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Unsure how to talk to your kids about COVID-19? Show them this.

Manuela Molina's COVIBook is designed to support and reassure children, while offering an outlet for their own thoughts and feelings about the virus.
By: Madeleine Hall
March 27, 2020
Photo: Mindheart (Instagram)

Colombian child psychologist and play therapist Manuela Molina has created a free e-book to provide comfort to children around the word, who may be scared and confused about the COVID-19 virus. The short guide portrays the virus as a friendly yet potentially dangerous character who “loves to travel” and “jump from hand to hand to say hi.” Young readers are then invited to share some of their thoughts and feelings around the virus in interactive exercises. Molina encourages parents to print out a copy of the e-book, so kids can fully participate in these pages.

View this post on Instagram

#COVIBOOK in English !!! . C BY-NC-SA 4.0 International Public License ⚠Share mentioning the account @mindheart.kids and the name of the author, Manuela Molina. . Have you talked to your kids about the Coronavirus? How can you bring up the virus in a way that will be appropriate and reassuring for children under the age of 7? . Children need to understand what's happening in their communities and in the world. It's our responsibility to keep them physically and EMOTIONALLY safe. . Therefore I have created the Covibook, a short story to help families and educators in this process (to download the PDF click the link on my Bio). . The #covibook will: • Invite children to express how they are feeling and validate their emotions. • Create a neuroception of safety when seeing the virus as a cartoon. • Comfort them by explaining that caregivers will keep them safe. • Introduce some precaution measures that will allow them to feel empowered. . Share with your community and help inform our kiddos in a conscious and respectful way. . . . . #covibook #coronaviruskids #coronavirusniños #covid #covid2019 #covid_19 #covid19usa #covid19uk #covidaustralia

A post shared by Mindheart (@mindheart.kids) on

On her website, Molina writes that she “created this short book to support and reassure our children, under the age of 7, regarding the COVID-19. This book is an invitation for families to discuss the full range of emotions arising from the current situation.”

For anyone keen to see the work in action, Montreal-based Speech-Language Pathologist Liza Selvarajah shared the following video on Facebook of her reading the e-book to her daughter Mila:

COVIBook is available free on Molina's website in its original Spanish as well as in translations into 23 languages including, so far, English, Hebrew, Arabic, and Indonesian.

Source: Mindheart

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