Engaging your children during the corona Pandemic

Engaging your children during the corona pandemic is not an easy task. But having to manage children within the confines of the house during a state mandated lockdown is an act we have never performed before.

All of a sudden Mani is asked by his parents to be inside the house and in fact his parents have not restricted him from watching / playing video games. Mani is wondering what has happened to his parents. Normally they would be behind him / restrict him on video games, mobile games and on watching TV cartoons. They used to push him outside the house to play with other children in the apartment. But now since past two weeks they are asking him to be inside the house always and keep talking about something, they look worried and they are not cheerful as they used to be.

Mani is very sad, and bored. He wants to go out and meet his friends and run around the apartment. He wants to take his skating board and bicycle out and play in the ground. He misses his karate classes, his drawing classes and his school too. Mani keeps looking outside the window and calls his friend’s Yogesh and Akila from the opposite building. They are also looking sad and dull and looks outside the window as if they are imprisoned. Mani, Yogesh and Akila have few questions in their mind. What happened to their parents? What happened to their playful world? When they can come out of their houses and meet their friends? What will happen to them? Is something dangerous waiting for all of them?

In their mind the “something dangerous” may be perceived as aliens from the marvel’s comic or demons from their fairy tale stories. The social isolation, lock down and the constant anxious TV / news watching baffles the young ones. Their small world has shrunk further. The constant questions in their mind and the anxiety related to those questions has to be addressed properly.

As we all are experiencing this kind of a lock down first time in our life and in our parent’s life too, we may be not sure of how to handle our little ones in these kinds of situations. Whether we need to tell everything to them or hide the information’s? How much could we tell? Or could we tell them something else instead of the true information’s? As children are having too many questions parents are also having many.

This is a tricky situation for the parents. They have an important duty to help the children understand why they have isolated them from their friends, coaching classes and also from the community. As responsible parents we need to explain the meaning of social isolation, lock down, pandemic and of course about COVID 19. We need to explain about the future to them too. Because the world is going to be no longer the same. We need to point out that such viral infections would be common in the future. It is our moral duty to explain the future changes in the world to our children. It is imperative because prevention is always better than cure.

Unfortunately, we cannot predict the situation now, but instead of telling wrong information or false details let us be truthful and in a simple way we can make them understand this crisis. The purpose of this article is to present our thoughts and suggestions on how best to deal with our children in these trying times, keep them engaged, use this time meaningfully to continue their education at home and set them up well to pick the threads easily when ‘normal’ schooling is restored.

Being a parent is a circus act at the best of times. But having to manage children within the confines of the house during a state mandated lockdown is an act we have never performed before. Normally as parents we insisted the children stop watching TV or playing video / mobile games and step outside the house to play. But now we are doing exactly the opposite. How do we justify our somersault on the ill-effects of TV watching and video game playing? Children are noticing with a strange sense of unease and delight that parental restrictions on watching TV or playing video / mobile games is off.

As parents we are all in a new learning curve on how do we keep our children safe and healthy while we deal with our numerous real world problems such as – being more effective at working from home, worrying about safety of our jobs in this corona induced economic crisis, ensuring adequate availability of food items for our daily meals, dealing with the fear of exhausting our stock of essential items and not being able to replenish them, managing better the dynamics of 24/7 confined living with family members, and so on.

Our suggestions revolve around the following:

1.Spend time with your children – when we do this we need to remember not to overdo it too. Facilitate on some healthy discussions around specific topics. The topics could be around the most important principles or values or goals in life, or some other topic that is of interest to the children and the family. These discussions can be based on some real life or popular fiction characters. Such a discussion where everyone in the family contributes to derive a common meaning by sharing, can help the children foster deeper understanding of self and the world around them.

2.Explain what is happening in the world – Use simple language. If you are in doubt whether to communicate to your children about the risk the corona pandemic poses, please don’t. It is absolutely important to communicate honestly to the children about the seriousness of the corona pandemic and the ways and means to safeguard ourselves.

3.Do not hide anything – withholding information’s creates anxiety in them. Do not give wrong / false information – at the same time we need not reveal the facts about the number of deaths and who is prone etc. Take care to avoid sharing each and every bit of new update that may not be of any relevance to them and is only likely to increase their fear and anxiety

4.Explain the need for cleanliness – show them the simple steps on maintaining general cleanliness and the need for washing hands.A good idea would be to appoint kids as custodians of hygiene and safety practices at home – viz., washing hands, keeping the house clean and other hygiene and safety precautions. It may ensure their enthusiastic support and make them proactive implementers of safety.

5.Reduce / avoid watching the minute by minute update of corona monitor – they may pick up your anxiety from your body language that will confuse them.

6.Feel free to show your weakness by explaining that “Dad /Mom are tensed – it is natural – but the situation will change”

7.Instill faith in the supreme being – if you are a spiritual / religious person – teach the scriptures / sloka’s to your younger ones and explain the content in simple words

8.Next idea is building a daily routine. Build a reasonably tight but flexible daily schedule of productive, energy expelling and relaxation activities. Make sure the children understand why the schedule is in place and how it helps everyone to manage the frustrations of being locked up in the house. Give them small, small activities such as peeling potatoes, arranging utensils and the house etc– this will help them to divert their attention from the grim situation.Take their help in preparing a new dish – this is a diversion for you as well as for them too.

9.Teach them vernacular languages – this is the right time to teach them the mother tongue and other languages.

10.Teach them mathematical tables – home schooling is the need of the hour. Just because this is lockdown time is no reason for a break in education of the children. In fact, this may be the best time to plan some educational activities that can be fun and stress free.

11.Conduct simple quizzes – share these quizzes with your friends too for their children and ask them to do so too. There are plenty of online resources available ( free of cost too) make use of the opportunity to download them and use them for this.

12.Draw and paint with them – simple drawing’s like a circle or a square and asking them to color it without taking their hands and with deep breathing helps in relaxation as well as focused attention.

13.Play video games with them – keep small competitions among the siblings if only child you can be their partner in the competition.

14.Read comics and epics to them – Reading great books can improve language ability and at the same time lend a sense of prestige to children as they become familiar with some of the most influential writings that have influenced our world.

15.Ask them to write their experiences – provide them a diary / note book – journaling is a healthy way of taking a stock of life

16.Help them to connect with their friends / relatives over phone if possible skype – allow them few minutes every day for this

17.Take them to the balcony / windows and help them to enjoy the clear sky and the stars. Make use of this visit to talk about your childhood to them – share funny stories of your childhood. This will be a better exercise for emotional bonding.

18.This is the right time for the very old games like Carom, Ludo, Pallanguzhi and Snake and Ladders – teach them and share your experiences of how you used to play all those during your childhood

19.Teach them simple pranayama – breathing exercises – make them walk inside the house for may be 30 minutes or play catch and catch

20.Cognitive training such as segregating a mixture of rice and different lentils orcolored beats brings in attention and concentration improvements – while doing it help them to take a deep breath and releasing it brings in relaxation also

Above all give them small hugs and show that you are there for them – this means a lot to the younger ones.And most of all be aware that there is no perfect way to do this, especially in the trying circumstance we are in. As stated earlier, parenting is a circus act at the best of times. It is not possible to always get it right. Sometimes you may feel like just allowing the children to do what they wish, even if you don’t like it. At other times you may intervene too early and later regret it. But as we all know well, parenting is never a finished task, it is a constant work in progress. Do the best you can and if your heart is in the right place, you can be sure it will all turn out fine!