No one ever imagined they would have to stay home for such a long time. Lockdown has made everyone stay in their home for a month. Everyone is bound to spend their days inside the house and reduce socialization.
This sudden change in everyone’s life has been the toughest. Not just adults are struggling to cope with this change; even kids are equally struggling. Adults can understand situations that are going outside, but kids might not fully understand it.
In this pandemic, you may also have noticed that kids have become quite lazy, bored, unhealthy as they’re restricted from doing any outdoor activities.
Even I experience the same with my teen at the first phase of the lockdown, my teen started to get extremely bored and she was not able to meet her friends. During the lockdown, all she wanted to do was to sleep and have junk food.
During the lockdown, kids are restricted from going to school, meeting their friends, and playing with them, affecting them mentally and physically.
Hence, it would be best if you kept your kids entertained during this movement restriction period.
How To Keep Your Kids Mentally Active?
Most kids are not used to staying at home for 24 hours. All the schools and playgrounds are closed, and they’re not allowed to meet their friends and extended family members. Staying at home and repeating the same activities every day can be mentally exhausting.
Accepting the “new normal” has been challenging for kids, both mentally and physically. You may have heard many news stories where children are getting depressed and aggressive due to lockdown.
Here is how you can keep your kids mentally active during the movement restriction period.”
Teach Them Skills:
Lockdown can be a great time to teach them new stuff and improve their skills. After attending their online classes, children have a lot of free time in hand that can be utilized.
There are many things to teach your kids through the internet, for example. Cooking, Playing an instrument, singing, dancing, self-discipline, personality training, etc.
You can enroll your kids in online learning courses which they are interested in. The internet is like an ocean for learners, and each day can be a new learning day. It keeps them busy and engaged. And those skills can be of great use in their future.
Let Them Make Mistakes And Learn:
You must agree that no one can be perfect and everyone makes some mistakes in their daily lives. It would help if you teach your kids making mistakes is not a problem but repeating the same mistake is a huge problem.
It would be best to teach your kids that mistakes are a part of life and part of the learning process. And they should not be ashamed whenever they make mistakes.
Let them grow, learn, and heal. Let them make their own share of mistakes and correct themselves, it increases their confidence and self-reliability.
Teach them it’s okay to make mistakes, but it is important to try not to make the same mistake again.
Lower Their Screen Time:
During the lockdown, kids’ screen time is increasing by a significant percentage, as kids are using their devices to attend school and for entertainment purposes.
There is so much free time with us in this lockdown, so it is very important not to let our kids indulge in technology. It is necessary to limit your kids’ screen time and take some time out for physical activity.
You should give your kids some tasks to keep them busy and minimize their screen time. You can add some challenges to the task, which will keep kids interested in completing the task.
Learn With Them:
To keep your child mentally active, parent’s participation is extremely important. You can do various activities like painting, cooking, drawing, gardening, cleaning along with your kids.
If the kids are learning anything new, then try to learn it with them. It makes things fun for kids and helps you bond and understand your kids better.
Play Indoor Games:
There are so many board games available to kill time, have fun, and keep you mentally active. Carrom board, Ludo, Chess, Snakes, and ladder are some of them. They’re fun to play with and also keeps the children engaged.
Likewise, there are many other indoor games like hiding n seek, hangman, Pictionary, puzzles, card games, etc.
Indoor games are not just entertaining, but they will also activate your brain. Keeping your kids engaged with indoor games will also help to reduce their device usage rate.
How To Keep Your Kids Physically Active?
Keeping your kids physically active is as important as keeping them mentally active. It can be quite a task for the parents to keep the little ones away from smartphones and indulge in physical activities. So, here are few ways you can keep your child physically active:
Exercise:
There are so many physical exercises that kids can do at home, it is one of the healthiest forms of physical exercise.
However, there is a misconception that only going to the gym is considered exercising. Many people also think that they cannot perform exercise whenever they are inside the home which is totally false.
One can do their basic exercise when they are at home, but make sure that you are doing your exercise correctly. As you might be aware that if you do a small mistake while doing exercise you may end up hurting your muscles and bones.
Running, doing yoga or exercise, online martial arts training, walks around the house, etc can be the best way to keep your children physically active in this lockdown period.
