Dealing with kids during home quarantine

Indoors with kids all the time? In the constantly changing and challenging times, especially in the pandemic crisis, parents have realised the immense role of school in shaping children. Two visionary chains of schools at Nagpur and Mumbai taught the students the following skills throughout the past few years. Even you can teach your kids as they are home.

The skills are:
Empathy, Gratitude, Adaptability, Proactivity, Self-responsibility, Dealing with boredom, managing screen time, managing negative emotions like Anger, Anxiety, depression, living in harmony with others, understanding consequences of action and inaction, being careful vs. being careless, effort tolerance, accountability etc.

How to teach these skills to the kids?

Every time there is a conflict with the kids, or something goes wrong, eg. the kids are fighting with each other, take it as a 'Teachable moment' *. You can calmly, firmly but privately have a brief talk with the child. Tell them an incident/story when you/someone else/their role-model (eg. a Marvel character) faced a similar situation. Do some homework before you have a conversation with them.

Ask a question to the child instead of giving a lecture/advice. They may not answer the question, but it will sow a seed in their mind. We never know when it would become a sapling.
Happy quarantine!


*The term 'Teachable Moment' was coined by Ann Vernon PhD,  past president of Albert Ellis Institute, New York.
#Centre Point schools, Nagpur
#RBK group of schools, Mumbai
with the CORE personal development program.

Why exactly are we panicked?

The Corona Virus has triggered panic worldwide, these tips will help you stay sane.
In any situation where there is Danger, the natural fear mechanism kicks in, and raises an alarm in the head. This alarm alerts us to safeguard ourselves. However, there could be excessive vigilance or false alarm that can go off in the head too, and no amount of reassurance will work. This can happen when you have following thought patterns.


1. Overestimation of danger: You dismiss the actual figures and think it's more likely than it is.
2. Personal vulnerability: You are convinced YOU will die of it, when specific age groups, or people with poor health status are more vulnerable.
3. Overestimation of damage: When you think the worst possible thing will happen- Death, and not the most common outcome- Recovery
4. Permanence of damage- You believe you won't recover from it, and the illness will have a permanent effect on you
5. Underestimation of coping- You dismiss the resources  or your healthy immune system with which you can deal with it effectively. You undermine the effectivity of simple techniques like hand washing.
6. Intolerance of uncertainty- You can't tolerate even one in million chance of getting the infection, and believe why take the chance?
7. Incompetence: A general belief about self which kicks in when there's an adversity that you are incapable in tough times. You might also think that you are incompetent as a parent if you don't protect your children, and can get into panic for them.
8. Excessive focus on danger: When you focus on viral videos, social media posts more than CDC and WHO fact sheets.
9. Inflated sense of responsibility: Especially for your loved ones, you may take up more responsibility than what would be functional, and it cripples you.

Besides, researching excessively on the internet from non reliable sources, too much reassurance seeking, forwarding viral videos, stocking up sanitisers and masks, completely isolating yourself all can worsen your anxiety.

Remember, Concern is helpful, Anxiety isn't. If you think your anxiety is crippling, consult a REBT-CBT therapist near you!