How to Help Kids Embrace Mask-Wearing

• Most children enjoy the chance to feel morally superior.

• Assign them to be the family mask monitors.

What a beautiful thing is a face mask if it gives us back our world.

With states in various stages of reopening, the challenge we face right now is to hold on to the hard-won gains from staying home and shutting down and to avoid increased transmission. Masks are a big part of the solution.

Older children can be a little cranky about adapting to life with masks, but younger children are perfectly placed to learn a new drill. They can be the family monitors, reminding their parents not to forget their face coverings when they leave the house, nudging them to pull up face coverings that slide down off their noses, sitting in disapproving judgment on naked-faced runners or puffing smokers who come too close.

Most children enjoy the chance to feel morally superior to adults (and adults often make this all too easy); go ahead and encourage a little righteousness. Remind them that they’re smarter than these grown-ups who are not protecting others and not protecting themselves; masks do both.

Going back to school in the fall may well mean masks; the more kids have come to take them for granted by then, the better. I’ve taught in China, where many people — including children — have long been in the habit of wearing face masks to prevent transmitting or catching respiratory illnesses. Masks also come out when pollution counts are high; everyone understands that a face mask protects children from breathing in bad stuff.

The American Academy of Pediatrics reminds parents that staying home and social distancing are still most effective in preventing the spread of the virus, but it offers advice about helping children get accustomed to masks. They are not recommended for those under 2, and there may be some children who can’t wear them — the A.A.P. mentions those with “severe cognitive or respiratory impairments.” On the other hand, immunocompromised children might need more protection than cloth face coverings offer, and N95 masks are recommended.

The A.A.P.’s suggestions include putting a cloth face covering on a child’s favorite stuffed animal, decorating masks so they’re more personalized and drawing a mask on your child’s favorite book character.

There will be more information coming out about the relative efficacy of different kinds of face coverings, and there is increasing interest in the possibility of face shields, which might be especially helpful for children with neurodevelopmental issues who have trouble reading social cues.

I understand it’s not always pleasant to feel a little hot and sweaty under the mask on a hot, humid day, but let’s be honest, you can feel a little hot and sweaty under your underwear on a hot, humid day. I understand being sorry not to see people’s full faces, out in public, but I can deal with it. We’ll always have Zoom.

Doctors and nurses tend to feel safe and at home in their masks. Medical Twitter is rife with TikToks about masks, and by and large they are made with affection. Let’s help our children learn that affection — they can smile from behind their masks at the other people who are also doing the right thing.

You should feel a little safer in your mask, because you are. And you should feel like a good and generous citizen in your mask, because you are. And you should teach your children to feel safe and proud when they wear their masks, because they deserve to. They will be helping make a safer world.

Believe me, they will understand. It’s not brain surgery.

References

Dr. Perri Klass is the author of the forthcoming book “A Good Time to Be Born: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future,” on how our world has been transformed by the radical decline of infant and child mortality.