Disruption in Bio-Psycho-Social Context: Children’s Perceptions of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Aotearoa New Zealand

ABSTRACT Children growing up during the COVID-19 pandemic have seen unprecedented restructuring of their childhoods through lockdowns, virtual schooling and other public health measures. Theories of biographical disruption developed from individual experiences of life-altering diagnoses predict that unforeseen events such as the pandemic will restructure individual perceptions of their future life narrative. Such theories have been developed from adult experiences, however, with scholars suggesting that normalcy may be more salient to children’s experience of chronic illness. Children’s experiences might be expected to vary from those of adults’ due to their different structural position and younger life history which shifts children’s perceptions of temporality, normalcy and disruption. Empirical evidence from young people with chronic illness, meanwhile, describes diverse experiences of continuity and disruption, while the rhythms and interruptions of childhood chronic illness remain without an adequate explanatory framework. Aotearoa New Zealand’s zero-COVID approach presents a unique opportunity to understand children’s perceptions of disruption and continuity. I worked with 26 children aged 7–11 living in diverse locations in Auckland, developing a comic-based method to elicit children’s perspectives and co-construct narratives over virtual or in-person research visits. Juxtaposed with caregiver experiences and paediatric asthma research, I analyse children’s perspectives to suggest how children differently make sense of and accommodate crisis events. I argue that moving beyond biographical disruption to address the bio-psycho-social factors producing diverse ruptures, discontinuities and interferences will more completely represent children’s experiences of chronic illness and life crises.