New normal

From childhood, we heard many times that outdoor play is so crucial for kids, but today, when everyone is staying in stress and isolation, outdoor play has taken a backseat. 

Kids now understand that it's better to stay at home than going out. The new academic year has started for many kids and they are getting accustomed to studying online and though as parents we keep on telling them to focus on what teacher is teaching, deep down we know that sitting in front of the screen and listening to someone is quite boring and staying focused is quite difficult. But still, parents do what parents need to do. 

Some helicopter parents want to make sure that their child gets full attention (even when the child doesn't want to say anything). so they are glued next to kids and studying again. 

Many times during these classes I seriously pray things to get normal soon, so that at least kids and teachers can have some uninterrupted time without a hyperactive parent around.

Kids also want parents to go away and leave them alone to learn without two people teaching the same thing and in the process making them confused. 

Today in creative writing class my seven-year-old son wrote a story about how a scientist found a cure of covid 19 and saved the world and I wondered if I am also in his list to get away with. Am I also monitoring him continuously and is it time to back off? 

Whatever the case may be but, one thing is clear it's not only us adults, even small kids want their freedom back.  

They don't want a cosseter around them to increase their trouble. They want to play with their friends without any fear and learn the old way while having fun. So, as parents, we should help them rather than making this transition tough for them.

Embracing Anger

 

We often think that anger is a negative emotion, being angry is bad and we should not show our anger. Anger is often the response of fear, excitement, and anxiety. It often comes from the body's flight or fight reaction. Hence anger is crucial for survival. 

But, holding on to anger for a longer period leads to a feeling of despair.

When we hold on to anger it consumes us so it’s always wise to let go of anger because holding anger affects our psychological well-being and quality of life, it takes lots of our energy, it can increase stress and eventually leads to many diseases.

Prolonged anger also affects our relationships with others; it has an impact on our health, our overall behavior.

Anger is an emotion so it should not be curbed instead we should accept and acknowledge anger and work towards our reaction. Because it’s not an emotion that is bad it’s how we react based on it that matters.

Also, we should not blame others for our emotions because when we blame we give away our power and we remain stuck in our anger.

Observe your anger and based on you observation function with maturity. Managing anger does not involve holding it in or avoiding feelings.

Finally, one thing we need to understand about anger is that when we accept it and let it go we begin the process of healing, and that leads to growth.

Don’t judge yourself and others based on anger. Anger is nothing but an emotion and like any other emotion, it is also not permanent. Let your thoughts flow and give yourself an opportunity to grow by accepting and healing.

Be unapologetically you!

 

 

Self Love

Its been more than 2.5 months now that we have decided to self-quarantine ourselves and it's going to be June in a few days and we are still nowhere near normalcy. 

In past months we all have gone through numerous emotional changes. I felt anxious, lonely, nervous, scared, and other gamut emotions many times and it was a difficult time, I still feel these emotions sometimes but since we are deep into this quarantine so, emotions are also learning to be stable now accepting what's normal. 

One thing I have learned in this COVID situation is that I love my company, with all the flaws I still enjoy spending time with myself. I am realizing that I am way more resilient than I give myself credit. 

I learned that we can't control everything so don't focus on those, its easier said than done but when practiced it makes things a bit easy. 

We spend so much time working because there is no line differentiating work and personal life, and most of us get carried away. But taking a break, scheduling downtime is very critical for us, we can't function on autopilot mode. We need to be self-compassionate and give ourselves time to rejuvenate. It's very important to make us efficient and accomplish more. 

Finally, on days when I feel down and find myself stepping into an abyss of negativity, I try to remind myself of everything I am grateful for, all the blessings, everything I have done, things I have accomplished, and what made everything so wonderful. 

Screen time for kids- How much is too much?

This vacation time is normally for visiting grandparents, seeing new places, meeting cousins, and trying new things with grandparents. As kids, we used to wait for our summer vacations to go out and enjoy our vacation without the fear to complete homework for school. Playing for hours, and hours.

But with the current situation, forget about vacations we are all confined in our homes with very limited activities to do and things are even crazier when you have kids around. 

We adults somehow try to convince ourselves to stay at home or to forget our worries in our chores, work, Netflix, or just random Instagram scrolling. But for kids, they don't have all these things as distractions.

We normally plan our day with kids to include reading, some writing activities, drawing, board games, workouts, structured and unstructured playtime. Sometimes I let them help me in house chores, cooking but even after all these kids still feel bored and need something more to do.

At that time like any other parent, I normally give in to screentime. Sometimes it's educational series, sometimes just a random cartoon they want to see on Netflix. But I often find it challenging to understand how much screen time is enough for kids. If they are watching something good should I let them see for more than an hour or should I stop them?

We have some rules for screen time but then I wonder that these rules are for normal times and these are not normal times so should I let them break the rules and let them indulge little more. Sometimes I let them but often I try to maintain a cap on their screen time. 

But even after so many days in quarantine, I am unable to decide how much screen time is appropriate for them now in this situation. 

Break the Stigma

We humans these days give so much importance to our physical health, every influencer on social media, celebrities, people in general everyone only talks about physical health. Workouts, getting lean, eating healthy, IF, keto, gym and nowadays working out at home is the new trend as we are all staying home but why is that hardly anyone speaks about Mental well being.

Of course, staying active and eating clean is important but so is our mental wellbeing. But still, as a society, we have been neglecting mental wellbeing for quite some time now. 

Why is there a stigma around mental health? Why people are not talking about it? 

Considering the difficult phase the entire human race is going through more and more people are facing anxiety, fear, depression but we are all talking about recipes, workout from home, useless challenges.

Recently a friend was going through a difficult time and she had an episode which was completely shocking for all of us because we never knew what was going on. She never talked about her issues, anxiety, or what was bothering her. We always saw this image of a happy person who is busy with her life. Even after her panic attack, she is not ready to talk about it. 

The social stigma attached to mental health leads to discrimination and because of which very few people come out openly and get the required help.

I feel really sad to see her struggle and not open up. I know it's difficult but isn't it normal to talk about your mental state why is it a taboo. 

It's ok to talk about mental health, it's ok to get help, it's ok to not be a perfect picture you see on your Instagram or Facebook.

It's ok to be not ok.

Quarantined

It's been quite a while since I wrote anything here and today all of a sudden I thought of just going through this blog and I couldn't stop myself from writing something here. 

So a lot has changed, it's 2020 and we are going through a hell of a year. Never thought we will ever see a 'Pandemic' in life and here we are all in our house facing this shit. It's almost a month to lock down and things are not that chaotic at home now that we have all adjusted to this new normal in life. 

But there is always this negativity, this sadness that there is a danger around us, which plays with my mind quite often. 

I sometimes see myself getting anxious about small things and that uneasiness never goes away. Anxiety level increases the moment I switch on the news so that has gone out of my schedule for quite some time now. No, I am not following stats of a number of people infected or recovered. It makes me worst.  I think I am just surviving in quarantine with my own rules of staying away from social media as well.

Just connecting with family and a few friends suits me and keeps me sane for now. 

Boys are taking this quarantine differently, one is happy because yes no school and some screen time while the other sometimes have this urge to go out like me and we handle it together. And yes quarantine has definitely increased my cooking time and I am not complaining :)

So yes a lot has happened, from playing boardgame of 'Pandemic' we are now surviving one to tell the tales.