7 May - Covid Update

As we continue to deal with Covid, I am witnessing a whole variety of situations - at home, with friends and colleagues, neighbours, our parent body and so much more.

My takeaways so far -

1. Maintain a positive outlook as far as humanly possible, especially if you are able to manage with homecare. Stress helps no one, on the contrary, it may be detrimental to your health and those close to you.

2. Help those that you can - with verified leads, medicines, hospital beds etc. I have personally seen my networks rally and bring help wherever needed.

3. Mask up! Please do not assume that you are safe just because you have been vaccinated or one report has come in negative. Till the virus can incubate, you are at risk, especially if there is even one case at home. Watch out for any symptoms, and even if there are no symptoms, maintain your chart - temperature, SPO2, pulse and any medication (even if just supplements) prescribed by your doctor.

4. Find a doctor - one who is available on call whenever you need them. Set up paid private consultations/packages. Scrambling for a doctor in emergency may lead to high levels of stress and perhaps avoidable delays.

5. The doctors are pretty overwhelmed too - they are unable to assess if the reports coming to them are right or wrong. While one report may indicate a spike, another may show you well within the normal ranges. In such a case, your doctor is likely to prescribe treatment based on what you tell them in conjunction with what your reports are saying. Listen to them, and please be patient. They are trying to do the best that they can given the circumstances while potentially acting like your counsellor too.

6. As our doctor said, remember that you are caregiver not caretaker. Things like keeping the house spic and span or cooking elaborate meals can take a backseat. While taking care of those more in need, remember to take care of yourself too and monitor your own vitals as well. It will help no one if you fall sicker because you forgot to look after yourself. Health first.

More in due course. Take each day at a time, stay vigilant till your doctor clears you.

Stay health, speedy recovery to all who are suffering, deepest condolences to those who have lost a near and dear one.

Up Next - Communicating with Your Child - The Role of Online Homeschooling

Comments

Musings of a Pioneer: Playschool Learning for Toddlers (Part 2)

…Till we were struck by a miniscule virus – the Covid 19. It is important for the child to continue to have the additional support in their most important brain development phase – the two to four-year-old age bracket – when the brain develops rapidly to almost 80 percent of a fully developed brain. It is important for the child to have external support to develop cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional, and motor skills. It is important for the toddler to be exposed to a peer group and caregivers other than parents, whom they could observe and imitate for holistic development to happen. It is important for the child to be in a more conducive environment at school where they could indulge in their favourite pastimes in a non-judgemental atmosphere. It is also important for the child to continue to have an environment where they can interact socially with their peer group. This environment is now being denied to the children of this age bracket of two to four years. Many young

Early Years Learning - Concrete vs Abstract

"My child does not recognize certain alphabets" "My child tends to shy away whenever we have guests at home" "My child does not show interest in number recognition, but loves to mess around in sand" "My child loves to speak, but when I ask her to speak vocabulary with a particular alphabet, she goes silent" "My child understands shapes, but is unable to find them in his surroundings" Notice the difference in the implications of these statements - they represent some examples of the difference between what we call concrete vs abstract learning during the early years at Morning Glorie, play school in Gurgaon, and online homeschooling in India. All too often, we tend to focus on learning which can be measured, which is concrete. What we tend to forget is, every experience, new or repeated, is a learning - this is truer during the early years of life, though it is something to ponder on and incorporate in our own lives irrespective of age

Pushing Children Beyond Their Comfort Zone - Striking the Right Balance

My mother, who is also my partner at work (this may seem odd, but we do complement each other in our skillsets, this makes us a good team), takes some of the batches in our online homeschooling in India program. These are live and interactive sessions, where parent and child attend together and are part of small groups of children for guided learning sessions. She also handles communication with the parent body, something we have learned is a very crucial aspect - at times, it is our responsibility to give the right guidance to parents as much as addressing queries which they may have. So two instances happened in the last couple of months, where a concerned parent called us up to tell us that their child was only interested in some of the activities, which seemed more fun in nature, while they tended to either show disinterest, or run away from some of the other activities. Their query to us had two dimensions - 1. Should the nature of activities be changed? 2. Were we pushing the c

Search This Blog