Sixth-grader’s coronavirus comic strip shows heroics of nurses
Lauren Rush, a sixth grader at Allison elementary school, drew a cartoon featuring a nurse battling COVID-19.
The Rush family is, from left, Kyle, Melanie, Lauren, sitting, Doug and their dog, Lucy.
Dr. Oandasan
When Lauren Rush, a sixth-grader at Chartiers-Houston’s Allison Park Elementary School, got the assignment in art class to draw a cartoon of a superhero versus a villain, it was a no-brainer for her: Lauren created a comic strip pitting a nurse against COVID-19.
“My mom’s a nurse and I know that during all of this, nurses have been superheroes and I believe that we will overcome it sometime,” said Lauren, 12.
In the comic strip, a mask-wearing Nurse Lauren, armed with a syringe and the power of science, vanquishes her arch-nemesis, a coronavirus protein.
The cartoon – which included details like stacks of toilet paper – struck Lauren’s art teacher, Caitlin Walther.
“I was excited when I got it. I felt she did an excellent job creating a character who’s the superhero that everybody needs right now,” said Walther. “Everybody needs someone to save the day with COVID-19, and for her to recognize the significance of this moment and this situation, and the importance of health care workers, is amazing.”
Walther forwarded the comic to principal Joe Lemley, who sent it on to Allegheny Health Network Canonsburg Hospital, where it touched the hearts of the nurses and staff.
Lauren’s mother, Melanie, teaches nursing at Community College at Beaver County and its satellite office at Washington Area Career and Technology Center. She was proud of he daughter’s comic strip.
“She took a lot of time and put a lot of thought into it,” said Melanie.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, art is serving both as a way to see how children are coping with stress and as an outlet for anxiety, said Dr. Aileen Oandasan, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at AHN Jefferson Hospital.
“Art is a window into what’s happening to a kiddo internally,” said Oandasan. “Whether we have a little one who is drawing stick figures or an adolescent who is producing more sophisticated art, we like to see their art projects. For me, it’s like gathering information through a window to the child’s soul. It’s super helpful and super important, even pre-COVID and especially now.”
Lauren said her intent was to get across the message that the world will overcome the coronavirus pandemic, and to encourage people to remain hopeful. The syringe, she noted, represents a vaccine that will cure the disease.
“(The comic strip) took out some stress about COVID,” said Lauren, who wants to be an orthodontist. “I was just thinking about what would happen in the future, and I expressed my feelings that way.”
Not all children are handling COVID-19 as well.
One in seven children and teens has a mental health condition, and Oandasan said she has seen a huge spike in the numbers of children experiencing stress and anxiety since the coronavirus outbreak began.
She is concerned about the long-term emotional impact the pandemic will have on children.
“I’m personally just worried we’re going to have a generation of kids whose lives are changed forever,” she said. “I think it’s important for us as parents to not be anxious, to check our irritability and stress level, to have television and news holidays where it’s not always on. All of that negativity does sink into kids’ psyche.”
She encouraged parents, too, to pay attention to their children’s artwork because “it can tell what the individual is thinking, without saying it. Drawing as a safe way to articulate this.”
Walther agrees children tend to draw about what matters to them.
“I think I get to know my students better when I see what they’re drawing, because they draw what’s important to them,” she said.
Art also can be therapeutic and serve as “another tool in the tool kit” to help children manage stressful situations, Oandasan said.
She recommends providing children with art supplies and choosing together art projects for them to do. Oandasan encouraged making art projects a regular part of a child’s routine.
“It can be a wonderful outlet and method to de-stress,” said Oandasan.
Walther said the art assignment was part of a pop art unit she was teaching in collaboration with librarian Sara Taylor, and children chose other impactful topics such as pollution and climate change.
“Kids recognized there are problems that are bigger than them,” she said.
Art, she believes, is significant in helping her students handle the uncertainty of the moment.
“I think their world has been turned upside down, and art is playing an important role in what they’re going through,” said Walther. “I think kids sense the stress of the situation and they realize the significance. I think they have a lot to say right now, and they don’t have a lot of people to talk to like they’re used to, like their friends and teachers, so drawing is very important right now.”