The coronavirus forces us to be family again
COVID has changed the rules of the game, also in our families.
I love the reflection onCOVID-19made by psychologistF. Morelliin the newspaper El Mundo, especially with regard to families: “I believe that the universe has its own way of restoring balance to things, according to its own laws, when they are altered. The coronavirus forces us to close schools and look for alternative solutions, to put mom and dad with their children again. It is forcing us to be families.” In an increasingly frenetic world, where we all spend our days running from one place to another, taking things for granted and believing that we control time, suddenly, we come to a 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 this: we can take advantage of this time to spend with our families. How much time do you usually spend doing fun and enjoyable activities with your children? The time we dedicate to our children’s 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 more than 3,400 parents, whose objective 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. That 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 so little time, especially considering that it is very likely that most of that time will be spent on tasks such as taking them to or picking them up from school, extracurricular activities, doing their homework…
Our excess of duties (work, household chores, social activities…) makes us super busy people and we see how time slips through our fingers. Let’s use confinement to spend some quality time with our families. But what does quality time mean? It means time of full attention.
It means sharing moments, conversations, tasks and activities with them, so that our children can be active and feel heard. Let’s also help our children understand what is happening. They are exposed to a lot of information that their minds cannot process and that can cause anxiety and fear. Here are some tips that may be helpful: provide them with age-appropriate information; Teach them some basic hygiene rules to help them control the situation; reassure them by explaining that our cities have people like health professionals and security forces who will work to ensure our health and safety; and try to prevent them from being exposed to the media as much as possible.
