Nostalgia Of Our Childhood In Lock Down Back In The 90s

Its been nearly 7 months since kids have gone to School in Sri lanka. The online classes and exams have been slowly fading out with Government's announcement on the upcoming year end exams. So, kids are almost & always free at home.

With the wake of on-line classes, kids have started taking over the custody of all the electronic gadgets at home. We no longer protect them with PW, and even if we try, kids may need them here and there, so it is better they have control over their on-line classes/gadgets rather than disturbing parents every time amidst our busy WFH schedules... As a result, they get unlimited screen time which worries me the most.

These days my kids wake up at 10 am. Then both will laze around the living area for another 30 mins before they eat breakfast. There is no time for morning routines as such. Sometimes, they brush and take bath after 12 or even later than that.
We absolutely have no time to help them or guide them in the morning, unless they wake up with us early.
After 8.30 am, both myself and H would be busy with our respective WFH schedules till late in the afternoon, so kids are left with their own world.

Of course my mom is there to supervise them, but they lack motive to get up and be active during the day. Its like an extended and never ending vacation for both.

Looking back our lives back in the 90s, around the same age as my kids (9 & 7 years old), it was completely a different world despite of similar circumstances.

Yes, we had curfews every now and then in Sri Lanka due to the war. Either a bomb blast or a search operation would warrant a curfew for few days or even a month long back then.
Lots of police and army personal would be roaming in our town (It wasn't a war zone), conducting search operations at each home. Hence, the children had no option to play outside.
We were hooked inside our homes for days, yet our lives were different and interesting back then.

We usually wake up at 6.30 every day. That's the time we have the daily morning news in Radio.
Dad would turn up the radio volume very high, so that we could wake up to that noise.
Each day there will be something shocking or interesting in the news. Eg: A bomb blast or arrest of 50 odd young Tamil guys etc... That would automatically drag us from our beds to the living room to get more closer to the radio.
Then there will be discussions around the news between mom and dad. Either my uncle or aunt from the next door would peep in from their window to share their opinion on the news, and their discussion would go on and an for hours, which would make our mornings busy right after waking up from the bed.
Though these things sound very disturbing, this was our normal day back then.

Those days when we had extended holidays due to curfews, we retorted to story books. My uncles insisted that we read Tamil kids books because of the love they had for the language back then. We had dozens of "Mayavi", "Ambulimama" stories from Indian stores that entertained our childhood days.

We were very creative with whatever we had at home to play. In fact, none of the elders sat with us or spent their time to give us company. But we found our living on our own without disturbing the busy elders.

I remember collecting tiny beads from old cloths, and assemble them with a tangus/nylon thread into beautiful earrings, bracelets and rings. We even made different designs and gifted them to our loved ones.
Later, our dad used to buy packets of beads from the shops to encourage our craft works.

Whoever goes to Jaffna back then, brought arecanut as jaffna is famous for arecanut then. But we young kids could make varieties of creative dalls using raw arecanut, and one of our neighbor aunt used to collect these dolls from us for her Navaratri Golu.

My cousins - whom I fondly call as akka/s would make beautiful craft works using plastic straws. One of the art that I've picked from her was "straw curtains". I could also make beautiful flowers and vases from plastic cola bottles. Those were the beautiful days, that brought out the best in us.

We didn't have DIY videos or you tube guides back then, yet we invented or copied from others to occupy our times with whatever we had at home.

Lots of indoor games like chess, ludo, cards etc..etc... were played together as family. We read the news in papers, and started collecting important "news cuttings" of that era.

We wrote diaries, did home gardening, painted, helped momma with her sawing work and what not.

I tried my best to teach all those interesting arts to the kids, but they don't seem to be getting them. They feel bored, and wanted something or the other to be entertained from outside. Like a TV show or a mobile game or actual interaction of an elder all the time.
If not, they become wild and use all the energy negatively to create uneasiness at home during this already messy time.

I wish my kids find happiness in simple things as we did before, and find self dependence in whatever the circumstances for a smoother life later on....

 

You gave the answer to your question Mr Balajee.

You and your wife had shifts, which means either of you would be home without office duties to be with the kid.
Spending time with the kids is not the problem here. We are home 24/7 and we are spending the whole time with family in this 2020 than any year before. But spending quality time DURING the day times of the work week is the problem here.

We do spend quality time with kids at night. We do spend a lot of fun times during weekends. But that doesn't matter.
What matter is, how to spend QUALITY time, when BOTH parents are fully busy doing WFH between 8.30am to 4.30 pm AND specifically we have to ADJUST our work time to do the household chores in between, with the absence of the domestic helper these days (and of course no outside services, no restaurant food etc and extra sanitizing tasks to name a few of our covid burdens)

So, practically speaking, spending quality time with kids during day time in the work week would become questionable. Especially when kids want us to bathe, feed, play, and read for them in order to keep them occupied during day times. If not, they don't see any motive to wake up or eat or read on their own. They just laze around the couch, and do these routines at their own timing and the rest of the day they are addicted to the devices.

My question is.... Many of us didn't expect our parents to spend quality time with us back in our childhood days. Our parents were with us, but they were on their own doing their chores and living their adult life while looking after us.
They did not play with us or read for us during the days by leaving their works. They did ONLY when they could. But during the rest of the times, we had our own ways of living our childhood independently, and more importantly without being addicted to any devices.
We too had walkman, TV, video games etc... but we had other interesting and own inventions to play with.
We didn't laze around or expect our parents to do everything for us when our usual routine (School, after school, playtime, park etc..etc..) got disturbed during unavoidable circumstances.

Then, why can't our kids take it as it comes, and live by themselves?
We can't blame kids, but we have to find out where it all go wrong, so that we could shape up their future