HELP! My Child Hates Wearing a Mask!

Yeah… Yours and everyone else’s. We are all in the same big “my kid hates wearing a mask” boat. But the world as is currently stands requires our kids to wear masks… which stinks. No, I mean it literally stinks. Well at least that’s MY ten year-old daughter’s biggest issue when it comes to wearing a mask. Apparently every mask has a smell that disgusts her, and I’ve been suffering from flashbacks to when she was four and every sock apparently had a “bump” in it (insert eye roll here). Still, I remember moving the sock around a bit, distracting her by talking about an upcoming playdate she was going to have, etc… and magically the “bump” seemed to disappear. So I thought to myself, there is definitely hope for successful mask-wearing also! Before anything else, I needed to get a mask that would, at the very least, be a contender for the battle ahead. I knew there were no guarantees of a win, but what’s the point of using a mask that you know is going to get KO’d in the first round? So I tried a bunch out… different styles, different fits, and I found a couple that worked! Yay! First Mission… Accomplished!

Being both a parent AND a person who changes behavior for a living, I often need to use the strategies that I spend so much time teaching others to use, in my personal life. Mask-wearing was no different. I reminded myself… if I’m going to make mask-wearing tolerable, first and foremost my expectations need to be reasonable. I knew I could not expect her to wear a mask for 2 hours right out of the gate. I started with 10 seconds. Yup you read that correctly…. I counted to 10. We want to facilitate success, right? Seemed like a completely “doable” amount of time to me, yet she still would get annoyed sometimes and would pull it down off her nose or occasionally off her face altogether. If she DID do it though, which WAS most of the time, I told her to take it off after the ten seconds were up, and then I praised her whole-heartedly. Now, besides starting with such a reasonable amount of time, I made sure she was also doing something she loved… in her case, dribbling a basketball. This definitely increased the odds of her keeping it on. So she dribbled, and I told her that she was doing an amazing job… at both the dribbling and with keeping the mask on. I did this again. And again. A bunch of times a day, for a couple of days. When she could do this with no issues, I started to extend the time… simply by saying, “Wait…. Don’t take it off yet. (pause for a few seconds) Ok. You can take it off now.” Changing things up really helped, and then it wasn’t so shocking when I started to really increase the time…. 30 seconds… a minute… two minutes… five minutes…fifteen minutes. There was hardly a complaint if she was playing her favorite game, watching her favorite show, or doing her favorite art activity. Oh, and did I mention that she was allowed to pick something out at Dollar Tree every time she had a successful practice day?? That’s right… if she wore the mask for the entire amount of time I set without complaint, every time, the whole day, she got to tally up a Dollar Tree “dollar” to use the next time we went to the store. By the end of the first week she earned 5 items! Mission Number 2… CHECK!

The next challenge I faced was getting her to wear a mask while doing something that wasn’t, you know, “cool”. Lucky for me I had a ton of success with this mission right off the bat, but I decided to go through all of my pre-planned steps anyway. I had her wear her mask while doing her “summer work” for school, or while helping with various chores around the house. I did this not for as long as she had been wearing her mask while doing something fun, but only slightly less. I began alternating… fun activity, work activity, fun activity, work activity. It was music to my ears to hear, “It’s not so bad mommy. I’ll keep it on longer.” Helped that she was still earning those Dollar Tree rewards (we now have a house filled with poster board and containers of knock-off Silly Putty- just sayin’). Now, I STILL had her remove the mask when I asked… sometimes requiring her to wear it a bit longer, sometimes allowing her to remove it a bit sooner. I wanted to teach her that she needs to take it off when she is told to do so. After all, while in school, she most certainly is going to be told when to put in on, and when she can take it off, and she will need to comply with both. Mission Number 3… DONE!

My last and final feat was for my daughter to wear her mask and adhere to the mask-wearing rules I set when I wasn’t around. Of course, I WAS always “around” in a sense, and I’d sneak-a- peek whenever I could without her knowing, but generally speaking she was on her own. This too, didn’t prove to be challenging, but I did catch her removing it now and again to take a few breaths (and really, who could blame her). But I firmly believe that all that practice she did the three weeks prior really set the stage for successful mask-wearing as a whole! I DID make sure to keep the reward in place, and I plan to do so even when we are done practicing and the school year starts. After all, keeping a mask on for an entire day of school is what REALLY deserves to be rewarded. For the record though, I AM looking forward to the day when I can start fading that away... Ahhhhhhhh… My wallet is smiling at just the thought of it.  Final Mission (for now, anyway)… ACCOMPLISHED!!

The biggest thing I took from these last few weeks is that just because my daughter is 10, and is smart, and (generally speaking) does what she is told, these things did not necessarily equate to mask-wearing being “easy” for her. Suddenly being told that you need to have something covering the majority of your face all day long will most likely prove to be a challenge no matter the age, gender, ability-level, etc. So remember to have reasonable expectations. Be patient. Start small. Have him/her wear a mask while doing something fun at first. Increase the time gradually. Praise and reward. Practice, practice, practice. And then if you need to, practice some more! You will most certainly be glad you did!