That doesn’t mean that parents should be pretending that there is no stress. “Another thing to model is that there is not necessarily a perfect way to deal with this,” Dr. Manasse said. Instead of “modeling perfection,” what you can model is emotional communication, she said, acknowledging the stress and anxiety, coping with staying inside: “It’s OK to have anxiety, it’s OK to be stressed out, to have all these different feelings, but they don’t have to determine my behavior.”
Rely on routines, Dr. Lumeng advised, with meals and snacks at scheduled times. Schedule one or two snacks a day, depending on the child’s age — and for young children it may help to follow the routines they knew in day care.
Boredom can be an important factor. But as we all know, the remedy for boredom is activity, structure, engagement, and this is a hard demand to place on parents who are already under plenty of stress, working from home, worrying about job loss, supervising online classes, keeping children entertained.
Dr. Knäuper said she was reluctant to add any additional stress to what parents are already going through by saying they need to create additional structure for their children, recognizing how much parents are already being asked to do. “I would be very gentle in pointing this out,” she said. “Just aim for some kind of structure, not to go totally wild in terms of getting up at 2 in the afternoon.”
As someone who treats both people struggling with being overweight and those who have eating disorders, Dr. Manasse pointed out that some people with eating disorders are finding it really hard to manage during these stressful times. For some teenagers who are worried about gaining weight, she said, because they are home, unable to pursue a normal level of activity, and surrounded by food, restricting their eating may seem like a way to feel more in control.
