We asked parents to report the questions that their children asked the about the COVID-19 pandemic and how they responded. We found that children were more likely to ask questions about lifestyle changes, rather than about the virus. Parents often answered these questions and provided realistic explanations. Parents often discussed changes in social norms, their social responsibility to stop the spread of the virus, and tried to comfort their child. Thus, parent-child conversations about the pandemic might influence how children think about illness and social norm, and children's coping skills.
We examined the type of death information in children's films and parent- child conversations. We found that children's animated films contained a lot of biologically accurate information about death, however many of the deaths were implied and not explicitly shown. Children asked a lot of question about death in films, and these questions resemble their questions about death in other settings.
We investigated how parents make decisions about the healthiness of foods when presented with different representations of the same nutritional information. Providing parents with nutritional information did not influence their ratings of how healthy food items are. Parents reported talking with their children about nutrition, believed they are the best source of information for children about nutrition, and believed their nutrition beliefs influence their children's beliefs.
We review research on children's understanding of death. In particular we examine how children learn about death by talking with parents, consuming media, and participating in cultural rituals.
We used a mixed-method approach to explore parent and child perspectives on death in Puebla, Mexico. While all children in this sample displayed a biological understanding of death, they also combined this knowledge with spiritual information.
We examined how adults’ memories of socialization regarding death might influence their self-reported coping with losses in childhood and adulthood. We show that participants who remembered their parents shielding them less from issues related to death reported better coping as children and adults.