Up to 5 Million Children Have Lost Parents During the Pandemic. Here ’s How They’ve Coped

Adin James is only 8 years old, but he has some very strict rules about how the world should work in the age of the pandemic. For starters, there’s the business of avoiding unmasked people. “They don’t have their masks on,” he’ll say when he sees an uncovered face on the street or in a store. “That’s not right. They’re making other people sick.” Then there’s the matter of doctors—who might have been trusted once but not anymore. “They lied to me. They told me my dad was gonna be better,” he tells his mother, Ebony James, 50, a principal at a middle school in Fresno, a suburb of Houston. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] And then there’s the rule about spraying the room before bed. Ever since Adin’s father Terrence died on Feb. 19, Adin, the youngest of three children, has been sleeping in Ebony’s room. But that was where his father slept—which means that was the room where COVID-19 once lived. “Is it safe?” Adin will ask. “Is it safe?” And Ebony will promise him that it is, but he won’t believe it until she sprays the room with Lysol. And even then he’s not convinced that his world is not a place of mortal menace. “It’s almost like he closes the book,” says Ebony. “His face closes. His body language closes. The only thing I can do is just keep getting him counseling because I don’t know what else to...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 healthscienceclimate Source Type: news