, among others) in both individuals and groups (Vázquez et al, 2008)
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