It was March of this year and we were in the middle of our school term, the last of the academic year. The man of the house had returned from an international trip (In late January )where at the Narita Airport people were being screened and checked for having traveled to China. Since he returned there were little news snippets about Covid 19 making its presence felt in our southern neighbor – Singapore. We were quietly going about our normal life and suddenly by March, Malaysia saw a rapid increase in the number of cases. The government announced a MCO (Movement Control Order) which is referred to as a lock-down. 

Life came to a standstill. The first few weeks were very scary. The bright side was that all of us were together in the same town. There are so many families with one or more members stuck in another town or country. I counted my blessings and we were kept busy with the online schooling. 

What an amazing job the children did during this sudden shift of scenarios. The school admin, all the teachers threw themselves into ensuring that teaching never stopped or stalled. The children were engaged, they had fun and the best part was that they were actually involved with each other and their teachers on a more personal level. The way this happened is that they interacted with each other from their homes, so everyone saw everyone’s home environment, met the parents, met the pets, met the younger siblings, etc.  

The children also had online exams and it was nice to see how quickly systems were put into place for them and how the children were evaluated at the end of it all.

I’ve watched my younger one (9YO) be quite interested in Covid-19 in March, he told me enthusiastically about where it originated from, how it quickly spread, who the whistle-blower doctor was (yes he knew the word – whistle-blower) I was pretty impressed. But this very enthusiasm saw a steady, slow decline as days rolled into weeks and weeks rolled into months. He stopped talking about the updates from WHO, or from what he read online in newspapers. He became quieter and I saw restlessness growing inside him. 

To help with this, we started playing lots of games inside the house like UNO, cards games, chess, monopoly, etc. We had kept TV and gaming to a bare minimum, and wanted the children to really explore living without these electronics to keep them entertained. We have loads of books at home, and the children love reading. But I saw that they resisted reading and felt more comfort in watching cartoons or a TV show or even a movie on Netflix. 

Try as I might, I kind of failed to keep my children away from Netflix. I really couldn’t figure out what more I could do to keep my children happy and active and engaged all at once. 

Luckily, the company where the man of the house works, had a wonderful program setup for families throughout the lock-down. There was a family fun day, when we played lots of games with other families, there was quizzing based on movies, guessing characters from blurred or zoomed out images, there was identifying the sound game, there was scavenger hunt too. The day this event happened, my children were very happy. Not only did I see them compete readily during all the various games, but I also saw their enthusiasm, vigor and joy return! After this, the company had a month long program, where every day of the week was dedicated to some activity like yoga, cooking, zoomba, circuit breaker workouts, motivational talks, etc.

Overall I was happy to have some help to keep my children in a good mood. 

Another thing we consciously did was introduce them to cooking and baking. My older one (15YO) has since taken up making lunch every Sunday. We baked cakes, a variety of breads, we made baked vegetables, and basically saw to it that the children did some parts of all these activities on their own. Thanks to this, my younger one baked a cake very recently for the older one’s birthday! I was very impressed and thoroughly delighted. 

My struggle was that I am not a mother who plans out the day for her kids. I let kids decide what they want to do. I don’t believe in structural play. I have always given them the freedom to access their desires about what they feel like doing at that time, checking if that (what they want to do) is available, if not, then they come up with another option for themselves. So when during the lock-down, they failed to come up with a variety of activities to do, it was up to me to come up with options, and since I have never done it, I found it quite challenging to come up with activities for them to engage in! 

The lock-down did play on their mind, their creativity, their enthusiasm, their mood. This phase has been very challenging for everyone, I agree, but children suffered the most.

The other side of lock-down was the lifting of the lock-down. I was faced with a tough decision to either send the children to school or keep them at home and continue the online schooling option. The dilemma was really tough. 

On one hand is the fact that yes, the situation has improved a lot and life was getting back to normal, the old normal. Offices were open (in a limited way), malls opened up, restaurants opened up for dine-in customers, spas, salons, and other small businesses also opened up. The local schools had opened up almost a month back. The other side was the worry due to the fact of how the number of cases had increased when schools reopened. To add to this was the fact that children needed a normal life, they were suffocating in a only-home, no-mobility environment. They needed to physically get a sense of being normal and being with their friends, their teachers, etc.

This was one question that needed very careful deliberation and thinking that was multi-pronged. It is one of the toughest decisions that I have ever had to take as a parent.

End of the day, I did decide to place my trust in the ministry officials who came and inspected the school and all the SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) that they had put in place for the school reopening. The school management had been sending out very detailed emails about what they are doing about the safe physical distancing, where the kids will eat, how they will use the washrooms, every minute detail. I mustered up all the courage I could and got them ready for school, slathered on some essential oils to boost their immunity and sent them off.

Our first week ended today, and I am happy with the school systems and also with transporter for keeping everything as promised (temperature checking, sanitizers). The children are chirpy again and I as their mom is super happy to see that. Yes I still will worry about their safety and hygiene and distancing, but I will take each day as it comes and pray for the wellness of each and everyone. I think what I have understood so far is that we need more kindness, more empathy and even more love for us as well as for everyone around us to overcome this testing time in our lives.