The majority of studies exploring children’s emotional reactions to COVID-19 related to modifications of their everyday life were conducted during the first lockdown (March–April 2020); only a few of them directly collected children’s opinions using mainly parent reports.

When interviewed about their wellbeing, children reported mixed emotions linked to the different impacts of the situation on their life. Missing their grandparents, playing with their friends, being able to go outside and having missed milestone events, such as birthday celebrations or graduations, made children interviewed in China, Spain and Australia feel bored, lonely, and sad ^[1][2][3][4][10,14,15,16]. On the other hand, the forced cohabitation made them feel happy, relaxed to be in their own home, helped the development of close family bonds and, at the same time, made them feel angry and worried about their family condition and nervous and agitated about the situation ^[1][2][3][5][10,13,14,15]. Moreover, children had low motivation and dissatisfaction about learning online, but they enjoyed some aspects of not going to school ^[1][10]. Not having appointments or class activities reduced the children’s stress levels and increased their free time for pleasure activities or for mastering new skills (e.g., yoga, video games, painting) (as reported in studies conducted in China and Austria) ^[1][5][10,13].

It is well known that the pandemic impacted lives for many months worldwide, with implications that are still present even if the emergency is almost over. However, only a few studies explored the long-lasting effects of COVID-19 modifications on everyday life after the first lockdown. Moreover, most of the studies considered a wide range of ages, failing to explore the specificities of children and adolescents’ reactions. The results of a qualitative study conducted in Austria a few months after the lockdown showed how children’s (from kindergarten age to 18 years old) emotional reactions varied according to age and were quite different from what was reported in studies conducted during the lockdown ^[5][13]. Specifically, younger children showed COVID-19 preoccupations by incorporating them into their games or recommending their parents to respect containment measures. Older children, instead, suffered from the lack of privacy and the reduction of social activities outside the family household (i.e., school, peer groups, recreational activities, visits to grandparents) ^[5][13]. Regardless of their age, children’s emotions changed from fear and anxiety, expressed during the first lockdown, to frustration and aggression shown a few months later ^[5][13].

To sum up, the lockdown had a mixed impact on children’s wellbeing. Scholars also reported the presence of positive reactions related to some aspects of modifications of life. An exploration of both positive and negative emotional reactions is necessary to fully understand the complexity of the experience. Moreover, emotional reactions could differ among ages with children and adolescents, experiencing two crucial developmental periods, showing different emotional reactions and different strategies used to cope with those emotions. While children might rely more on the family for emotional support and to share time and pleasure, adolescents are focused on relations with their peers, which often conflicts with parents. A crucial limit of the literature is the only focus on the lockdown experience; this was very useful to understand the immediate effects of the pandemic. However, understanding the long-lasting effects of the modifications of everyday life still present months after the beginning of the emergency and how that could be replicated if similar situations happen again is now necessary.

The changes in everyday life caused by COVID-19 also had a negative impact on parents’ wellbeing. The major COVID-19 pandemic’s restrictions and the rules imposed by the government to prevent contagions made parents feel angry, frustrated, and stressed by daily inconveniences, especially related to school, work and family members (as reported in a study conducted in the United Stated) ^[1][10]. In particular, trying to balance work, parenting and schooling children from home was perceived as very stressful [6]. Having to choose between prioritizing work at home or parenting made them feel guilty and unable to fully attend either role. Parents from the United States reported struggling in managing sibling relationships and in giving children limited opportunities for socialization with peers ^[7][17]. As for the work, unemployment, job insecurity and layoffs made parents feel high levels of stress ^[7][17].

With the extension of the first lockdown, parents expressed concerns about the long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on their children’s lives, specifically their mental health, education, and opportunities ^[1][10]. In addition, with the increase of deaths and infections, concerns were emerging regarding the impact of COVID-19 on the health of elderly parents, family members or friends and parents who feared becoming sick or dying ^[1][8][10,18]. The closure of infant centers and schools made parents experience fear of not feeling able to take care of their children in the event of infection of both parents ^[1][7][10,17]. In general, both parents in Italy and in the United States reported the fear of being unable to control what was happening to their family life ^[7][9][10][17,19,20].

