Should Your Child Wear a Mask During a Pandemic?
Last week, we all had to mentally shift from thinking “you don’t need masks, leave them for the pros” to the latest CDC recommendation that we really should wear “cloth face masks” whenever we leave the house. When a family friend sewed and sent us two masks this week (one for me and one for my husband), my 9 year old son immediately wanted to know where he was.
I really didn’t think that he might need him. After all, he really won’t go away. We take social distancing very seriously for a few weeks now, and I am the one who leaves home for the essentials. He goes out to our backyard or walks around the neighborhood, but we are careful to cross the street if someone comes towards us. However, I realized that there might be times when he and other children might need to wear a mask. If you are a single parent, you may have no choice but to take your children with you to the grocery store, pharmacy, or doctor’s appointment. So you better get ready.
Why do children need them?
The recommendation of wearing a cloth mask outside the home is less about protecting ourselves from the coronavirus and more about helping prevent us from spreading it to others, we must be infected and do not know about it. Since children often carry the virus without showing any symptoms (and since children are less good at things like washing their hands and not touching their faces), they are willing to spread it.
Dr. Deborah Gilboa, family doctor and spokesperson for youth development, told Today.com that because children are more prone to spreading the virus, they should also wear masks as often as possible:
“Children are much more likely to be asymptotic carriers or presymptotic carriers, so … we do a lot of good things when we say, ‘Hey, in addition to washing your hands and please stop licking things, we wear a mask just like you.’ said Gilboa TODAY to the Parents. “We really want to slow down and stop the spread of this, and we see in the data from other countries that children are actively involved, quite by accident, in spreading it.”
The CDC recommends that everyone, including children 2 years of age and older, wear cloth face bands “in public places where it is difficult to maintain other social distancing measures (such as grocery stores and pharmacies), especially in areas of significant community transmission.” …
It is important to note that wearing masks is recommended in addition to the social distancing measures we are already taking, not in place of them . Please note that masks are not suitable for infants and children under 2 years of age . Young children have smaller airways, making it difficult to breathe through the mask. In particular, for infants, the mask is a choking hazard. Do your best to ensure that children of this age are kept and kept at a distance from others, tying them to a car seat or stroller if possible.
But how do you actually get them to wear it?
Ahhhh, yeah, and here we come to a real problem: we may know that kids are better off wearing a mask, but they may not be at all interested in following the rules. It is helpful to think of this in the same way as if they were accustomed to wearing a bicycle helmet.
The helmets are awkward and awkward … and much needed. So we make it as fun as possible: we attach great importance to them choosing a hot pink helmet or a helmet with dinosaur images on the sides. Or let us decorate it ourselves with felt-tip pens or stickers. Whatever it takes for them to feel responsible for the decision to wear it, that’s what we do. The same concept applies here.
If you search for “masks for kids” on Etsy right now, you’ll find a wide selection of handmade masks in a wide variety of fabrics and prints, from superheroes to cartoon characters and animals. My son chose a Star Wars mask and a pirate skeleton mask and he is very excited to try them out.
Jamie Roney writes for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation that during the recent flu season she had to face wearing a mask with her young daughter, who suffers from the condition. She has put together a variety of tricks to try, including:
- Ask your parents to wear a mask too (check!)
- Look in the mirror and talk about masks (even better, take a selfie with masks!)
- Place the mask on your favorite doll or stuffed animal.
- Show them pictures of other masked children.
- Paint a mask on your favorite book character
If nothing helps , Ronnie reminds us that a small bribe will not hurt anyone, especially when safety is at stake:
We found that her favorite masked doll while playing was the easiest way for her to start feeling comfortable with the donated mask … We played with the masked doll for two days until Desi seemed to notice it more. On the third day, she asked for sweets as a snack and I told her that if she could wear a mask like her child, she could have three M & M’s. Here’s what it finally did! She wore the mask for 10 seconds, and I counted, cheered and danced around the kitchen like crazy, trying to distract her. Success!
Just remember that once the mask has been put on, it is officially contaminated and will need to be handled as such and cleaned before the child can put it on again.
And if none of this works, which is possible at all … just stay at home. It’s better for you there now.