The COVID-19 pandemic has been a challenging experience for many families, as it brought in many changes. From implementing stricter sanitation practices to managing the kids’ online lessons, parents often find themselves juggling a lot of things. To help you go through these times, here are some useful pandemic parenting tips and tricks you can employ.
Pandemic parenting tip no. 1: Create some structure
One of the biggest challenges of parenting during this time is going through all the activities that you have to accomplish during the day. While you already have a hectic schedule pre-COVID, the pandemic has introduced new things that throw off that schedule. As such, it will help to create a new structure for the family’s daily routine.
When creating your new home schedule, the goal should be to come up with something that your kids can easily adapt to. Take into consideration the various activities they like to do and incorporate these into the routine. Another handy tip here is break down your daily schedule into smaller 30-minute time blocks to make them more manageable. One example of such a schedule is shown below.
Note that you don’t need to be very strict with the schedule that you create. Adding a bit of flexibility helps you better adjust it in case of changes in routine. This also gives your kids more freedom in their activities instead of being conscious whether time is up.
Scheduling schoolwork
A particular activity that you have to properly schedule is schoolwork. How you incorporate it depends largely on the arrangement made by your kids’ school when it comes to distance learning. Since most schools require students to go online at specific times for virtual classes, you would want to structure your kids’ activities around that time.
Beyond that online classes, it would be a good idea to break kids’ schoolwork time into smaller chunks. Sandwich these schoolwork periods in between activities that your kids have chosen. By giving them this option, your kids can better adapt to the routine you are developing. They also gain a sense of agency for organizing their own routines.
Pandemic parenting tip no. 2: Address your children’s concerns
While they might appear happy go lucky on the outside, kids can be under a lot of stress as they try to understand how the CoVID-19 pandemic has affected their lives. As such, it is an important part of pandemic parenting to help them address their concerns.
Here, you need to recognize and acknowledge your children’s feelings. In most cases, they will be telling you outright, listen attentively. On the other hand, you should be more active in asking them if you think that they are stressed. This constant communication helps your kids be more open to the concerns that they might have.
In this situation, you can use guiding questions to help your kids know more about their feelings. For example, you can ask them “How do you feel not being able to see your friends for a long time?” Once they start telling you, ask them how they think they can cope up with the situation. This helps them have a more positive outlook about the current pandemic.
Responding to their questions
Kids will also likely have a lot of questions for you about the COVID-19 pandemic. Be ready to answer these as honestly as you can. In particular, you should respond to the various news that they read. Tell them what the situation is like and explain to them what they can do to help. You can even do some reading together to learn more about the topic.
You should also talk to them about your feelings during the situation. Explain how you are coping up with all of it. Also, assure them that everything will be fine in the future. This will put them at ease and also work as a model of how they can overcome their worries.
Pandemic parenting tip no. 3: Employ positive discipline
The stresses brought about by the pandemic is also going to influence the behavior of everyone in the house. Your kids can become more short-tempered due to the limited activities that they can do at home. And this makes it easier for misunderstandings and conflicts to arise between siblings or between them and you.
Utilizing positive discipline is a better way of resolving these conflicts and dealing with misbehavior. Here, you are not punishing your kids for something “wrong.” Rather, you would want them to explain to them what the right behavior should be. Additionally, you want your kids to adapt to that better behavior more.
Using rewards and privileges the right way is one step in building positive behavior. Give your kids rewards that they won’t normally receive during regular days. This helps them notice the right behavior they are doing more and adapt to it. But you don’t want to overdo it, as this can distract them from the true purpose of the exercise.
Dealing with misbehavior
When dealing with infighting among your kids, you need to fully understand where the conflict is coming from. Often, these are caused by frustrations due to not being able to do the things that they can usually do. There might also be jealousy between them that is triggering the behavior.
Instead of threatening them with punishment, you should address these frustrations first. Attend to the more emotionally/physically affected sibling first but don’t forget about the other one. Once both have calmed down, explain why their actions are bad, and teach them how to avoid such fights.
Use these moments to further teach them about self-discipline. Ask them what the consequence will be had they continued fighting or misbehaving. You can then guide them to think about what kind of positive behavior they should have employed. This helps them become more introspective of their actions and better control their temper.
Keep everyone in line during the pandemic
Pandemic parenting is arguably going to be a lot harder than regular parenting. But it is not impossible to pull off. By staying calm and following the tips here, you will keep everyone in the house in line and safe while you wait for better days ahead.