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Actress Goldie Hawn is warning America the trauma visited on our children over the COVID pandemic has devastated an entire generation and that it is equal to and “could very well surpass” the fear and dread brought on by the 9/11 terror attacks and the Cold War.
Hawn wrote an op-ed for USA Today relating how she saw her “entire world get ripped apart” by the threat of all-out nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1956 while she was in the fifth grade. Children were shown graphic educational films depicting what could happen if someone pushed the button and triggered a nuclear war. It terrified an 11-year-old Hawn who recounts that she ran home at lunchtime and called her mom, crying, “Mommy, come home quick! We’re all going to die!”
“Even in high school, I’d hear a siren in the morning and be too terrified to go to school that day,” Hawn wrote about that period in her life. “This was a specific trauma that affected me, but it was a collective trauma, too – an entire generation of American children was, in some form or another, taught to think of nuclear holocaust as a real threat.”
“We all know how magical a child’s imagination can be – the wonderful worlds they create in their minds. But there’s a flip side to the joyful creativity that can turn a big cardboard box into a spaceship,” she explained. “A child’s mind exposed to real-world fear, without the ability to properly process it, can go down dark passages leading to nothing less than existential dread.”
"Covid Trauma is hurting a generation of kids. We've failed them as a nation." ~ Goldie Hawn. I could not agree more. I can't imagine how Children feel about this pandemic and how it is affecting their lives.
— Tommy Lightfoot Garrett (@LightfootInHwd) January 27, 2022
We can’t even mention the word covid in front of my 6 year old granddaughter, as she is now so nervous and asks are we going to die? Its terrible.
— Nickijay (@Nickija70626737) January 29, 2022
The “Overboard” actress compared the trauma experienced by children during the pandemic to the Challenger space shuttle disaster that happened live on TV on Jan. 28, 1986. She also referenced the children who witnessed the Twin Towers collapsing on Sept. 11, 2001.
She asserted that COVID has robbed both adults and children of critical “support structures that all humans depend on for perspective, encouragement, and love.”
“The COVID era has changed our children’s lives in far more real, tangible ways — social distancing, school closures, daily mask use,” she continued. “Kids are afraid of people, spaces, even the air around them – a level of constant fear not seen in decades.”
Hawn spoke of the rise in suicide attempts by children as cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She recounted that U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy warned in December that the pandemic has had “unprecedented impacts on the mental health of America’s youth and families.”
Yes, they have scared kids to death!
— Nancy Pardue (@pardue_nancy) January 29, 2022
The actress also went on to reference a declaration of national emergency in child and adolescent mental health by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Children’s Hospital Association.
“As health professionals dedicated to the care of children and adolescents, we have witnessed soaring rates of mental health challenges among children, adolescents, and their families over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, exacerbating the situation that existed prior to the pandemic,” the declaration stated in October. “Children and families across our country have experienced enormous adversity and disruption.”
“This tells us that as a nation, we have failed our children,” Hawn said. “We are not properly funding preventive care and early interventions that normalize the mental struggles every individual has at some level. There are everyday tools for mental fitness, just as there are for exercise and healthy eating; we just don’t teach them in any systematic way to our nation’s children.”
She also called for “helping children understand the chemical reactions that occur in their mind” when they hear the “latest horrifying statistic or headline on the evening news.”
Hawn noted that understanding how the brain works will provide children with “the patience and confidence to put things in perspective, rather than fall victim to the emotions of the moment and end up in a helplessness that leads to depression and sometimes self-harm, the kind we are seeing in record numbers among children.”
Children should not “be over-diagnosed or shuffled through a system that screens and treats extreme cases after they are too late,” she contended.
“We will survive the COVID-19 pandemic, but I’m not sure we can survive an entire generation whose collective trauma sends them hobbling into adulthood. We need more research, more preventative care, and more early intervention. And there’s still time,” Hawn declared. “If we get it right, today’s kids could emerge as the strongest generation America has ever produced.”
Hawn has been an advocate for children’s mental health since founding the non-profit MindUp in 2003. The organization was started to “help children develop the knowledge and tools they need to manage stress, regulate emotions and face the challenges of the 21st century with optimism, resilience, and compassion.” MindUp addresses childhood aggression, anxiety, depression, and suicide.
Goldie Hawn also stated this week on “The Megyn Kelly Show” that Hollywood celebrities need to entertain the public no matter what political affiliations they have.
“I stay in my lane,” she stated when it comes to politics.
(Video Credit: Megyn Kelly)
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