Tips For Healthy Parenting During Covid-19 Pandemic
Hi All mommies, I hope you all are doing well to cope up with this pandemic. My name is Prachi Jain, a mother of 2 children – 1 is 5 yr old, and the other is 36 yrs old (my husband). Today we all are witnessing the worldwide pandemic SARS Covid 19, where the situation has been named ‘The New Normal.’
But do you really think there is anything normal these days? As a working woman, I face many challenges, and I think all mommies, working or non-working, are facing the same challenges during this difficult phase. For all mothers, kids are the priority above everything else. So, be it education, feeding kids, taking care of their health and medicines, we must be on top of everything.
Not only this, but it also goes along with office and other household chores, considering that most of us have replaced ourselves with the maids too. Wooofff…. That’s too much. Right!!! I would like to describe my experience in detail and share a few ideas that might help working mothers handle all the responsibilities to a certain extent.
Online Classes
For the last 1 year, kids are having online classes due to which their screen time has increased drastically, which is impacting their eyes, mental and physical health. In physical classes, we were not required to engage with the child so much with their studies as we do now. Firstly, spend time sitting with them during the classes and then also make them do self-study so that they don’t lag behind.
Where is the time left for office work? Well, I think we can make time for that too. There is a lot of material available on YouTube for every age and standard. The activity sheets have a fun factor to them so that kids enjoy practicing the concepts. I use this technique to teach my kid, and trust me; he enjoys studying this way. Not only he but even I don’t realize we have gone ahead of what the teacher has covered without I spending much time sitting with him.
I just have to make those worksheets for him, and he does it on his own while I complete my office work. And since he is ahead of the teacher, I don’t even have to spend much time during online sessions because he already knows the concepts. You must try this; it works.
Emotional Balance
Since kids have been restricted to homes, though they are not able to explain their feeling in words, they show it in their behavior. It is on us whether we can read those signs of stress that the kids express through their behavior. Sometimes children misbehave, which can make us upset. They feel bored and thus frustrated. Now that the parents are already under stress from all the daily tasks, kids’ frustration gets added to ours, and it becomes a balloon ready to explode any day.
Mothers, let’s not be unfair to our kids. I know it’s challenging, but we can solve this problem too. There are various activities in which we can engage our children and games that kids can enjoy playing even alone, for example:
- Dart game helps increase their concentration and teaches them the lesson of ‘never lose hope’ and simultaneously gives a sense of achievement.
- Tambola – Helps our little ones read all the numbers from 1 to 99, and number searching in the ticket also helps improve their concentration.
- Word Antakshari – I often play with my kid while I am cooking or mopping or doing any household work. This way, he learns new words, and I don’t even come to know when I finished my work.
Healthy Diet
I think most of us have started cooking everything at home that we would have otherwise ordered from outside. Yes, it involves time and effort, but isn’t it great!!! We have actually become a ‘Chef.’ So we have started eating healthy food, have been focusing on improving our immunity which, irrespective of Corona or no Corona, is anyways good for us.
Did we do it in the pre-Corona era? A big ‘NO.’ With all this, please don’t forget to take care of your own health because ‘Jaan hai to Jahan hai.’ If we are healthy, we can take care of our entire family.
So, please just take 5 mins out for yourself before going to bed and just pamper yourself by saying ‘I am a wonderful woman and I am my favorite’… Meditate for just 5 mins and go to a sound sleep so that you are ready to take the challenges the next day will throw at you.