Because the family condition impacted that much on parents’ emotional reactions, scholarswe might expect to find differences between the parents of children’s and adolescents’ reactions. However, to the best of our knowledge only one study conducted in Austria explored the difference between the negative emotions of parents of children of different ages ^[5][13]. Parents of kindergarten-aged children were concerned that their children had few social learning opportunities with their peers and were not receiving adequate preparation for school entry, and, as the duration of the first lockdown increased, they feared that children might forget previously learned kindergarten routines and their friends ^[5][13]. In contrast, parents of elementary school-age children showed concerns about their children’s educational disadvantages related to home learning due to limited abilities to support them ^[5][13].

As for children, the COVID-19 pandemic had some positive effects on parents’ wellbeing. Among the reported positive aspects of forced cohabitation, one was the creation of stronger bonds with family members and the ability to spend more quality time with their children and partner. In addition, improvements in sibling relationships were observed that had not occurred when schools were open ^[1][3][7][10,15,17].

In conclusion, the COVID-19 pandemic had both positive and negative effects on parents’ emotional sphere. Their emotional reactions varied according to their offspring’s age; however, only few studies explored these differences. In addition, most studies were conducted during the first lockdown, leaving a gap in the knowledge of long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on parental wellbeing.

Coping strategies refer to the regulatory processes people used to manage their emotions and behaviors under stress ^[11][21]. They are multidimensional and have different functions that enable a person to adapt to the environment. Coping strategies include controlling one’s emotional state by acting on it, self-regulation, and strategies aimed at gaining control of one’s emotional state by acting externally, other-regulation ^[11][21]. The first category includes behaviors such as reading a book, meditation, playing sports and all the action a person can do to regulate her/his emotion by his/herself. The second category includes all the behaviors aimed at seeking the help of an external person such as talking with someone about the issue, sharing ideas and thoughts and sharing or asking for affection.

Studies reported that children of different ages from Spain and the United States used several coping strategies to regulate the emotional distress caused by the COVID-19 pandemic ^[12][13][22,23]. Pre-schoolers predominantly used behavioral strategies such as “scream or get angry” to deal with their negative emotions ^[13][23]. On the other hand, school-age children used more engaged-oriented strategies such as problem solving to take specific actions to solve the crisis, seeking instrumental social support to try to understand how COVID-19 happened ^[13][23]. The coping strategies of preadolescents turned out to be more varied and complex, both cognitively and behaviorally. Children between 10 and 12 years used cognitive strategies as wishful thinking in which they hope the COVID-19 crisis had never happened or they reminded themselves that the lockdown situation was not that bad. Concerning emotional strategies, they tried to calm themselves down, they shared with their parents how they felt about the COVID-19 situation and used humor to joke or tried to laugh about the situation ^[13][23].

Some scholars found that specific pre-COVID-19 frequently used coping strategies were associated with children’s emotional wellbeing during lockdown (as reported in studies conducted Spain, China, and the United States) ^{[12][14][15][16]}[11,22,24,25]. For 8–13-year-old children, the frequent use of savoring before COVID-19, a process of attending, intensifying and prolonging positive memories, was associated with greater stable positive affects during the lockdown, while the frequent use of dampening, a strategy used to down-regulate positive emotions, predicted low positive affects. In contrast, more frequent pre-COVID-19 rumination predicted the increase of negative affects probably because this dysfunctional strategy consists of thinking often about the negative aspects of a situation ^[12][22].

While younger children’s emotions were still externally regulated by their parents, adolescents gradually learned to self-regulate their emotions, showing different resources than children to cope with the COVID-19 inconveniences and to make new meaning of experiences related to the lockdown (as reported in an Italian study) ^[17][26]. Appraisal, the process that determines if a situation is perceived as stressful, positive thinking, acceptance and emotional awareness were considered as protective factors for adolescent’s wellbeing. The use of these coping strategies before COVID-19 was associated with low stress during lockdown in Spain and China ^[14][16][11,25]. On the contrary, procrastination was considered as a risk factor because it is a short-term emotion regulation strategy, based on avoidance, that does not allow processing and accepting negative emotions ^[14][11]. Additionally, through direct access to electronic devices (e.g., smartphones and computers) Chinese and Spanish adolescents were able to maintain social contacts to cope with negative emotions that were caused by the inability to meet with relatives and friends ^[15][18][19][24,27,28].

