Parents are encouraged to take moments of their day to spend meaningful time playing with their children who were confined to their homes for close to two years due to the global pandemic.
As a brand committed towards driving a great quality life among all Sri Lankans and as the life insurance provider for more than 1.5Mn Sri Lankan lives, Softlogic Life considers it their duty to support individuals and families upon their quest to navigate life amidst this pandemic while staying safe.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted our daily lives on an absolute granular level.
It has locked us all within four walls and withdrawn us “social beings” from the daily interactions with the rest of the world that brought us a sense of mental wellness, stability and joy.
The many lockdowns in Sri Lanka alone brought forward a complex array of challenges with some unspoken negative mental repercussions for both children and parents.
Grief, fear, uncertainty, social isolation, little to no extracurricular exposure, reduced and changed interactions with peers and family, increased screen time and fatigue, and parental fatigue have deeply impacted the mental health and wellbeing of adults and children.
Parents too are victims, with having to juggle work from home or business responsibilities, online schooling for children, increased parental anxiety, stress, depression, and burnout resulting from multiple lockdowns.
While parents have been trying their very best, it has undoubtedly become difficult to mitigate their children's problems because of the increased workload, stress and uncertainty in their own lives.
Counselling Psychologist, Avanthi Jayasinghe states that there isn't one particular method to overcome these psychosocial challenges.
However, simple daily tasks which does not burden parents can offer themselves as solutions to a great extent.
One such way is to connect with a person's inner child at least once a day to incite a positive transformation of the environment within a home.
Interestingly, the inner child is a psychotherapeutic concept that was researched and popularized by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who utilized this aspect of subpersonality to help his clients.
"We were all at one time children and the inner child is the purest form of each person.
The child you once were, who played Hopscotch or “Butta” with your friends all day or made crowns out of coconut leaves, did not just get up and vanish, to be replaced by a perfect, always responsible adult.
Our inner child is the foundation for our relationships with others and the place from which we make decisions about love, trust, and safety.
When parents tap into their inner child at least 10 minutes each day, recreate their favourite moments of childhood play and joy with their kids, it allows them to avail themselves of this massive burden of lockdown-induced stress, and most importantly connect with their children in a deeper compassionate sense, giving their children a break and a release from the tech immersed world that they are confined to.
In other words, bringing out a parent’s inner child will result in happier parents who are more attuned to their child’s psychosocial needs and are capable of making their children feel heard and understood," stated Psychologist, Avanthi Jayasinghe.
"Right now, when they severely lack play and social interaction, parents need to be creative and recreate highlights of their childhood with their children.
This will aid a child’s development, completely transform the stressful environment within a household and enhance the entire family's wellbeing while strengthening the parent-child bond that needs to be strong now more than ever.
This may include playing house, making 'sellang buth', creating a playground setting with a cloth or rope swing, pillow fight, playing hopscotch, building 'Kurumbatti' Machines and so on" she continued to state.
Therefore, this Children's Day, Softlogic Life invites all parents to bring out their inner child at least 10 minutes each day to contribute towards a more productive and positive home environment.
This is because the constant necessity for psychological connectedness with another human being is vital to the survival and satisfactory development of both children and parents, not only in the psychological domain, but also in the physical and cognitive domains.
While everyone exists as adults, an inner child is still very much a part of each person, and it is often a strong source of strength.
While the day-to-day stress of taking charge, and running one’s life can squeeze out every bit of enthusiasm out, tapping into one's inner child can undoubtedly allow people to look at the world with a fresh set of hopeful eyes, the eyes of wonder, the eyes of a child.