mAINTAINING WELLBEING

Maintaining Wellbeing In Unique Times

Tips for Parents

For parents, students, staff and all family and friends, these days of children and adults all being at home together 24/7, with no known end in sight, is unique. Trying to balance the whole family's needs, run a household, attend to your work and your children's education, feed the hungry clan, get out for some exercise and stay sane and not too cranky...it's a tall order.

How do we all survive well? Here are some suggestions:

• Don't expect too much from yourself. It's OK to not get it all right, to take short cuts, lose your cool at times. Your family will forgive you.

• Help your children as best you can with school work. If you are baffled by some of the tasks, especially if you also have kids in secondary school, bow out gracefully and say, "Give it a go, but sorry, I can't help with this one."

• Read to your kids daily, share a bedtime story. Listen to them read to you, then ask some questions - "What just happened? Who or what is this story about? What do you think will happen next?"

• If you are working from home, try and devise a rough timetable for yourself. When is the best time of day to fit in your own work? Help the kids first, then onto your work? While the kids are having some screen time?

• Have fun every day. Get down on the floor and play with your younger ones, drag out all the board games. Make cubby houses indoors with blankets, cushions, sheets draped over furniture. Play hide and seek, Charades, put on a talent show, sing together.

• Get outdoors and walk, cycle, scooter, skateboard. Just avoid busy, popular walks like the Bay Run, it is over-crowded now. Find quiet, suburban streets and the local green spaces. Play backyard cricket, chasing, Dodge Ball.

• Get outdoors and just enjoy the warm sunshine, blue skies, soft breezes, lorikeets and cockatoos in the beautiful gum trees. Have a cuppa and a food treat. Relax.

• Look up the many web sites that have great ideas for coping at this time. Some are listed below.