This picture above, is of the early days of COVID pandemic. The facial mask was made more compulsory at that time, than wearing a helmet while riding a two wheeler.
As adults we do not have too many permanent damages in our body or psyche after that enduring about three years of the pandemic. I do not want to underestimate some chronic health related matters in adults that are under investigation attributable to the pandemic.
However, the children had a major loss of two academic years, of not being able to go to school. For the pre-schoolers the school experience got postponed to two more years. The regular schooling in 2022 placed demands on children, who did not have the transition experience of being at school from the age of four years. The loss of two years affected their formative process emotionally, socially, relationally and behaviourally.
The down side of it was the occupation with the visual media. It was not the pre-school children alone who got used to the visual media during the on-line schooling, but infants from about nine months onwards when they could sit on their own, became co-watchers of the visual media for a few hours. When the schools restarted and children returned to school, the younger children continued watching programmes in the TV or mobile phone.
The effects of this is now visible in children, who joined pre-school in their fourth year, showing signs of reduced attention, altered behaviour or poor class room adjustment. Some parents have given up on weaning young children from the TV viewing, as their fondness to animations and cartoons create traction towards the visual media. Those children demand and insist for TV time which parents find it difficult to deny. The prolonged viewing of the visual media and under expose to many childhood habits, outdoor play indoor play, and social contacts which are formative influences for all round child development get denied by this media dependence. The language skills get delayed, as social habits of communication was denied to them for over two years.
During my experience with some families, it has taken them three or more months to give alternate choices for children to pursue, instead of overviewing the TV programs. During this time, parents needed to be active by giving the pre-school children creative activities, indoor and outdoor, to draw children them away from their media dependence.
That is how the family got started, with playing card games, colouring, playing with blocks, tracing and colouring, visiting the children's park in the evenings, going for boating and spending time at the beach, and plan something novel each evening. The parents were surprised how their child became more fond of these activities than the earlier pattern of habitual viewing the visual media.
I have similar stories from other parents. One favourable outcome of this was, children got used to a better sleep-wake rhythm, replacing the late night sleep habit and getting up on time with persuasion to go to school. The parents are happier as the conflict between children and parents are less, as children too have got used to another rhythm.
A teacher mentioned to me that some children habitually sleep during the mid day and afternoon. They were children who slept late. I wish pre-school children would go to bed around 8 pm and get up around 6 am to correspond with the cicardian rhythm of the body. This frees parents to find sometime of their own as a couple before they go to bed.
We still have a box of face masks in our cupboard. I hope it would not be needed for regular use. The recent outbreak of respiratory infections in China, raises an alarm about what might happen if it were to spread!
The pre-school children need a lot of support for them to compensate for the time they lost without regular schooling!
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
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