CORONAVIRUS: From a different perspective

My mum has just returned from her daily walk with my 8-year-old sister on our tenth (or eleventh? Does anyone even know at this point?) week of lockdown. “It’s nice to be outside,” my little sister tells me. “But I’m bored of seeing the same things, there’s nothing fun to do without other people”. It was at this point I realised my trivial worries of not being able to go to the pub on my birthday or the whole season of football being scrapped (which actually could be a blessing in disguise, relegation was certainly on the cards for the team I support) were simply that… trivial. When I really think about it none of that stuff matters, and despite finishing my second year of university online and swapping beer gardens for the garden in my own house, my life really hadn’t been affected all that much. So here it is. A short article on Coronavirus, but from a slightly different perspective.

Thinking back to being an 8-year-old myself I realised how difficult it must be for my sister, Millie, and how much I sympathise for her. School, especially primary school, is certainly a time I wouldn’t hesitate to go back to (spending five days a week with your best friends, who wouldn’t?). My parents also shared the same worries and like many other families we all wondered how the lack of interaction with children her own age would affect her. Rachael Busman, senior director of the Anxiety Disorders Center at the Child Mind Institute stated that the reaction children have to this newfound loneliness would all depend on the child’s personality. “There’s so much individual variation… some may be happy and some may be sad and find this time really challenging, all of which is valid and acceptable”. But after reading this our worries only worsened. Constantly the last one to come out of school because she’s been chatting with her friends in the cloak room, it’s clear that Millie is without a doubt an extrovert – if she’s quiet for more than ten minutes its fair to assume she’s asleep, or up to no good.

The closure of schools and subsequent online schooling as a replacement has been a challenge. My parents are both key workers so often, during weekdays, it is just my sister and I in the house. I try my best to support and help Millie as much I can but with my own university work to complete added with the fact that I am simply not qualified to be a teacher, this can be a struggle. “I don’t feel like I’m learning anything as the online work is normally just repeating things we’ve already learnt in class.” Millie has told us this on multiple occasions but still completes her work daily, with just a little bit of convincing. Given this I set out to teach her skills she wouldn’t necessarily learn at school such as baking, sewing and occasionally makeup – granted this isn’t something an 8-year-old needs to learn about right this minute but hopefully this new knowledge will prevent the questionable orange foundation and overdrawn eyebrows once she reaches high school, or so we can hope.

Really, I’ve just been trying to keep my sister busy and her mind preoccupied in the hopes she won’t feel the effects of a non-existent social life. I’ve also been trying to keep her mind preoccupied from everything Coronavirus related. This whole pandemic has been difficult for even me, an adult, to understand and I can’t imagine how confusing this must be for a young child.

As Millie’s gotten older I’ve realised one thing, children really do hear everything – I remember my parents telling me this throughout the years but I have only now realised how true this is. Coronavirus is unavoidable. It’s on the news, on the front covers of magazines, making headlines on the radio and is currently all most people are talking about, so questions from a confused and curious 8-year-old are unavoidable. From a few conversations with our parents and what she’d heard from the media when I asked her the question of “what is Coronavirus” she confidently told me it was a disease from China (that came from someone eating a bat, she later told me was an important part she forgot to add) that can spread amongst other people if we’re not careful – sounds like a good enough definition to me. Although I’m not sure she fully understands, Millie has adapted to the lifestyle changes we’ve all had to implement – washing our hands thoroughly, staying inside as much as we can and should we see anybody including family members, staying at least two meters away from them.

In the last few weeks we’ve began to visit our grandparents, who conveniently live one street away from us, and standing outside their house for a little while. With my parents being key workers meaning we can’t fully self-isolate should we want to, we didn’t want to risk being anywhere near two meters close to our family, so shouted conversations from the street to the house have become the new norm. “I miss being able to hug our nanan,” Millie told me after one of our trips. “It makes me sad because I used to do it all the time, and now I’m not allowed to”. Other than missing her school friends this is the one thing she says she’s been missing the most. I truly believe this is because we’ve been brought up being told that we should value and cherish the time we spend with family and we both realise how precious the time is that we spend with our grandparents. Millie often asks if she can FaceTime our grandparents as she likes the fact we can do this from the comfort of our own home, without having to come into contact with anyone – although I’m not sure my nanan, who can barely send a text message, has quite got the hang of it yet.

Speaking of technology, what a lifesaver it’s been during lockdown. My parents recently signed Millie up to WhatsApp so she could contact a few of her school friends. “I wish we were in school so I could play with them but it’s still nice to talk to them”. Although texting is no comparison to seeing her friends in person, it’s allowed her that slice of interaction with children her own age which every child needs in order to develop basic social skills. In some way’s lockdown has been good for Millie, she even told me this herself. With little else to do it’s given her time to become more creative in the way she entertains herself. Old cardboard boxes have become doll houses and empty bottles became rockets, it’s surprising how long this actually kept her busy but it was nice to hear her talking about something other than Roblox – apparently this is the new in game, or so Millie tells me.

As restrictions begin to ease Millie tells me her post lockdown plans, which include seeing her friends, family and going shopping. In the last couple of days we’ve put together a memory box documenting this time of our lives and our different perspectives. We set out to write a letter to our future self discussing everything lockdown related, as well as our emotions throughout. This brought me to the question “what have you learnt during lockdown?”. Millie took some time to think about this before concluding that she had, in fact, learnt a lot. “I’ve learnt that I’m lucky to have the things I have otherwise I would have been very bored and I’m glad I have my family to talk to, they always cheer me up”.