I am a mother of two kids, a 7 year old son and a 2 year old daughter. Staying in a joint family and being self sufficient, I was quiet lucky as compared to a lot of other people, who had to go through a lot of difficulties physically, mentally and emotionally. Financially it was a challenge to everyone.
Just last night, my son had a meltdown because he wanted to play for longer time downstairs. It was tough to handle the meltdown. Constant crying, tantrums, It was the second meltdown that he had yesterday. Some days he has meltdown multiple times, on somedays his meltdowns are impossible to control. I do feel bad for him and try to console him but that is not possible all the time. There are days, when I am tired of his meltdowns and end up loosing all my temper on him. Children during this lockdown have ended up becoming punching bag of parents emotions. No Parent wants to hurt their child but we are all going through our own issues.
We as adults understand our problems but do not want to accept the same and sometimes do not want to find solutions to our emotional issues. Probably, the reason is we were never taught on how to deal with our emotional problems in the first place. Therefore, when we have to confront emotional issues of another person, we end up loosing our temper.
We often hear these days, that today’s children are more spoilt because their parents do not know how to raise their children, or they pamper them too much. But, the circumstances today are entirely different from what they were a few years ago. During those days, we had no option but to contact a person manually, physical communication was a norm them, we felt the warmth of relationships, of human contact, unlike today, where everyone has gadgets to keep them busy throughout the day. I miss those days, but the change in lifestyle, which happened a few years ago, also brought in a few changes unwarranted.
Often people blame that the new age mothers do not know how to take care of their children adn so hand over a cell phone to their kids. But how many people talk about today’s nuclear families, wherein both the couples most of the times need to work to keep up with the growing expenses. We just end up blaming one particular section of the society but how much are we ready to accept the situation and find a solution towards the same. Sometimes, for us parents screen time is the only way to keep our children entertained so that they can atleast finish basic chores such as cooking and cleaning.
One of the biggest challenges, during this pandemic, that I had to face as a parent was saying No to my child. Telling him No, he cannot come with me to the market. Telling my daughter no, she cannot touch me as soon as I come home was difficult for me to do. It may seem a simple No, but yes, those tiny fragile hearts were hurt. Slowly and steadily the kids learnt how to play at home and stay within the 4 walls. Still, once in a while, they would insist on going outside.
Their sleep cycle, Digestive system everything went for a toss. Their appetite reduced and they slept less, which meant they became more cranky and demanded constant attention. But the challenge did not stop hereonly. It only increased more with time. The online classes were a new set of challenge. Initially, there was too much of back and forth on whether the classes would start for the children or not. Once those classes started, children started crying loudly because they could only see their friends online and not touch them and feel them. That was my most helpless moment. Children never missed their friends and schools so much as much as they had missed them in the past few months.
The online classes were stressful but also a relief somewhere. The Children who were used to screentime, were somewhat able to learn from watching videos but the children, who had no idea, about screen time, were too over whelmed. It was a real challenge for those children to handle everything about online learning. The children had somehow adjusted to the idea of not going outside to play but then seeing the faces of their classmates, they just wanted to go down once again.
From the begining of the month of October 2020, I had slowly started taking my children downstairs for 30 minutes. For the first one week, my daughter would cry at the sight of Lift. Finally, once I managed to take her downstairs, she started getting scared of cats. Infact before the lockdown she loved cats and would beg us to take her downstairs to see the cats. Just like my kids, when their friends came down they also had their own set of challenges. Some children forgot how to ride their cycles. Some children had immense stomach ache if they ran a little bit more. Some children were scared of talking to others.
The children somehow, have been emotionally affected during this pandemic, but how often do we care about our children’s mental health. From the past few days almost all children are on the verge of mental breakdown. Somehow, when they come down these days, they are trying their level best to make up for the time that they lost during the lockdown. Time is something that I cannot bring back, but the least I can do is try to be patient with my children.
This post is part of Blogchatter’s CauseAChatter’ , you can visit their site here to know more about the campaign. https://www.theblogchatter.com/causeachatter.
Aishwarya Says:
I have always been against Glorifying Over Work and therefore, in the year 2021, I have decided to launch this campaign “Balancing Life”and talk about this wrong practice, that we have been following since last few years. I will be talking to and interviewing around 1 lakh people in the coming 2021 and publish their interview regarding their opinion on glamourising Over Work.
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You may also like to read:
Inspirational Woman – Renuka Ray