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As parents learn to deal with work and children during the lockdown, new relationship dimensions emerge
The biggest challenge for parents during the lockdown is to convince kids that they should not go out and play, maintain social distance and wash hands, says advocate Sheetal Lokhande Waghchoure.
The spread of the Covid-19 pandemic has forced us to remain indoors due to the lockdown and with the lockdown, comes spending the entire day at home. This routine is new for working professionals, college students and even school-going children. The most challenging part is how to spend quality time with family during the lockdown without clashes, arguments and fights between parents and children. Parenting counsellors and mental health physiologists have been receiving many calls daily during the lockdown to get help on how to tackle children.
Dr Anjali Chaudhary of Sangopan-The Art of Parenting, a child counsellor and parenting coach, said, “Since the lockdown has begun, I have received more than 50 calls from parents who want help on how to tackle children. Along with small kids, even the teens and college-going children are easily irritated being locked inside their homes. Parents have to face mood swings, anger and other issues related to children. There are online classes for children, parents work from home, the domestic chores adds to the problems. Parenting has become tougher and people need to understand its basics to deal with it better.”
Neha Mundhada, a banking professional and a parent, says, “The lockdown has defined the parent-child relationship in new ways. First few days were spent nicely as we always wanted to spend more time with the children and vice-versa. So, there was no routine and we were happy and busy fulfilling all their demands of food, play time, among other things. But when the work from home pressure started pilling up which has webinars, video calls, audio con calls, and my child didn’t get enough attention and he started with his tantrums. So, we decided that we should have a routine which we had before the lockdown for everyone in the house and we will have to include our child in every activity we do and made a timetable for household work, office work, study time, TV time and family play time. Thee routine helps us do our work and also keeps him engaged.”
Some of the measures which Dr Chaudhary suggests is that children should be kept engaged at all times, not only visually but creatively as well. Parents should encourage their hobbies at home, involve them in domestic chores to develop a sense of responsibility towards the household and spend time bonding with them, she adds.
Another senior physiologist Dr Anand Nadkarni, a mental health consultant and managing trustee of Institutes for Physiological Help (IPH), Pune and Thane, says that teaching moral lessons should always be included in bonding exercises. “Bonding time can also be doing nothing together. Your kids do not have to learn a moral lesson each time they spend time with you. Time is a very neutral commodity, how we use that time is the goal that we have to set. In a family, parents have to plan their individual goals and should also include their children in planning their family time. Family time can include a healthy dose of time pass.”
Family time should include edutainment time (combination of education and entertainment), action time (delegation of work) and personal time for each member, he adds.
The biggest challenge for parents during the lockdown is to convince kids that they should not go out and play, maintain social distance and wash hands, says advocate Sheetal Lokhande Waghchoure. “Also, since there is no going out to restaurants, mothers have to take extra effort to prepare tasty food at home. Parks are shut, swimming pools are closed too and this brings in a lot of pent up energy in young kids, which makes parenting tough now.”
