More Family Time – COVID19 plus

While a pandemic hits the world, governments and individuals around the world call for a shut down and everyone is trying to stay home as much as possible. One of the benefit of this social isolation drive is actually increased social interaction with the loved ones you should always have more interaction with. Yes the people at your home.

With evolving lifestyles, we have stopped interacting enough with our family members and those we actually live with. Whether it is hectic work schedule, heavy work load from school, university giving tough time, or your other hobbies or activities, your family members are actually those you are least interacting with. It’s may be not because you don’t want to, but because you have not enough time to do so.

An opportunity

With this forced stay-at-home trend, which is healthy and beneficial for you and everyone else in the first place, it automatically brings an opportunity for you to spend some more quality time with your own family.

Pros and cons of social media

Social media platforms and online interaction being at the fingertip of everyone today, has a negative effect on your family time too, we already know that. We are more in touch with those who respond to our tweets or Facebook status regularly. We know more about people we are following on Instagram. This trend may continue here as well during the social isolation as well.

The best thing to do in this lock down is to improve on your habits and give up on your social media use frequency, not entirely but lets limit it. This will not only give you more family time, it will help with your mental health as well. Too much time on social media is just amplifying negative thoughts into everyone’s mind.

What to do at home?

I think I’ll also start listing and posting about ideas of indoor activities you should have at home. Those of us with younger kids are having a tougher time keeping them entertained but trust me, it is not going to be that tough. Think about the previous generations, a whole lot of people, generations and generations of them have grown up happy and healthy without digital entertainment, hanging out, fast food and amusement parks. These kids can do it for a few weeks too.

So start a set of indoor activities, play board games or cards with kids, make lego trails, learn to cook something new, go back to the good old books (yeah the paper books I’m talking about), pick up your camera and do some bird photography/watching from your window (don’t go out), grab an online course and learn something new, go for some indoor games like table tennis, watch some TV together (but not all day) and balance things well.

Balance is a must

Balance is a must, too much of everything is bad so it’s important to maintain a schedule for everyone. Get up on time, make sure everyone is working out, eating balanced diet, work life balance and yes the family time.

Bottom line

So my short suggestion, give more time to family, have more interaction with people at home and enjoy this time as long as it lasts. Trust me you’re going to miss these quarantine days once it is all over.

See you guys at the other side of this crazy time.

This article is part of a set of articles I call “The positives of COVID19“.