Parenting During Lockdown

“Work from home with no domestic help, kids at home with no school/summer camp for an undefined period.”

As parents we would had never ever imagined a work and life @home in this situation. I have personally always quoted – My work life balance depends on the schedule and rhythm set at home rather than work”. And now with more than 30+ days of lockdown globally, parents are getting used to this NEW NORMAL.

I personally took a lot of time to adopt to NEW NORMAL with super active 3.5 years old son being around with our hectic work schedule and no domestic help. I often wandered, “How is this being managed by other parents?”. This curiosity made me reach out to parents at Happiest Minds to share their short story which is working out for them to manage this balance.

As a parent, each one of us have our story of struggle, settling down, learning and opportunities in this situation.Managing our parenting duties with work priorities, can be very challenging, but a mix of acceptance and adoption including little bit of innovation and lots of patience, we can make it work.

Which one do you think relates to your story?

1.Define a Schedule

Both me and my wife have demanding roles - our day starts at 8 am without a definite end time! So, we glance at each other and take over the chores based on our availability.

And locking an 8-year-old is like trying to contain the whole universe into a tiny box! So, I have a schedule defined for my son, that cuts across Board Games, Outdoor Games, Family Time, Nap Time etc. I am sharing snapshot of the same. We start the day together with a cup of coffee, stretching exercises and 15 mins meditation and end the with bedtime stories.              – Sripad Raj (Associate Director – DBS)     

2. Living in the moment

I truly believe that my two kids are great at helping me de-stress. As parents, we focus on creating a learning and happy environment for the kids. Along with maintaining a regular WFH schedule, it is all about living in the moment and enjoying the simple things in life. Whether it is play time, karaoke time, cooking time, dance time, pray time, TV time, game time, mealtime, etc… either or both of us ensure that we spend quality time with them. We also do video calls on a weekly basis to catchup with relatives/friends and our kids love these virtual catchup sessions as well.

During the current lockdown, my elder son is learning to play the keyboard and the younger one likes to dance. Overall, it is fun and we are thankful that we get to enjoy with the family. -         Kiran Veigas (Director – Marketing)

3.Help me in daily chores

The schools shut doors the day my son turned 3. Keeping him engaged & taking care of self (as in my second pregnancy) has been the toughest of all the things that have been happening in the past month. Having family around during such crisis times is a blessing.

One of his favorite activities is to wash veggies as he gets to play in water. With practice now he washes veggies better than me. ?? He also loves to peel boiled eggs, so we let him do that as well as it keeps him engaged. Involving kids in our day to day activity and taking their help to make it easy is tough. But with repeated actions, we can achieve it. 

Maintaining a scheduled approach every day is difficult, but we try to achieve it or let go based on convenience of all. We have had our meltdown sessions as well. But we are keeping calm and embracing the NEW NORMAL. - Shilpa Patil (Test Lead – DBS)

4.Time and Management

Ahhh… how I wish this were a routine I could follow, and life could be so managed and easy with a 2-year-old toddler. Instead it is just the opposite and a mayhem!!! Nothing is planned and we are taking one day at a time…

The day begins with the morning marathon and the whole day goes in juggling between office work, meals, household chores and engaging the kiddo.

However, there are two things that I like to stick by to manage my time a little better and that are still under my control –

§ Creating a to-do list of both my household tasks as well as office work.

§ And using OPOS (OnePotOneShot) technique for preparing meals which cuts down lot of cooking time. You can search on the web/Facebook for more info on this.

Having said all the above and sharing the workload, both of us look forward to sharing a light drink & hearty meal on the Friday night to celebrate the survival of a hectic week and gearing up for the week ahead! - Shubhi Rastogi ( Senior Technical Manager – IMSS)

5. Old and New Routine

I personally don’t like to work remote, even though I had to travel close to 27 kms every day to reach work. And for us the lockdown started a week before March 22nd as we were in self quarantine as my spouse (Chitra) had returned from an international trip.

With lockdown, our summer vacation plans overturned, initial days were tough with no maid, day long meetings, managing meals during work, household chores etc. But we wanted to ensure, they eat on time, sleep on time, do not spend too much time with TV, socialize, gets some physical activity and some sunlight and fresh air ??

