STOP ASSUMING MOST KIDS WILL BE RESILIENT IN THE FACE OF COVID- 19: WHEN WE BELIEVE THIS, WE FAIL TO PROTECT THEM AS WE MUST

This “doing well” depends to a large extent on two things during this global pandemic: the nature (and magnitude) of the trauma children have endured and the security provided by family, schools, and peer relationships. [...] If the potency of the stressors exceeds the healing or buffering power of supportive influences in children’s lives, their ability to cope becomes exhausted. [...] The children of racial and ethnic minority groups, for example, have a four-times greater rate of parental loss than white children in the United States. [...] Parental loss even affects the physical health of children, both in the immediate and in the long-term, including increasing the odds that they too will die early. [...] Resilience is contingent on the adults in the lives of children being healthy.