During this time of studying/working from home, your biggest challenge as a parent may be to make sure that your children don’t use screens on the couch or in bed.
As working professionals, all of us are learning to keep sitting stance stable for efficient work sessions. For children and teenagers, the rules are same. keep bottom part of your body stabilized and your upper body relaxed. Children should sit on a chair, and at a table which are adapted to their height. You can use extra cushions and footrest to position at the table with their elbows at 90 degrees.
- If your kid work on a tablet for homeschooling, make sure they limit the leisure time on the screen. Ask them to strictly follow structured breaks while working on the tablet or computer screen. You can ask them perform schooling activities/tasks away from the screen like paper and pencil writing practices. Help them avoid continuous reading smaller font literature on the screen. Text wrap and increase font size of the read and give a break after every 10 mins.
- Help keep them physically active. You can find some space and time to play with them and exercise physical activities. Give them different obstacle tasks like Yoga, stretching and still jogging. Exercise with them in the morning hours.
- Especially for smaller kids, being on a shorter attention span, help them arrange between structured activities and free play within relatively short intervals. Bear with them as this is something they never experienced in live. No school, no outdoor activity and no chit-chatting with friends. They are also having to deal with you throughout the day. Understand their situation and be very polite with them.
- With the fear of coronavirus around and the time of isolations, keep watching and take a note if there are signs of stress or anxiety in kids. There are lots of little things that you can do as parents to help them better understand and deal with the situation of crises. For example
- Helping them maintain a healthy lifestyle and explain the value of staying fit.
- The benefits of hygienic practices in daily life
- Working on positive thinking
- Distracting them by focusing on something else so that they can utilize this time and learn new things.
- There are chances when your kid appears from nowhere during an important video call you are having with your colleagues or clients. It is absolutely OK to introduce your kids to people on the call. It also helps to give your colleagues a sense of your environment and also gives a standing/respect to your child and save them from the sense of fault.
