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Marketing Officer, Jon Duckworth, writes about what being a parent in lockdown is like and the positives of more family time.

These certainly are unprecedented times, yet, for many, day to day life continues, albeit differently.

This new normal, of course, brings its own hardships, great and small: juggling working from home with home-schooling the children; estrangement from our nearest and dearest; money worries and job fears; concerns for our futures; loneliness and isolation. For people who live to work even having extra hours to fill will be a challenge if those hours are usually filled for them.

But in spite of all the uncertainty, for a lot of us there are some positives to be found and, for me, it has been more time with my family.

Those of us now furloughed or working from home, for example, have unexpectedly been released from the grind of the daily commute.  The change to less hurried get-readies in the morning and less harried evening meals and bedtimes has been psychologically beneficial for me, as has spending more time at home with the family generally.

Freed somewhat from the pressure of spending money on entertainments and travel, we have taken pleasure in the simple things. How many of us will have been gardening, going for long, appropriately socially-distanced walks, reading the books we somehow never got around to before, and rediscovering the joy of jigsaw puzzles, board games, knitting and needlepoint? Surely the reported supermarket shortages of flour are due, in part, to more of us home-baking with the kids.

Lessons learned when home-schooling

Working from home presents challenges, undoubtedly, and the biggest one for us and many other families has been juggling home-schooling and work responsibilities. Indeed, the most stressful days have been those when we possibly tried too hard to turn the living room into the classroom. I expect a few of us will have discovered that we are not natural teachers and, I suspect, when it comes to their own children that applies to some actual teachers too! The absolute low point came when attempts to get our eight-year-old to count in tens led to an outburst of tears and a day-long sulk (and that was just the adults).

But there have been highlights too, and I sincerely hope that, when our children look back, they will remember how they couldn’t see their friends or go on holiday but that we played more games, tried new things and looked after each other.

Making the most of a captive audience

Our children often get lost to their smart devices, but lockdown has been a great opportunity to introduce them to classic films including the 1984 Karate Kid which our youngest seemed spellbound by, books read aloud by the light of a virtual fireside, and music – including all of us trying to hold the famous long note in Bill Withers’ ’Lovely Day’.

Taking the classroom outside

Our children’s school adapted brilliantly to the lockdown, providing daily activities and engaging with pupils through Microsoft Teams, but our best days have been those when we have been able to combine learning with our daily exercise. I was reminded of Loughborough University’s own research on Forest Schools and the benefits of outdoor learning for young children. During lockdown, we were able to combine maths and science learning, PE and weekly topics with walks in the woods or trips to the bottom of the garden. The children will remember chalk drawings on the pavement, reading on the rooftop and gathering rocks to weigh. 

Acquiring new skills and interests

I bemoaned electronic devices above, but they have their place. With some developers making their apps and online resources free during the lockdown we have been able to enhance our children’s learning with animation, video and music-making apps. They have been learning new skills to enable them to complete and submit their work electronically using PowerPoint and the like. Online escape rooms have helped developed their logic and problem-solving abilities. YouTube art tutorials and slime-making videos have enabled them to get creative. Live-streamed tours of zoos, parks and museums have broadened their horizons and online Facebook pub quizzes have tested their general knowledge. Technology aside, they have also learned how to make pom-poms which then formed the basis for a diorama of the solar system. All of these are things I am not sure we would be doing were it not for the lockdown.

The sense of community

Finally, I think it has been important for our children to see how communities can and do rally together in times of crisis.  ‘Look for the helpers’ is the much-memed quote from US TV personality Mr Rogers, but I think it has been truly life-affirming for our children to recognise not only the hard work and dedication of health workers, care workers, scientific researchers and others on the front line, but also the way we care for each other. Enquiring after the health and wellbeing of elderly neighbours, waving across the street to people we barely acknowledged before, writing letters and cards for the grandparents we can’t visit, supporting local initiatives designed to help the most vulnerable. Despite the hardship, they’ve been able to see examples of society at its best too.

And so, whether our way of life is changed irrevocably by COVID-19, or whether we eventually ease all the way back to The Old Normal, I already know there are some things I will miss from this time. Wouldn’t it be nice to think that when we’ve finally said goodbye to coronavirus, we might keep the kindness? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could find ways to incorporate more of this beneficial family time into our lives post-lockdown? This pandemic has already changed so much in our world. Wouldn’t it be nice if some things changed for the better?