Author – Nidhi Somani
“Nidhi Somani is a mother of 2 boys, a writer, an entrepreneur with MSc degree in Finance and Economics from the London School of Economics.”
Just when we were sitting to worry and ponder about what our kids will be doing during their term break, the universe had other things planned. All of a sudden, without any notice we were given 21 days with our kids at home. For us in Kolkata, we had 7 days before that as well.
We usually worry about such a situation, What we need to think is that whether we worry because we need our time out or is it because we need our kids to learn everything that all other kids know. If A knows X and B knows Y then why does my kid not know X and Y. We worry about ‘entertaining’ and ‘occupying’ our kids from time to time.
This pandemic due to COVID-19 came without a warning for us to stack up on material for new activities, games or other things. This came as a blow and has made us so creative that we are surprising ourselves every day. Simple things at home are making for such fun play.
I am looking at the kids at home and I am wondering, why do we use the word ‘entertaining’. We entertain guests, we entertain our business contacts, we don’t entertain our kids. Rather, we engage them.
Yes, we want them to be productive, we want to keep them away from falling behind when schools start again, but we want them to be happy. Don’t we? They are not our models to outdo the mothers on their Instagram posts.
Now, more than any other holiday season, more than any other break, we need to be with them and let them be themselves at the same time. If this time is tough on you, it’s tough on them too.
They are resilient. My kids at home who hated being without an outing even on a weekend have been home for the past 9 days now. They show no signs of boredom or frustration. We worry about them getting bored, we worry about what to do next but they are happy just by listening to music and dancing for hours. The lockdown and these kids make me realize things that we think are so normal but are so mundane. The shoes we own, the places we eat, the toys we buy, to be honest, today they are of no significance. We all find our peace in being together, and in our happy places.
