Rationale
During the pandemic, many toddlers staying at home with their parents never came in contact with anyone. A survey of 26 parent responses showed 42% of their toddlers had a high level of anxiety returning to school after the COVID-19 lockdown, and 35% of them experienced a medium level of stress. Cloudy To Calm was created to help toddlers with separation anxiety. The purpose of Cloudy To Calm is to engage and distract children with comforting items provided by their parents to calm them so they do not stress about their parents leaving them.
Inspiration
In the midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic, I was a Lead Preschool Teacher at the Lakeland Hills YMCA. There were fifteen children in my class, ages 2-3. There was an extreme level of separation anxiety among most of them. Particularly, a girl named Gianna, who served as the inspiration for Cloudy To Calm. When she first started she would drag herself all over the floor to get away from the classroom and back to her mom. Her mom ended up handing me some photos and other sentimental things from home in hopes that it would comfort her, which they did. As time passed, she would sprint into the classroom looking for me. After a long day, she would always know that her mom would return.
Cloudy To Calm
“They have not even been going to see grandparents – you have babies that weren’t held by anyone other than parents for months, so this is one of the impacts of the pandemic that we don’t know how it will manifest over the weeks, months and years as this group of babies and small children grow and develop.” -Yorkshire Evening Post
