Mothers’ Perceptions of the Impact of COVID-19 on Family Communication and Children’s Play

ABSTRACT Purpose: The Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic, which has been effective worldwide, and the resulting 'social distance' and hygiene measures have led to changes in family communication behaviors and children's daily life activities. Findings have shown that family life practices, children's behavior, and parents' mental health are both negatively and positively affected by periods of isolation due to the pandemic. Public health authorities recommended protective health behaviors such as hand washing, mask wearing and social distancing (Chiu et al., 2020). Because of governmental social distancing constraints, many parents who were requested or ordered to stay at home for a period of time began working from their homes (Prime, Wayde & Browne, 2020). To illustrate, lockdowns and quarantines resulted in social isolation, separation from peers, and loneliness for young children, which had a detrimental effect on their mental health (Loades et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2017) since extended periods of social isolation might lead to behavioral problems and brain dysfunctions (Hall, 1998; Novick et al., 2018; Tomova et al., 2020).