A working mom & parenting author shares lockdown experience

One of the reasons I write this article is because I worry

I worry if this lockdown will last 21 days only. I worry for family members and my friends. I worry for my colleagues and complete strangers. I worry about schools shutting down. Before now, my worry was on schools not shutting down. I worry that Covid-19 may invade our lives and change every single habit that we have spent so much time to cultivate. How about our disappearing finances? I just worry.

Our household is not your typical one. My husband and I are both self-employed in the same industry. We are lucky in the sense that we can both be there for our children. Or should I say we were lucky before COVID-19?

Unfortunately, now we are both held up with not a single option on how to earn our next cent. We have never had a taste of paid leave. Now stuck at home and no way to conduct our training and hospitality businesses from home, we spend our days (between everything else) viewing and reading everything we can find about the Corona virus. We can no longer be cautious. We quickly got nervous. By day three of the lockdown, we collectively decided to not panic any longer and to boycott information overload.

This meant that we had to start responding to unending questions from the children

Some we gladly did, others we chose to refrain from full disclosure, either because of their ages, or simply because we had little knowledge on. I tell you; parenting has become even more physically, emotionally, psychologically and mentally demanding.

But guess what? I have learnt a huge lesson of gratitude and I will leave that with you the readers, my children and many others.

My husband has been the hero in it all. However, it still seems like as a working mother, the threat of COVID-19 gives me a new view of domestic and emotional labour.

I have to be a psychologist to make sure that I gauge and manage fears and anxieties

But I am not managing my family well because my own fear and anxiety keep featuring as I think of how long the items we bought will last for. How many children out there have no food? How many men are held up and being abused by their children and partners? How many men have abandoned women with children? How many women are locked up with and are meant to look after stepchildren that they have never met?

How many parents seem to be strangers in looking after their children because they paid helpers to do so all their lives? How long will working and schooling from home last?

Where will our next household income come from? How will our bills look like in the next weeks? What will banks say? What will the government do? How about my employees?

I worry about how parents in private employment feed their children if their salaries do not go through? How will people survive psychologically? How many grownups are now locked down with and have to look after and feed parents who abused them all their childhood?

And the old people, can they stand for themselves? The mentally disturbed, where are they? I worry about who can hear the silence.

The burden is huge. It is real. But it can be lightened by us all

It is clear that many of us will survive. It seems certain that COVID-19 is a stress test for societies. Even experts’ understanding on the coronavirus and how it functions seems to be extremely limited. Worst even, we are bombarded with new findings every day. We know that it is now an Airborne virus, right?

Scary as the world may be right now, let me emphasize that it is important for parents to protect themselves from stress and anxiety. Children pick up cues very easily and they can be traumatised when they noticed that their parents are acting weird.

Do not over or under compromise. Try to keep a balance. Maintain a routine as per schools or instill some order to avoid chaos. Please find humour in any and everything, eat together, exercise and practise me-time, watch TV, read a book, make phone calls, participate in chat groups, play family games, eat out of routine now and then, make your own rules, reward yourself and your family for committing.

Celebrate milestones with simple meals, involve everyone in anticipating the needs of the family and plan what’s next. It is a no brainer that school closure is a wake-up call for many, if not all families.

It is sad that some men have demanded personal space

Some have set-up private offices in rooms with controlled access in order to keep away the wife who also has to work, and the children who need supervision from their working parents. Some have started to abuse substances.

I appreciate all men who, like my husband, are shouldering this uncertainty with – actually, for – their families. My husband commented on day three, that the lockdown felt like a normal weekend. His job as the chef for all three meals each day got us all overfed and left him exhausted. He made the rule that he and I shall each cook every alternate day while the children clean up. However, he cheated and this has left the children calling themselves his kitchen army. This is after they each had to chop, fry, boil or at least do something when it was his turn to cook. In between living each day, all four children rely on our support to do their best at homeschooling.

South Africa is on day 12 and survival beyond the pandemic will leave many of us with lessons. It does not matter whether you stay in a village, township, suburb, or hotel. It does not matter whether you are wealthy, of the working class, single, married or a beggar. It does not matter whether you live in Europe, America, Africa, Asia or Australia. Nothing matters much after COVID-19.

What will matter will be the fact that we depend on each other to survive. So, maybe, just maybe, Covid-19 has come to show us the real meaning of involved parenting, involved caregiving and a revision in policies.

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