Managing Family Time During Lockdown
As we are all aware by now, working remotely carries a lot of challenges. One of the most topical right now is how our work life has become so intertwined with our personal life as we are forced to transform our homes into a working space. On this episode of the podcast, Dr Malie Coyne discusses how the lockdown has changed the way we relate with our family and how we can manage our working day and home life.
Dr. Coyne is a Clinical Psychologist and N.U.I.G. Lecturer with 20 years experience of working therapeutically with children and families. She is very passionate about promoting wellbeing and increasing awareness of mental health issues, which she achieves through her work on the A Lust for Life mental health advisory panel, public speaking and media contributions. Dr. Coyne believes that the solid foundations for emotional and mental wellbeing begin in early childhood and that staying well involves looking after your mind on a daily basis.
In this episode, we’ll discuss the most frequent questions parents have during lockdown, how we can manage time with family, how to deal with children’s fears and anxiety, and how the future will look in terms of the balance between working hours and family time.
Don’t Expect Perfection
Working as a psychologist specialising in child and family therapy, Dr. Coyne has spoken with many parents looking for answers and guidance to cope with the lockdown. For her, the most important thing is not to expect perfection from yourself and that parents need to be aware that everyone is coping with this situation the best they can because it is a new experience for everyone.
Homeschooling is another topic that worries parents quite often. To this point, Malie suggests to her patients to be gentle with themselves by acknowledging they are parents and not trained teachers, so a perfect homeschooling experience should not be expected.
The Good Side of the Lockdown
Yes, there are a lot of difficulties to overcome during lockdown, but it also has taught us some lessons as well. Many parents are reporting that these times have made their family bonds stronger. Spending so much time together can create conflict, but people have learned from this how to give each other space to repair and fix problems which is a great lesson to keep for the future.
Parents have also learned that kids don’t always need as much as we thought they needed. “They certainly don't need to be over-scheduled and be busy all the time. Actually having the last few months where there was less to do because you couldn't go further than two kilometres, that kind of helped us to maybe appreciate moments more, which is hard to do when you're very busy.” Dr. Coyne says as she reflects on the importance of the child-parent relationship, which she finds critical to teach children that being human is imperfect, is accepting difficult feelings, and going with the flow of life rather than trying to be a perfect multitasker.
All these challenges have also been an excellent opportunity to teach resilience to kids, which is all about facing a manageable threat with parents by their side.
What the New Normal Should Be
The future of how we perform our work will be most likely changed when restrictions have passed. And Dr. Coyne thinks there will be improvements in family relations since the remote experience will replace the long commutes and travel, for example, and this means more time to be at home and share with our close ones.
In-person social connection is, of course, something we all miss, and it should not be replaced entirely by zoom meetings since it is very important to build good relationships with our colleagues. But the things we’ve learned will open up the possibility to be more flexible and find a better balance between work and personal life.
In the end, it should be about what parts of “normal” we want to keep and what should be replaced with these new tools we’ve acquired. This is something to reflect upon; would it be better for children to have fewer activities and to have more family time? It would be very easy just to go back to the way things were before.
Managing Children’s Fears.
We end the interview by asking Dr. Coyne about her book “Love In, Love Out: A Compassionate Approach to Parenting Your Anxious Child”. And she shares a couple of techniques to deal with children’s fears which might be useful these days when kids may feel so anxious about getting back to school.
Malie highlights an acronym included in the book called SAFE, which details various steps parents can take to deal with many situations. She explains the “S” stands for “Self Care”, looking after themselves when they’re in a fight or flight situation, and we should help them feel safe in these scenarios. Hence, the first thing to do is to validate their experience and to reflect back what they’re saying and connect with them on an emotional level.
This validation will eventually lead to the “E” which is empowerment, and it can be assessed many ways depending on the child’s age. Dr. Coyne shares and example with us:
“So when my child comes to me and says she's afraid of monsters, rather than me saying there is no monster you know [...] that I kind of respond to that in a playful way and say to her oh, you poor thing, what kind of monster? And maybe being playful about it. I wonder, could we put a tutu on the monster or could we imagine the monster on roller skates or could we put a jar next to your bed and trap the monster overnight, or use the spray to spray out the monster. And what that's doing for the child is validating how they actually feel because a five or six year old really believes in monsters. And to meet them where they're at and to take the sting out of the fear and add in a little bit of creativity and play and fun and that actually works really well with children.”
You can connect with Dr. Malie Coyne on LinkedIn, write her an email with your questions at drmaliecoyne@gmail.com or visit her website www.drmaliecoyne.ie
If you’re interested in her book, you can find it here.