Coronavirus: A horrific situation we never prepared our kids for

Dubai - If adult patience is rendering place to weariness and a sort of nibbling exhaustion, what is going through the mind of that fertile imaginative five-year-old?

A fairly large number of parents are wringing their hands with the despair of Lady Macbeth over their children's battle with e-learning. Here they were weaning them off the little screen and arguing "no you can't watch 'Paw Patrol' over dinner". Now, they are saying "look at it, concentrate". From Little Princess to math on the same device can be disconcerting if you are seven years old.

But the parental frustration so eloquently being expressed on several forums and echoed around the world does not take into account the unarticulated but traumatic impact of Covid-19 on the social fabric and the dynamics of the past as far as children are concerned. Suddenly they cannot go out, cannot meet friends, they wish granny happy birthday on Zoom, munch e-cake. This is bogeyman stuff. No ice cream treat, no trip to Green Planet, no trip anywhere, not even the park. Think for a moment. If adult patience is rendering place to weariness and a sort of nibbling exhaustion, what is going through the mind of that fertile imaginative five-year-old?

Paramount is the realisation that mum and dad, the rocks in a child's mind, are not on top of this situation. That is hugely intimidating and much of the expression of this emanates from fear. Children personify Covid-19, he has a form. So talk to them about it. Give them confidence. Don't take out your despair on them. I saw a message the other morning where a father is throwing his hands up in surrender, his child just sulks and pouts and will not cooperate. That is because his world has been turned inside out and your impatience only makes him recede deeper into his shell.

Come on, we never prepared our kids for this horrific situation, the sheer cheerlessness of the atmosphere in the house already has the kids on edge. Between e-learning, lack of friends, getting cabin fever all cooped up and sibling overdose the kid's plate is already full.