It’s a parent’s job to help their child navigate the world. But what do you do when the current state of the world is something even parents of today have never seen?

The COVID-19 pandemic has created that situation for millions of families. Algenon Cash, a restaurateur and investor in Winston-Salem, is trying to keep things as normal as possible with his only child: Ariana.

“We’re talking about what college does she want to go to. She’s applying to colleges like crazy,” including Wake Forest University and several HBCUs.

Monica Moyer’s son, like Ariana, is Black, and she says that creates an entirely different set of issues she and her husband have to deal with. They have a daughter, but in a lot of ways, they worry more about their son, who is still only in middle school.

“I worry about my son,” Monica said. “He’s not at the age where he can drive or anything of that sort, but it’s conversations like make sure you have your phone if any altercation comes up, make sure you can have your phone rolling, see if you can call your mom, see if you can call me first. It just has to change.”

Flavia and Phillip Nazareth are both Americans who emigrated from Brazil. Like Algenon, they just have the one child, a daughter, and Olivia has always been an excellent student and fully dedicated herself to anything she chose to do.

“And then, suddenly, it started to change, and if it requires a little bit of effort, she will probably – ‘Maybe I want to quit’,” Flavia said. But she and Phillip fully anticipate that Olivia will be back to her old self once the pandemic is under control.

See more about talking kids through COVID in this edition of our Project 2021 reports.