Parents’ strategies to deal with the pandemic’s impact on their personal and family life consisted of the tendency to regulate their own emotions and to regulate their children’s emotions.

Spending time outdoors in their own backyard and accepting that the lockdown was not up to them helped to enjoy moments and to maintain their wellbeing (as reported in studies conducted China and United States) ^[7][20][17,29]. Other parents used avoidance strategies toward elements that were a source of stress for them. For example, they limited contact with friends or relatives with whom they did not have a good relationship with, they avoided arguments with family members, and they limited access to news about COVID-19. One of the most used other-regulation strategies was maintaining contact with friends and family online ^[7][17]. Having supportive and understanding colleagues helped them decrease the stress generated by managing work and home life ^[7][17].

Parents’ strategies to regulate children emotions impacted on children’s wellbeing. Negative parental coping strategies, such as rumination and communication difficulties, were associated with high perceived stress in both parents and children in the United States ^[21][30]. Moreover, during the first lockdown in China, the United States and Spain, parental involvement, measured as the focus of the parent on children’s emotional experience, was positively associated with children and adolescents’ emotion regulation skills and low negative reactions ^{[16][20][22][23][24]}[12,25,29,31,32]. On the other hand, parents with high levels of stress interacted less with their children, negatively affecting the child’s emotional regulation skills ^[22][12].

One of the major strategies that parents used to protect children from the negative impact of the pandemic was structuring family life during the lockdown to maintain as much as possible the habits and schedules of everyday life. This was conducted with attention to promoting the independence of their children by involving them in the care of the house or by giving them responsibilities. For example, younger children set the table or helped prepare food, while older children assisted with groceries, helped parents to take care of younger siblings or helped them with schoolwork. This strategy was employed in Chinese families with children of all ages, but the routine of young children was structured primarily by the parents, while adolescents were actively included in its creation and supported in respecting it independently ^[5][13]. An additional strategy was to provide children with a feeling of reassurance and family cohesion through parental closeness, communication, and the scheduling of shared activities (as reported in studies conducted Spanish, China and United States) ^{[5][14][25][26]}[11,13,33,34]. Cohesion was established with frequent physical and emotional closeness with the child, such as devoting more time for cuddling ^[27][35] and through the sharing of activities that allowed for positive memories and strengthening of family bonds (i.e., walking, board games, movie nights and cooking) ^[5][13].

To regulate negative emotions caused by children’s exposure to COVID-19 news, parents of children preferred to communicate information with their own words or to use a restrictive mediation style to avoid exposing them directly to false or negative COVID-19 news ^[5][17][13,26]. In contrast, co-viewing was the style mainly used by the parents of pre-teens. Both restrictive mediation and social co-viewing styles were negatively correlated with children’s emotional functioning, probably because these mediation strategies did not allow for the organized processing of negative COVID-19 news. Regardless of children’s age, an active communication style used by parents to talk about negative and positive emotions related to COVID-19 news was associated with both a child’s greater ability to regulate their emotions as it allowed them to process information on COVID-19 at an emotional and cognitive level ^[17][26], and with more emotional problems in children, probably because talking a lot about the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic could cause them continued worry and rumination (as reported in studies conducted in Italy and United States) ^[18][27].

Older children were also encouraged to use social media and electronic devices for home education and to maintain social contacts independently ^[5][13].

In summary, during the lockdown, parents used several coping strategies to manage their own distress and to manage their children’s emotions and behaviors. While the latter were more explored, little is known on the strategies used by parents to cope with their own distress. Studies conducted in several countries evidenced that children and adolescents who were exposed to familiar protective factors, such as emotional support from parents, a well-defined daily routine and good communication with friends and parents, were more resilient to pandemic stress. On the contrary, children and adolescents who lack familiar protective factors are more likely to develop anxiety and depression ^[28][36]. Moreover, the quality of parenting support seems to be affected by parent’s wellbeing ^[28][36]. For these reasons, the study of both parental emotional reactions, parenting strategies, and the exploration of the link with children’s wellbeing is necessary.