Important Tips to Help Kids Wear Face Masks During Covid19

Face masks can be safely worn by all children two years of age and older, including most children with special health conditions, with rare exception.
Children should not wear a mask if they are under two years. Maybe because of suffocation risk. Also, anyone unconscious or unable to remove a face covering on their own should not wear one.

Children Age Two and Older, with Rare Exception, Should Wear Masks When They Are:

In childcare, at school & other group activities. For a safe return to school, child care and other group activities, all children over age two and adults must wear face masks. Face masks are also necessary to wear during most sports.
Unable to stay 6 feet away from others, both indoors and outdoors. Examples include at school, child care, a playground, park, or grocery store.
If you have a medically fragile child or an at-risk adult in your household, you may want to consider having everyone wear masks at home to help protect them.
It is understandable if your child seems afraid of wearing a mask at first.

Here are a few ideas that might help make them more comfortable:

Explain Why

Children need to understand the reason why they will need to wear masks. Explain how they prevent germs from spreading among people and keep others safe and healthy. Let the questions of your child guide your conversation. Listen and answer their questions with facts in a way they can understand. Discuss with your child that doctors and nurses recommend that we all wear masks to protect ourselves and others from COVID-19. Masks are not scary – they keep the germs away.

Personalise and Decorate

Letting kids pick out the colour or pattern of their cloth face mask – like dinosaurs, princesses, superheroes or puppies – will give them a sense of ownership and make the experience feel more normal. Allow your children to customise their masks with fabric markers or patterned fabric. There are masks available with cartoon characters or sports teams that can showcase your child's personality and preferences. Your children could make a mask out of a favourite bandana or scarf, as well. Just be sure that this may not compromise the protection level of the mask.

Play Pretends

For younger children, provide masks for stuffed animals and dolls during playtime. That can lessen any fears your children have with seeing other people in masks. Make it fun. Let your child pretend to be a doctor or nurse while wearing a mask. They can check your temperature, put on a Band-aid or take care of their favourite stuffed animal.

Make Them Comfortable

Wearing a mask is a task even for adults. They also need a lot of patience so, if your kids complain that masks hurt their ears, try attaching buttons to a hat or a cloth headband. You can loop the elastic around the buttons rather than their ears. Provide them comfort with safety. Invest plenty of time for your kids to get used to wearing one before going out in public. Wear them around the house to normalize the experience.

Praise and Practice

Use positive reinforcement – like praise or small rewards – when your child wears a mask. This will encourage them to wear the mask every time they would step out.

It may be challenging for very young children not to fidget with their face mask, so expect to give your child plenty of gentle reminders. When mask-wearing is reinforced by adults, they will also learn to follow directions. Just like children understand that they must wear bicycle helmets and buckle into their car seats, they will learn to wear masks correctly and routinely when needed.

The best way to protect your baby is to practice physical distancing and encourage people around your baby to wear face masks. Ask them to take other measures to reduce COVID-19 risk.

Along with social distancing, hand washing and vaccination, mask-wearing is key to reducing SARS-CoV-2 infection and spread. Children who are sick (fever, cough, congestion, runny nose, diarrhoea, or vomiting) should stay home. If you have any concerns about your child's health, talk with your paediatrician.
You can purchase comfortable kids masks from us at Brooklyn equipment.