Safe at Home: Keeping Adopted Children Safe During the Pandemic

There have been over 6 million cases of COVID-19 in the United States, causing untold hardships for millions around the country. If you’re the parent of an adopted child, you know that the damage done by the illness isn’t confined to those who get sick. If you’re concerned about your child’s well-being, you’ll want to consider taking a few necessary steps to keep your adopted child safe from a COVID outbreak.

Discuss the Illness

The best place to start is always with honesty. Take some time to discuss COVID-19 with your child so that he or she understands the severity of the illness. There is quite a bit of misinformation out there, so it’s up to you as a parent to make sure that your child is on the right path. If you’re not sure of what to believe, make sure to educate yourself well enough to talk to your child. Don’t pull from unreliable sources or your own guesses — if you don’t know what to tell your child, be honest with him or her, and do some of the research together.

Follow the Rules

Once you’ve established the reasons for acting safely, it’s time to start looking at the minimum actions that you can take to stay safe. Try to present the basic health care rules for the pandemic in the same way that your New Jersey adoption lawyer presented the rules you’d need to follow the complete your adoption — clearly, concisely, and with explanations for anything that could be easily misconstrued. COVID safety generally requires wearing a mask when out of the house and maintaining a social distance whenever possible, so make sure that your child knows to follow these rules whenever you are not around.

Take Sensible Precautions

Your next step is to look at the sensible precautions that you and your child can take that go above and beyond the mandated actions. It is generally a good idea to minimize the trips that you take outside of your home, for example, and to avoid those places where you think that social distancing won’t be possible. Make sure that you keep up to date with information about preventing transmission as it becomes available, and always err on the side of caution when deciding where it’s safe for your child to go.

Limit Socializing

One particularly tough part about keeping your child safe during the pandemic is the fact that you’ll have to limit his or her socialization. Try to find alternatives to meeting in person, such as video games and teleconferencing, and make sure to limit the number of people who are around whenever possible. If you choose to let your child socialize, make sure that it is with friends and family who follow the proper health care guidelines and who would clearly communicate with you if and when they have been in contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19. Social opportunities will be limited for the time being, but it’s always better to be safe than to be sorry.

Keep Yourself Safe

Finally, make sure that you set a good example by keeping yourself safe. If your child is not yet in school or is attending school at home, you will be one of the most likely vectors of transmission that your child encounters. As such, you’ll want to follow all of the rules that you have set forth for your child so that he or she can see a model of what actually needs to be done. Remember, your child is likely going to be watching your every move, so setting the right example is a must.

Know When to Reach Out for Help

Raising a child is never easy, and the pandemic certainly doesn’t help. As an adoptive parent, you’ve made the choice to bring a child into your life, so make sure that you’re doing all that you can to keep him or her safe. If you find yourself wondering whether you have any special responsibilities because of the nature of your relationship with your child or the legal proceedings that you’ve undergone, make sure to reach out to our New Jersey adoption lawyer at Cofsy & Zeidman in Haddonfield, NJ, to get the help you and your child deserve.