Here is what worked for us:

Maintaining Set Routines (Continue as is) – Like waking up, dressing up for work, work, meal and bed time.

·     Form new Routines (Improvements) – Morning travel time to catch up on emails, shift in workout timings, household chores during otherwise evening travel time.

·     Managing Supplies (Need of the hour) – Weekends were spending on getting the deliveries and ensuring the supplies are cleaned and sanitized to the maximum possible order

·     Engaging Kids & Family time (Improvisations) - Ensured there are certain set routines with Kids (both of them also aligned to the same quickly) for Indoor games, art and crafts, story time, voice assistants, tv time, cue Math online classes and forced nap time.  - Ramu MR ( General Manager – DBS)

6.Channelize their energy

My long story in short and only Mantra for managing my 7.5 yr son, involve him in the daily work. I give him to type PDFs from my Udemy or let him learn Keyboard from my Udemy saying its big boy’s course. You know, they feel very satisfied when they do Big boy’s work ??.

Many times makes him sit with me on my office calls and say maintain silence. Sometimes me and him compete on who can take better notes from the meeting. I give small billing calculations for him which helps him revise his math skills they learnt in school.

 My wife also does the same, like allows him to prepare roti, help in small tasks in cooking which can be done being away from fire stove, wash utensils (not all, but mostly the flat plates which are not sharp edges). So basically, for grown up kids, involving them in our daily work is the best way to channelize their energy instead of constraining their energy. -Shakti Patra (Senior Engineering Manager – PES)

7. Let’s play a game

With school, play area all closed, keeping my 7 yrs old son engaged was the biggest task we had during the lockdown. Here came the idea, let’s play a game. We created a list of activities one should do in a day and started putting duration to it and after some cajoling and convincing, my son agreed to play a game where he has to complete all the activities by the end of day. The activities include reading, writing, drawing, daily chores, sister care, mobile games, TV, family time and so on. As you know, kids do not like playing it alone, so I must create one for myself as well. ??

The record for the last 20 - 25 days is impeccable, he has completed all activities for all the days except the weekend, which is an off for him as well.

Other than this, taking care of the little one and managing work priorities for both by my spouse and me, generally leading to some more late-night work, including writing this story ?? -        Sachin Khurana (Chief People Officer)

8. Mutually Agreed Goals

Parents are known for multitasking and COVID-19 pandemic has given us a chance to exhibit it in several ways.

Parenting during COVID for me is more fun than pain. My 8-year old son, “Sumed” – a live wire with abundant energy is a tough client to keep engaged. I had to think out of box to come out with real, crazy and creative ideas for successfully onboarding him in my journey of “Parenting during COVID”.

As part of HR department, I started implementing few of the HR goals not only in the office but also happiestminds@home. I discussed with my SON (happeistminds@home partner) and set the mutually agreed goals using FBO (Fun By Objective) method. This made him independent and helped me to work un-interruptedly in my home-work space.

I prepare his favorite dishes to reward him for meeting weekly objectives. Same way, his screen time was cut on not meeting the same.

COVID has taught us to try innovative and creative ways to turn the challenges into opportunities for teaching our kids as well to transform ourselves as better human beings. -         Gayatri Rajesh (Consultant – Onboarding Team)

9. Divide and Manage

It is hard to stay positive when your 2 yr old toddler is making you crazy and you end up saying “NO” for everything.

Our morning starts with Mommy’s office call, and Daddy-Toddler play time. While I finish my call and cooking for the day, it’s daddy’s task to spend some quality time with our son.

After I finish my house chores, I spend some 30 minutes time with my son and we do some building blocks tasks together, he feels secure and starts playing on his own for hours. I utilize this time to complete all my important office tasks. We pre-assign and divide our tasks for the day based on urgencies of work.

Of course, every day is not a happy day. We have tough times too in managing important calls and handling a fussy baby at the same time ??, we try to stay calm when such situation occurs. -    Neha Saxena (Associate Manager – Talent Acquisition)

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