Coronavirus Shutdowns Explained By A Phoenix 4-Year-Old: Video

PHOENIX — It's hard enough for adults to wrap their heads around all the ways the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted their lives, but it can be especially difficult to help kids used to climbing play structures, meeting the ice cream truck at the curb and other favorite activities.

But a Phoenix 5-year-old has it all figured out. She's not very happy about it, though.

Sure, Ben and Rebecca McLennan’s daughter Blake knows that staying home keeps her neighbors safe.

However, as the precocious little girl explains in a video her parents recorded in March that has become an internet sensation in the last few days, "everything in this world has to shut all the way down,"

Even the ice cream truck. It has a gumball machine that spits out blue ones. They’re her favorites.

“We can’t go anywhere,” Blake, who was 4 at the time the video was recorded, continues as tears begin to well up in her eyes. “Not even McDonald’s.”

“You can pick up McDonald’s in the drive-thru,” Dad says.

“No you can’t,” counters an adamant Blake.

“You can. You can go in the drive-thru, but you can’t go in the playground,” Ben says.

“Right,” Blake says, acquiescing and throwing her arms out in dismay. “It’s really frustrating. If you go through the drive-thru, it’s just boring.”

It wouldn’t be boring, she says, if she could just pass the time on the playground.

“And now they have to shut down,” she says, sobbing. “It’s just boring when you have to wait for food to come.”

The video goes on, with Blake again explaining that “everything has to shut all the way down” and “I don’t want it to do that.”

“The only thing open is nothing — nothing,” she says as her parents are heard chuckling in the background. “It’s just not fair.”

Blake articulated her frustrations for a full 7 minutes. A little more than halfway through, her parents turned on a cell phone video camera, knowing “there was a moment there we could show her later,” Ben tells Patch.

The McLennans’ intention was never that their daughter become the darling of the internet when they recorded it in March after sitting down with their six kids to explain how the coronavirus was changing life around the world.

In the video, Blake “said more than we said,” Ben says. “It wasn’t like she just regurgitated what we said — you could see her verbally processing it.”

Related: How To Talk To Your Kids About Coronavirus

The family received offers from strangers around the country to give Blake toys and McDonald’s gift certificates, but her parents steered them toward their local communities and asked them instead to give gifts to local foster kids — a group of children dear to the McLennans’ hearts.

All six of their children — including Blake and her four biological siblings — were adopted from foster care by the McLennans, who struggled with infertility issues for about seven years.

“Pay it forward,” Ben says.

The McLennans explained to Blake in the last few days that “a lot of people are watching video and it’s helping them put words to what they’re feeling.”

Blake, who turned 5 in May, understands that she’s “famous,” but Ben doesn’t worry about the fame going to his daughter’s head.

“She’s so young, I don’t think it’s as real to her,” Ben says. “To her, it’s as real as Mickey Mouse, and we’re so secluded, we’re not going to run into somebody that’s going to say, ‘You’re famous.’”

He hopes the video will bring a smile in places such as Arizona, where positive coronavirus cases continue to surge.

“Her words bring some levity to what we are all feeling,” Ben said.