CORONAVIRUS QUARANTINE: A FAMILY IN OWN JUICE

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Coronavirus quarantine: Family in its own juice. I well remember how in the distant 1980s, canned food with sardines in their own juice, jokingly called - "Sardines in their own sweat", ridiculing the density of the "settlement" of a can of fish. However, now, in April 2020, there is no time for jokes: like fish on ice, members of those families that were in a forced self-isolation mode are fighting against each other as part of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. In addition to the risk of contracting the coronavirus, there are risks of knocking down the crown from those heads of families who could not properly organize the leisure of their households in quarantine. In addition to the threat to life and health, there is also a very real threat of divorce. And while husbands and wives are being saved from this by the doors of the magistrates' courts buried during the pandemic, family psychologists around the world should urgently be given such a set of the right advice that will help transform the stress from quarantine into a positive one from communicating with loved ones.

So, let's begin. Why Is quarantine a family problem? There are at least seven reasons for this:

- Due to the high pace of ordinary working life, many husbands and wives have simply lost the habit of long-term communication with each other.

- The small size of the living space of Russian apartments does not allow creating comfortable private corners for all family members, which leads to competition for “living space”.

- Teenagers and already adult children may not obey their parents, which is why sharp pedagogical disputes may arise between spouses.

- Any unfulfilled or unfinished business by one of the spouses becomes him / her a guilty verdict, which is repeated like a mantra and poisons life.

- Lack of news quickly leads to impoverishment of communication in a couple.

- Violation of their own plans for the future, the whipping up of negative information by news programs, the lack of live communication with other people and a general lack of physical activity leads to stress or depression.

- The constant presence of children (since schools, kindergartens and universities are closed) does not allow spouses to lead an active intimate life, which does not allow them to receive emotional relaxation in full.

Accordingly, in order to neutralize the effect of these unpleasant factors and circumstances, I give ten specific tipshow to not only survive quarantine and self-isolation, but also improve relations in your family.

1. Coronavirus quarantine. For the period of family seclusion in a couple, a complete moratorium is imposed on expressing any claims to each other! Both for past mistakes and miscalculations, and for current ones. Because the constant showdown in a confined space will quickly turn any married couple into spiders or snakes in one jar. If a man and a woman are characterized by a deterioration in communication after drinking alcohol, it must be completely excluded for this time. It is important to agree that no one shouts at each other during this period of time, does not offend, all the more, does not raise a hand!

2. Coronavirus quarantine. To create the effect of movement, movement in space, you can spend a "week of national cuisine". This is when every day a special menu is prepared - Mexican, Georgian, French, Greek, Turkish, American, German, Tatar, Buryat, Ukrainian, Indian, Arabic, etc. I will say more: you can even Chinese and Italian))) Through pizza, spaghetti or Peking duck, the corona virus is still not transmitted! But with fried bats, I advise you to be careful)) This is not Feng Shui yet)). It has long been known: nothing unites people more than joint breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Therefore, during the quarantine period, it is necessary to agree that meals in the family should be shared, and not with plates in their corners.

In addition: quarantine is a great time when a family can and should make desserts and sweets on their own. Long-forgotten Russian folk family snacks - jelly, "potato", "sweet sausage", gingerbread, "nuts with condensed milk", "brushwood", waffles, cake "Napoleon", "Pancake", "Medovik", "Smetannik", " Chak-chak”, all this is at your disposal. Moreover, the recipes can always be spied on the Internet, and the ingredients for these dishes are elementary: flour, sugar, eggs, butter and milk. This good, for sure, everyone in a panic bought many kilograms)) So it's time to eat all this and enjoy life. In addition: cooking yummy together is a great opportunity to introduce our children to this culinary art. The XXI century has just begun, you never know what kind of quarantines await us and they are still ahead. And the ability to cook deliciously has not stopped anyone yet.

3. Coronavirus quarantine. General improvement in figure and health by sports and diet. A week of quarantine or two weeks of self-isolation for coronavirus is a great opportunity to put the whole family on a diet and improve their figure. Fitness centers and sports stores are closed, but squats, abs and push-ups can be done without any equipment at all! Moreover: through online stores (such as Yula and Avito) or social networks, you can quickly and very inexpensively (reception, with home delivery) purchase new or used bike simulators, treadmills, a set of weights or dumbbells, a horizontal bar or wall bars for an apartment or something else. And so, your whole friendly family spends many hours at home training, to sweat and pleasant pain in the strained muscles. As a result, when the quarantine is over, you will pleasantly surprise everyone around you with your waist, posture and biceps. And this shared success and shared pride will greatly strengthen your couple!

