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It was inevitable. We didn't immediately imagine how much being in lockdown and waiting for the pandemic to abate in the world outside would affect our intimate relationships, but now we know. It is happening in every home, it is happening to all of us. The only solace is that it is a teachable moment.
The result of being physically close to one's own family is not always as rosy as anticipated. Between my husband and me, living through the pandemic has escalated what was already the pattern of our mutual agreements and disagreements. With our youngest child who is still a pre-teen, it has been smoother. Secure in her identity of being a child, she is relatively untouched by the disruption that the rest of us are still struggling with. We have left her to find her own rhythm and along with our pet dog and two cats, she seems to know when she needs to be around adults and when she is just fine on her own.
It is with our two teenage daughters that I have experienced the most surprises. Even though we spend a lot of time being in different rooms — me working from home, and them reading and studying — the routine of eating together and going for a walk at the end of the day has brought us closer to each other than any planned holiday could have done.
"Mamma, why do you think I am blaming you whenever I share my problems with you?" our eldest daughter said to me at the end of a long day recently.
"You mean you are not blaming me?" I asked with great hope in my mind.
"No, Mamma! I don't even know what I am feeling until I begin to talk about it," she said. "But if you become distressed and start thinking it is your fault, I won't be able to approach you."
Therein was lesson no. 1 for me. Listen to your children. Be the safe space they need to practise expressing themselves, without making it about you. Like my daughter said, they may know they are upset, but talking helps to understand what's getting to them. They are not asking the parent to solve their problems; they are trying to untangle it themselves. Be a good listener.
A second lesson has been about work. Being at home without the domestic workers who took care of many of the daily chores requires us to team up. It is easy to pull rank and be a benevolent despot of a parent, but the real test of parenting starts when we begin to treat our young adult progeny as equals. Having grown up in a world of tight hierarchies, this is always a challenge and being locked down together offered a long stretch of a training period to us.
I learnt to ask for help. I learnt to cede space. Children want to take care of their parents. Do not frustrate them by being too efficient. They need to build competencies and try out things before they can become skilled at them. Do not push them back by judging them or raising the bar so high that they are guaranteed to be disappointed in themselves.
We complain about how lazy and entitled teenagers can be, but we often forget how vulnerable they are on the prolonged cusp between childhood and adulthood. This is the time when their confidence is most precarious. Adolescents struggle with a fragile sense of self behind the veneer of indifference and self-absorption. In the busy-ness of our over-committed urban lives, we miss the signs when anxiety first begins to take root in the lives of our children.
Treat teenagers like children when they are emotionally needy. They may look all grown-up, but they need to be comforted too. All of us will always long for that home where we can let down our guard and get some respite from "adulating", as we like to call it these days.
A final lesson has been to make space for my own inner teenager. I sleep on the couch at odd hours and often eat snacks instead of meals. I practise embarrassing dance moves when no one but the dog is watching. We watched Farhan Akhtar's 2001 film, Dil Chahta Hai, as a lockdown birthday treat and collectively hooted and passed loud comments at various plot developments. We didn't have to behave ourselves and out-did each other in being unruly. After all, we were home. Alone, yet together.
I highly recommend locking down families without locking down
the economy and governance as an annual routine.
— The writer is an author and film-maker natasha.badhwar@gmail.com
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