My eldest two bicker a lot, although I am sure that deep down, they love each other. They do love each other, don’t they?
Anyway, when schools were shut a month ago, confining them to the house, their squabbles escalated — they would fight about everything and nothing, even the way one looked at the other.
They also started telling on each other more, with the snitch hoping that I will castigate or punish the offender. This progression had me greatly worried and questioning my parenting skills.
It seemed that I spent more time playing referee instead of working, a factor that frustrated me, and which managed to draw me into their petty fights.
Before I go further, perhaps it’s necessary to tell you a little about these two, to lend my story some perspective. My first is 10 years and being child number one, I have noticed that he tends to flex his muscles a lot and is fond of ordering number two around.
I have to confess that I am partly to blame for this, having once mentioned that when the grown-ups are not around, he is the chief whip.
Number two is eight, and she is as assertive and headstrong as they come. She takes offence at being ordered around by her elder brother, who, she must tell herself, is not that taller than her to begin with.
Her resistance to his imperious ways almost always ends up with a spat, which has me wondering whether other siblings this age fight or whether it is just my children.
I was, therefore, immensely relieved when week three into isolation, the bickering began to go down. I think it finally dawned on them that having been cut off from their friends in school indefinitely, as well as the cousins they spent most weekends with, they only had each other to play with, so they might as well get along.
As I write this, I can hear them running around laughing in glee, a sound that was not very common before Covid-19 came and changed how families live and interact with each other.
It’s true; there are some good things emerging from this gloomy period. My prayer is that after we contain this virus and they go back to interacting with their friends, they will hold onto this new-found friendship.
This experience with my children has taught me that children, too, are struggling with the changes that have been brought about by this pandemic.
Being locked up at home week after week, wrenched from the vibrant social life that school had accorded them, is taking a toll on them, and if parents are not conscious of this they might end up with stressed or even depressed children.
Research has shown that children are, by nature, social beings, and that depriving them of this socialisation might affect their development.
But since we are still in isolation and have no idea how long this will go on, experts say that this need to socialise must be met at home.
Parents I have talked to say they manage to meet this need by coming up with activities that require everyone’s participation, such as doing the house work together, eating together and cooking together — basically, spending quality time together where family members actually get to really talk and listen to one another.
It will also help to read up on the warning signs that could signify anxiety in your child and how you can alleviate it. Who ever imagined a period such as this?
