With the COVID 19 crisis and the lockdown, I suddenly find myself in an unusual situation. Schools have been unexpectedly closed from mid-March and I find my 13-year-old daughter confined at home ever since. Her regular timings and routine activities have been completely disrupted. Not only she, but we all in the family have been staying indoors.
Working from home has become a norm these days. My daughter has been sulking about the fact that she cannot attend her school anymore. She cannot meet her school friends or her teachers. I comfort her and try to enliven her mood. Teachers have started online classes; all subjects are being taught and explained through google meet. Assignments are given, and the teachers take feedback from each student! Initially, my daughter found the whole arrangement quite weird and perplexing. But the coronavirus is enabling us to make all impossible things possible. Thanks to the digital era and the internet revolution, we are able to bridge all the gaps.
Coping with social distancing is not easy, especially for school-going children. My daughter is in High School. She misses her friends deeply. I try to spend more time with her, lest she feels lonely. It is no doubt a difficult phase for my daughter. Now no more sports, no music, no dramas, no debates, and no competition. She and her friends cannot meet their favorite teachers or go for school picnics, or tours or camps, or any school exhibitions. They cannot casually go to meet their grandparents or visit cousin’s houses nor attend any birthday parties together.
I do not see any tweens hangout together like before. It is sad but true. They are at an age where they need to communicate with friends and peers for their development. I do remember how friends were so important to me when I was 14. So, I try to be empathetic to her. I try my best to help her cope with the impact of the Covid-19 quarantine.
I have structured her day’s timings now so that she doesn’t feel isolated or lonely. She regularly attends her school hours in the morning. I try to maintain normalcy in her routine as far as possible. In her free time, I encourage her to connect with her school friends via mobiles, video chats, and other social media platforms. In the evenings we watch television together or even watch Netflix. Some of the programs shown on Netflix are my daughter’s favorites. Staying at home so as to flatten the curve of the coronavirus has brought my daughter closer to me than ever before.
There are trying times when I have to keep a lot of patience as she fails to remember the basic things. There are days when she forgets to drink her chocolate milk for more than an hour as she is busy texting her friends, sometimes she forgets to put her towels and bedsheets in place, sometimes her hairpins are strewn all over the bed, sometimes she forgets to put her used clothes in the washing machine, and many a time she stays awake late in the night playing video games even when the light is shut. But they are minor things and can be ignored.
Nearly all the tweens from our area are following social distancing rules. There are posts going viral about some people not using masks. I see some older men stealthily taking a walk in the garden early in the morning without putting their masks on. They appear to give a damn to the lockdown rules.
On the contrary, the tweens have managed to adapt to the pandemic quite well. So is my daughter. She is now more often connecting with her friends on the phone. She is also interacting with her English and maths teachers in their virtual office hours to solve her difficult problems. She is attending a virtual dance class. Through social media she is making new friends from different countries, she is chatting with her cousins more now from the distant countries, she is making DIY craft projects or even posting her photos on Instagram.
She has dealt to cope with the losses and pave a new direction for herself. Her laughter video chats with her friends enliven my mood as I watch the agonizing hell news every day. Not only she, but all her friends in the neighborhoods have also adjusted brilliantly to the challenging times. You kids have remarkable spirits! Kudos to you all!
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