How to talk to your children about coronavirus

Talking to children about the Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic is complicated.

The desire to shield them from anything scary is strong, yet it’s likely that they have seen and heard a lot about it already from friends and the media.

In my business at Nanogirl Labs I work with over 120,000 children a year in countries all over the world. While I am no expert in child psychology I have been helping families and teachers talk about the virus with their children over the last few weeks and their feedback has been to share it with the world. 

So here I am - sharing what I’ve been learning.

1 - Talk about it

Children pick up way more than we think they do. Just because you haven’t talked about it with them doesn’t mean that they haven’t heard of the virus or aren’t worried about it. If we are anxious, they are anxious. Lots of children have told me that they are scared because their parents are scared. Many parents aren’t sure where to go for information and with most of us not being virologists it can be hard to navigate the good media information from the bad. As information is changing hour by hour it’s worth keeping an eye of the World Health Organisation website as well as that of your countries government health ministry.

If you aren’t sure how to explain the virus to your children I’ve made a simple video here that you are welcome to use or steal ideas from

2 – Gamify it

Children love games and one of these games needs to be educating the importance of hand washing. The coronavirus is special because it has a lipid-bilayer coating which is a fancy way to say that its wearing a fat coat. When you wash your dishes with dish-soap, the soap breaks down the fat and grease from your plates and rinses them off. The same thing happens when we wash our hands. The soap breaks down the fat coat covering the virus killing it!

This is why the message of washing out hands with soap and water is so important.

I’ve been working with schools and parents to help gamify this by teaching children that soap is a superpower that shields them from the virus. This makes good hand-washers ‘virus superheroes’ fighting the battle against the bad coronavirus.

You can watch this superhero training in action below:

All instructions for the activity can be downloaded for free here.

3 – Learn how to wash your hands

Sounds dumb I know, but most of us have spent our lives thinking we knew how to wash our hands. Yet how often do you wash your thumbs or wrists? Good hand-washing should take around 20 seconds and use both soap and water. Why not learn how to wash your hands properly with your children together at home – here is a video if you need help.

4 – Kids will pick their nose

As much as we are being told to not touch our face (as this is how the virus enters our body), trying to stop children picking their nose is almost impossible. This is why teaching regular hand-washing is so important. Most children have no idea that they are touching their face (to be honest most adults I’ve seen don’t realise it either). Rather than make a big deal of this, just give gentle reminders if you see them doing it. As long as they are washing their hands often their risk will be reduced so why not explain the science behind how soap destroys the coronavirus and make some personalise soap just for them.

 5 – Let your children talk about their fears

Adults talking about mortality rates and high numbers of elderly dying can be frightening to children who may thing that they will die if they get the disease. The research shows that for some reason children don’t seem to be affected by coronavirus in the same way as adults and to date no children have died from the virus and most of them have only had mild symptoms. Talk to your children about this and explain that they have special superpowers that keep them safe. The more we all talk about it and explain ways of protecting ourselves the more our children can feel in control which will help to reduce their anxiety.

These conversations are a great way for children to start learning about how their bodies work. Chats about their immune system and other viruses like the one that causes the common cold can help children realise that there will always be a battle to fight against viruses and bacteria. While this one is challenging right now, learning how to protect ourselves today is superhero training to fight against other germs in the future.