The following podcast is a dear media production.

Hello and welcome to Raising Good Humans.

I'm Dr. Lisa Pressman and I am here with a colleague of mine from Mount Sinai Hospital.

Mariel Benjamin who is the director of programming at the Mount Sinai

Parenting Center. We also work together at Seedlings Group and my private practice. We spend a

tremendous amount of time together and I asked Mariel to join me to answer questions

for all of you who are health care workers and staff at hospitals.

This will also be relevant for any essential workers to talk to their children during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We really want to start with a heartfelt thank you for the work that you're doing to protect,

treat, and save patients from this harrowing pandemic.

You're in a difficult and unique position as both providers and parents, and we're here to offer

whatever information and support we can to make you feel more comfortable and confident in your planning and conversations with your loved ones.

So, Mariel, thank you so much for doing this with me.

And I'm just gonna get started with some of the questions

that we've received at Mount Sinai.

Great.

So how do I explain COVID-19 to my kids? Right, so I think the conversation

around COVID-19 is difficult and a lot of us are tempted to avoid discussing uncomfortable or

scary topics at all. But giving children a clear explanation of this crisis

and answering their specific questions may stop

them from making up their own explanations in their mind which can be scary or inaccurate.

So you want to try and have the conversation, not the whole conversation at one time, but leave the door open for questions and continued follow up.

...