School reopening for children is a paradigm shift in their regular routine for the last two years. For the last two years, children were having online classes and they have now become accustomed to that new style of teaching.
There were no classrooms, there was no direct contact with the peerage group, with the teachers. The class was easily conducted in the bedroom with any posture of choice. The exams were online, which gave the highest advantage of cheating or manipulating answer sheets.
Now, with this sudden reopening of school after 2 years of resting period, children are finding it difficult with this new set of rules. Here are a few tips to manage a child’s mental health after school reopening.
1. Understand the shift will take time: Parents have to understand that the shift/ transition will take some time. Don’t lose your patience over a child’s temper tantrums. It is not easy for a child to shift to offline class from online ease in a day. Even for adults, this transition is difficult, what to talk of the adults. Make the child get up from the bed 20 minutes before the actual time to get dressed for school. During that spare time talking to him/her, prepare him mentally for the upcoming day. Mental preparation is very important for the physical shift.
2. Remind him of the joys of social life and meeting live with friends: Talk to him about how he spent his day in class. How his friends were? How much he enjoyed meeting with his old peer group. Remind him of the good days he/ she had when the school was offline. Talking about the past good times spent with friends in school, will make him enthusiastic and ready for school.
3. Make sure of his/her bed timings: During the online classes, children landed into the habit of starting their class in bed, joining at the last minute, and also going to sleep late at night. It is important to make sure that he/she has proper 8 to 9 hours of sleep. So, make sure they go to sleep at an earlier time than before, to have proper sleep and get up fresh in the morning. Again, this change of schedule will take time, so be patient while this transition takes place. Screentime just before sleep time interferes with the initiation of sleep, so make sure to avoid it for better sleep.
4. Academics will come a bit later: We send our children to school for socialising and academics. As this transition is a difficult one, make sure to indulge in easier aspects, that as socialising. Talk about the fun part of school first and then after a few days get into academics. It is going to help the child to get motivated to go to school. Slowly when the child gets accustomed to the offline school, academics could be focussed on along with socialising.
5. Share his/her thoughts: Act like a friend so that the child feels tchildhe ease of sharing his/her thoughts freely with you. This will enable you to guide him/her accordingly. The child would be having a plethora of experiences every day after being exposed to the real world after two years of pause. This will let him/her into different, sometimes difficult situations. Make sure you accompany him/her on this journey. This will give enough back support and confidence to the child to deal with the situation.
(By Dr. Puja Kapoor, Paediatric Neurologist & Co-founder of Continua kids)