COVID has changed the rules of the game, also in our families.

I love the reflection onCOVID-19-19 made by psychologistF. Morellin the newspaper El Mundo, especially with regard to families: “I believe that the universe has its own way of restoring the balance of things – according to its own laws – when they are disturbed. The coronavirus is forcing us to close schools and look for alternative solutions, to reunite mom and dad with their children. It is forcing us to be families.” In an increasingly frenetic world, where we all spend the day running from one place to another, taking things for granted and believing that we control the time, we suddenly stop, which is a completely new situation for us, full of uncertainty and restrictions that can increase every day.

However, we can see a very positive side to all of this: we can take advantage of this time to spend it with our families. How much time do you usually spend doing fun pleasant activities with your children? The time we devote to our kids’ childhood is a decisive factor for their education and the transmission of values. As parents, we are their main points of reference. Their personalities are shaped by taking our words and actions as true. They learn from us. After a study carried out by Nora Kurtin with over 3,400 parents, whose goal was to find out

How much time we spend with our children daily, the result was that during their first 12 years of life we ​​spent around 27,980 hours with them. This translates to three years, two months and nine days. It would be an average of three hours a day from Monday to Friday. It may be more in your particular case, but in reality it is very little time, especially considering that it is very likely that most of that time will be dedicated to tasks such as taking them to or picking them up from school, extracurricular activities, doing homework…

Our excessive number of tasks (housework, social activities…) makes us super busy people and we see how time slips through our fingers. Let’s take advantage of confinement to spend a pleasant time with our families. But what does quality time mean? It means mindfulness time.

It means sharing moments, conversations, tasks and activities with them, so that our children can be active and feel listened to. Let’s also help our children to understand what is going on. They are exposed to a lot of information that their minds cannot process and that can cause them anxiety and fear. Here are some tips that may be useful to you: provide them with information suitable for their ages; teach them some basic hygiene rules to help them control the situation; reassure them by explaining to them that our cities rely on people such as health professionals and security forces who will work to ensure our health and safety; and try to prevent them, as much as possible, from being exposed to the media.

Let us not forget that we are role models for our children as parents and as sons and daughters.

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