Dear Editor,
Since March 2nd we have been in unchartered waters in Guyana. Now, with schools closed, the zoo, various places children go during school breaks are now off-limits and parents are working at home (or wishing they were working). We are living through a global pandemic. What is a parent to do in Guyana?
Yes, even as we are together with our children 24/7, this is to remind ourselves to let the children be children! The good news is: Children don’t need constant stimulation.
The idea that parents have to enrich every second of their child’s life was a crazy lie even before the Covid-19. Children never needed all that scholarly stimulation and all those online classes and “teachable” moments. Do you know how Einstein spent much of his time as a child?
His father apparently gave him a compass when he was five. Story has it that he marvelled at the fact that no matter what position he put the compass in, the needle always pointed north. And he spent hours with that compass and…… building houses using cards!
That’s right! Just imagine young Albert, balancing cards and learning absolutely nothing. Except … well … patience … and concentration … science and physics.
The point being not that you should run out and get your little munchkins a compass or a pack of cards so they can win the Nobel Prize before school physically resumes. (In fact in these times, don’t run out for anything!) The point is that children have always been bored, and they’ve always come up with things that seem like a total waste of time to adults (I’m instantly thinking of that ridiculous “slime”!) but maybe they aren’t.
I’m sure there are the parents right now of older children who are worried their children are turning into video games fanatics. But is that terrible? Nothing is interesting to children (or any of us) if it’s not at least a little challenging. So even if a child is working on passing a level or achieving the goal of whatever is the biggest video game out now (I have a few more years before my toddler reaches this stage – in my days it was Mario on a N64, Pacman and duck hunt) he is learning focus, frustration, tolerance and determination. Those are transferable skills, not wasted hours. Video games are absorbing because they turn kids on, not off. So don’t worry about those.
Don’t worry, either, if a child seems to be slacking off in the homework department. Think back on how much you loved Easter, August and Christmas vacations. Wasn’t it a huge relief to finally not worry about grades and tests?
Before Covid-19, childhood anxiety levels were going through the roof. In a July 2019 Pew Research Center report, 7 out of 10 teens said anxiety and depression were “major problems among their peers.”
Now children have, basically, a long, strange, twisted vacation. Yes, for many, school is still continuing, with all these online classes the Ministry and schools implemented but it’s not taking the same number of hours, and all their after-school activities are cancelled, too. This opens up a vast swath of free time that many children have simply never had before! I urge you to take advantage of this potential of turning it into a period of growth — mentally and emotionally.
Though not every youngster will become an Einstein while under this lockdown, many seem to be turning into the children they would have been had they grown up a generation or two earlier, with more time to discover their real interests and hobbies (remember those days?), before childhood got so structured and busy.
It really hit me last evening as our son had simple joy in tossing little shredded paper from a homemade Easter basket at me shrieking excitedly “Got you!” He then proceeded to go look for his father and he did the same with him with it landing smack on his dad’s plate. A month or two ago, it would never have reached that stage but last evening we were both so chill and he was just being a child exploring and playing… Gleefully.
What I mean to convey is: It’s all okay. Our children will be fine. In fact, they’re growing, simply because children are always growing and learning from everything — building houses of cards, imagination pretend games, running in the backyard in the mornings, climbing a tree, playing with dirt and mud, doing chores with mommy, baths, helping with projects with daddy, building something, jumping in muddy puddles, seeking out insects outdoors, looking at videos, but most of all from that vital resource more rare and precious than toilet paper: free time.
I urge you all to think of the lockdown as a Master’s Programme in chilling. You can help your children so much by simply stepping back.
Yours faithfully,
Mommy V
