
Who had imagined most of 2020 would have us all stay put home. While the lockdown seemed like a picnic when it began, with a prolonged quarantine period it took the better of many people.
If you thought few gained and few lost during the Covid-19 pandemic, kids weren’t too far from what they had or did not have fulfilled during the nationwide lockdown. If you thought not going to school for a long time would make them happy, you are wrong.
You cannot put aside the multitude of thoughts kids had during this period. Here’s more on the good, bad, and the ugly things the lockdown extension brought to my children:
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Let’s begin with the good things:
1. Cooking became an adventure:
The kitchen was no longer a place just for mama. Every day was an exciting day as kids would look forward to being helping hands in making their favourite foods. What good it did to them? It helped to ward off the boredom that would have come from the lockdown. Putting kids in the kitchen tickled their imagination as they came up with great dinner ideas.
Anything from the whiskers to a unicorn – it all took shape through salads and cakes. It was a fun way to teach them to organize a kitchen, set the table, and do the dishes. As they sang and danced away and made cooking videos, they also learned the importance of maintaining hygiene in the kitchen while and also save water. The chores became learning while having fun which they would otherwise shy away from.
2. Kids turned to the home library:
Eventually…hugh! After all the rants to put the library to some good use, the COVID lockdown helped them discover what amazing books were part of the home library. From encyclopedias to fairy tales to kids’ activity books – they were taken into a world of fantasy as we read along often with a question popping up with curiosity.
Suddenly the began to appear full of wonders and way too big for them. They understood that there was a world beyond home, school, and friends; that there is so much mother nature gave us and how they can be responsible for nurturing the gifts of nature. Yes, they also learned about coronavirus, and how the virus life cycle takes place, and why it was important to be in quarantine.
3. Values got deeper:
Well, who doesn’t like to tell their children as to what’s good and what’s bad. We all rely on examples from historical figures to help them understand the value of being good and doing good. With the lockdown, there was moral policing of sorts.
The more kids stayed at home, the easier it was to preach them; the easier it became to tell them to keep the house spotless, that bits of paper don’t lie on the floor; that siblings must care for each other besides obeying parents without expecting any rewards. As a result, it became a rewardless way to be good. Also, they were taught to communicate with the elders in the extended family and be polite on phone.
Coming to the bad things:
4. The biological clock went haywire:
Now that they had all the joys at one go, and there was nothing more they could wish for than simply stepping out and feel the grass, within a few weeks they began to complain about staying home all the time.
The pitiful complaint helped them to get extra TV time. The result? Children would stay up most nights and wake up in the morning when most people had cooked their meals for the day.
The biological clock went for a toss. Was it leading to insomnia? As a mother, I was in a fix. Should I make them early birds and let them crib about not going out all day long? Or just let them watch tele as long as they wanted so that the following day much of the morning would have passed and they would have little to complain about except being sleepless.
5. Too much fun often led to boredom:
While children bonded well with each other, the sibling fights only grew bigger. The reason? They didn’t know what better they could do with each other because they were so bored with the extended lockdown. Kids would bring the roof down and as a worrier mother, it got on my nerves. The little squabbles would grow into big fights that were hard to handle.
6. Now the ugly things:
There was no way we would allow kids to go out and play in the rain with their masks on. There was no way they could go to the park and play with other children. There was no favourite destination to go to. The masks and the faces-fields felt like they were robots. The prebooked holiday was cancelled with the lockdown coming. The worst, to see a tear in my child’s eyes that she could not meet the people she loved dearly. You can deal with anything in the world but it breaks a mother to see her child cry.
There was a whole lot of surprises that the lockdown threw at people, especially at children. While the seemingly good things were there and they will remain in terms of healthy training of children, the emotional wellbeing of children came right on the edge. Like it or hate it, the lockdown had its flipside and the showed well through children.