My Kids Are Turning Into an Alien Species Thanks to The Pandemic
They have become antisocial and grumpy
It is a well-recognised fact that social interaction is crucial for our mental and emotional health. Another indisputable fact is that the pandemic has affected our everyday lives, and the level of our social interaction has dramatically gone down, resulting in far-reaching implications.
Most of us are suffering from stress and anxiety these days. It is one thing to be irritable and frustrated; it is a whole lot different when besides being irritable yourself, you have to deal with equally cranky kids. The uncertainty has taken a toll on their emotional well-being too with the lockdown and schools being closed.
I feel that my kids are living on auto mode these days. Their motto in life seems to be:
Eat. Sleep. Game. Repeat
‘All play and no work makes Jack a dull boy’ defines them these days. I’m thankful to them for squeezing their online lessons in between their ‘busy’ schedule. I understand that it requires an enormous amount of energy and effort to walk to their room and sit in front of their laptops, especially when they have to walk to and fro to get their things in one place — which should be in the first place, instead of being spread all around the apartment.
I’m still keeping up with my vain attempts to limit some of their screen time and make them do something else. My son thinks there is nothing else to do in life if he’s not allowed to play Xbox or to play cricket indoors — which is his favourite past time besides Xbox and has caused quite a bit of damage to the lamps and curtains in our living room. He starts his rant of ‘I’m bored’, ‘I’ve nothing else to do’ whenever I ask him to do something else.
My kids had been speaking an incomprehensible language with each other a lot lately. It contained words like ‘noob’, ‘v bucks’, ‘bot’, ‘emotes’, ‘battle pass’ etc. I’d been ignoring their mindless chatter and trying to focus on my writing, but things got out of hand one particular instance when they had a big fight about who was better. ‘Better at what’, I asked them as I tried to calm them down before I lost it myself — they say I’ve got a bad temper these days, that’s strange; I thought I had it under control.
It turned out everything was about this game called ‘Fortnite’, which they’d been playing day and night. I reminded myself I’ve to keep up with these things if I want to maintain a ‘cool mom’ persona, so I asked them to tell me everything there was to know. I learned that ‘noob’ was a short form for ‘newbie’, which is strange considering ‘newbie’ is already a slang term — why would you have slang for a slang — doesn’t make sense, does it?
How they attend their online lessons is a comical tale altogether. I still have to learn how you can listen in to the headphones and have a chat with somebody simultaneously, but my kids seem to have mastered this art. My daughter calls this multi-tasking; I call this nonsense.
The other day she woke up five minutes before her lesson and attended that lesson in bed with one eye open only; in her defence, she says she was half awake and thought her effort was praiseworthy. My son will spend his time playing, and as soon as his lesson starts, he’ll realise he needs the washroom. Yesterday he was shouting from the washroom because he wanted me to sit and listen to what his teacher was discussing. I couldn’t figure out if I should be angry or be amused by the ridiculousness of the situation.
My son continuously talks to me during his lesson and I constantly ‘shush’ him. I’ve ended up wearing headphones pretending I’m listening to music when he’s attending his lesson, in hopes that he’ll focus instead of chit-chatting with me. The result is that everyone in the house is walking around with headphones; makes us a really weird family.
I usually monitor my son strictly during lessons as I found him once not attempting the worksheet that he was supposed to be doing. Why? Because he thought it was boring and he didn’t feel like writing. I sympathise with the teachers who are conducting lessons virtually, they have very little control over the students. I’ve seen the kids spamming the chat box during the lesson, the poor teacher ended up disabling the chat option.
With the schools closed and preventive measures in place everywhere, the possibilities for socialising are few for kids these days. They can always go out of the apartment for a walk or cycle around our compound. But the problem is that they don’t go out. I tell them their brains are getting oxygen-deprived and are craving for fresh air. They think their brains have never felt better as going to school was hard work and pressure; though they miss meeting their friends.
I came up with plans to make sure they do something besides playing and fighting all day. I decided to assign responsibilities to each of them for helping in house chores. My daughter was to help me in the kitchen with dishwashing — the first thing she did was to lecture me on the importance of a dishwasher; we don’t have one in our apartment. Next, she observed that we were using a lot of unnecessary dishes and utensils, which we should avoid. She came up with a new rule for the kitchen:
‘When thou can manage with one dish or plate, thou shall not use two’.
I made my son responsible for taking the garbage out. He’s been complaining there’s a lot of garbage and that we should produce less waste. I tell them to stop with the whining and nagging and be of some help. They should realise this lady called ‘mom’ has been doing all these things for years.
I’m astounded by how they’re able to block out all sound which they deem unimportant because I’m unable to do that. Whenever I’m giving out instructions or lecturing them on something, I wait for them to nod or acknowledge they’ve understood. But more than often I find them paying attention to everything else except me, and if I raise my voice out of anger and start with my tirade, they’ll be like ‘Mom we heard you the first time, you don’t have to be that loud’.
Like seriously — if you’ve heard me then why wouldn’t you just say so, why is it so hard to say ‘okay mom’. I usually ask them to repeat what I said, to make sure they’ve actually understood. My go-to line these days is ‘What did I just say’, it could be a genuine question as well as a threat depending on the situation.
On a serious note though I hope and pray that things get back to normal as soon as possible. I believe social interaction is vital for the physical and emotional health of our kids, and at present, that human connection and touch is nonexistent. After months of virtual connections, social interaction may seem challenging for them when everything does get back to routine.