Eat Healthily:
To be physically active, it is very important to eat a healthy and balanced diet. It would help if you keep your kids away from junk and packaged food.
Junk foods are not just unhealthy, but they will also make your kids lethargic, lazy, and unfit. Most kids are obsessed with eating junk food and all kinds of sweets.
It would help if you taught them about the consequences of having junk food all the time. Make a deal with your kids to give them fast food or junk food once a month so that they will not insist you have it all the time.
Also, you can make some fast food at your home only which can be healthier than buying from restaurants. Moreover, you can make new healthy dishes at home and be creative with the food presentation which can attract your kids.
Make Fitness a Priority:
Fitness should be a way of life in every household. Not only in schools but fitness should be encouraged at home as well. You should always make sure to involve yourself along with your children while doing any fitness activities.
It would be best if you were a role model for your kids; then, only the kids actively participate in physical activities. You should fill your children with a positive attitude towards fitness and a healthy lifestyle from a very small age.
Get Active As a Family:
Try to look for activities that you can do together as a family and enjoy. Small things like cleaning the house together, gardening together, and walking together can be really beneficial.
It helps to keep you and your family active and helps to develop the bond you share. You can make your lockdown memorable for your kids by organizing small family events.
Give Chores To Do:
It would be best to teach your kids to do some of the house chores this is a perfect time to teach your kids some house chores. It will make them responsible and prepare for the future.
Teaching your kids to do basic house chores during their teenage will help them to be responsible for their house chores when they move out. You should not spend extra time teaching your kids how to do laundry or wash utensils when they grow up.
Basic house chores that you can teach your kids during the lockdown are: taking out the garbage, making beds, sweeping the house, mopping, washing a few utensils.
This helps the kids learn basic household works and at the same time, it can be a good form of physical exercise for the kids.
Importance of Physical Activities
Technology has made our work effortless; by pressing a single button, you can complete most of the works. This overuse of technology is making everyone lazy and extremely dependent on technology.
You can complete most of your work sitting in one place, which has reduced your physical exercise. To remain healthy and fit, you must move your body or do any physical activity.
Lack of exercise is one of the main reasons for most of the health issues this generation faces.
Earlier, people used to go out, involve themselves in physical work. Nowadays, technology has been a big part of our lives, and it has definitely degraded our health.
A good amount of physical activity like walking, jogging, running, cycling can be really beneficial if done regularly. It keeps you active, lowers your risk of any serious illness, strengthens, keeps you fresh.
It also helps to reduce stress and make you happy. These healthy habits must be adapted to get benefits in the long run.
Indoor activities
Staying home all day and night is one of the toughest things that we all are facing during this lockdown. Your kids might have been bored with their digital devices and might be insisting on you to do some fun activities inside the house. Here I have mentioned some of the fun activities that you can do with your kids during the movement restriction period:
- Treasure hunt
- Whisper games
- Kids yoga
- Dancing
- Name that Tune
- Family Photo Bingo
- Storytelling
- Family Room Picnic, etc.
Important Tips To Follow
- Don’t let your kids watch television or use phones for more than an hour a day apart from using their devices for their online classes.
- Encourage them to read books.
- Get the kids to bed at the same time every night. Don’t change their routine, and also try to include bedtime stories.
- Teach them to make their own bed.
- Don’t let them indulge in junk food more often.
- Help them develop the habit of doing some form of physical exercise.
- Don’t give them food containing caffeine, extra sugar, or packaged food.
Conclusion
During the lockdown, parents are concerned with the physical and mental problems that may come with less time spent outdoors. So, you must try your best to indulge your kids in any physical or mental activity.
Lockdown is a tough time; even the kids may have so many things going on in their minds. So, listen to them, talk to them, understand them and try not to be too harsh.
Most importantly, try to spend quality time with them. These kinds of free days may not come again, so make sure to seize the moments and develop a beautiful bond with your child.
Here in this article, I have mentioned some of the ideas of keeping your kids physically and mentally active during the lockdown. These are some of the activities that I did with my teen, I would love to know how did you spent the lockdown with your kids and what are the activities that you performed as a family. Please feel free to mention them in the comment section below.