4. Coronavirus quarantine. Disassemble all cabinets! Most of the husbands and wives living as usual simply do not physically have enough time to sort out all their family property. Hence - mezzanines of wardrobes, dressing rooms, balconies, loggias, spaces under the bathroom, etc. - are packed with a wide variety of things, most often forgotten long ago. Therefore, it is very correct to use the quarantine period for well-coordinated family work to sort out everything in the apartment, to clear these "Augean stables". Something can be thrown away, something can be compacted, something can be altered and worn, something can be donated, etc. The main thing is a real family quest, where an equation is solved with many unknown numbers at once and with the participation of all family members. And the feeling of satisfaction from the work done on the analysis will also be common.

5. Coronavirus quarantine. Parse all family photos on computers. Modern life is so dynamic that we do not even have time to comprehend many of our actions. We go on vacation, visit relatives, hold parties, walk in parks, raise children, and work a lot. And all this is preserved by us in photographs in computers, laptops, flash cards and phones. However, we rarely look at it and organize it, more often we accidentally erase it or forget it along with old gadgets. But forgetting the past means forgetting yourself, your family history! Therefore, during the quarantine period, it's time to collect and organize all your photos and videos for many, many years and from all, all carriers. Trust me as someone who has already done this: it will take a very long time! However, putting everything discovered in different folders - "Wedding", "Children kindergarten", "Children school", "Pets", "Parents' anniversaries", "Egypt 2008", "Turkey-2014", "Dominican Republic-2011", "Cyprus-2017", "Sport", "Mountains", "Family", "Our past apartments and cars", etc., will allow you to once again remember all the main milestones of your family path. Cry about the past and be proud of yourself, praise each other and once again understand: "We are so different, but together - we are strong!"

6. Coronavirus quarantine. Show children old photo albums. The family is always a synthesis of stories, traditions and the future. But our children are growing so fast that we do not have time to devote them to the history of our family. However, most families keep old photo albums, where all this is reflected. And modern grandparents can always send the necessary scans of old photos by e-mail or instant messengers. Therefore, when else, if not during quarantine, sit down with the children and for a couple of evenings tell them about the pedigree of your family, about your great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers and other relatives, participants in wars and revolutions, industrializations and reforms that raised virgin lands and build BAM, who made scientific discoveries and lived in the "dashing 1990s". It is these family evenings that allow maintaining the spirit of unity not only between spouses, but also in the family as a whole.

7. Coronavirus quarantine. Communication with children. The study of family legends and old photo albums is only the beginning of a large family-quarantine work on communicating with children. After all, to be honest - at ordinary times, modern children always receive less attention from their parents, who are always busy with work during the day and are very tired in the evenings. Therefore, self-isolation of parents with their children is an ideal time for career guidance, when parents can slowly find out the horizons and interests of their son or daughter. This is the time to tell and come up with fairy tales, read books, learn checkers and chess, learn folk proverbs and sayings, play board games, watch educational programs, sculpt from plasticine and slime, build doll houses and garages for cars, assemble a constructor and to set up scientific experiments. In the end - to arrange a competition for the best Egyptian mummy, wrapping themselves in rolls of stored toilet paper. Children are at the same time the most difficult, but also the most grateful audience, which is always happy from joint activities with moms and dads. It is the common activity of parents with children that allows both the first and the last to feel how much this word means - family.

8. Coronavirus quarantine. When no one is in a hurry in the family, the time comes to plan new goals, successes and achievements, to clarify plans for the future. The husband and wife can analyze their past, current and future budget. Not only to set new tasks, but also to carry out monitoring of prices and assortment of what needs to be purchased this and next year through the sites without fuss. Analysis of furniture, summer cottages and land plots, apartments and cars, universities for the admission of children, vacancies for changing jobs for the spouses themselves is a very exciting and bringing together occupation.

9. Coronavirus quarantine. Expanding social connections with virtual contacts. The point is that any spouses have childhood friends, classmates and classmates, colleagues in past places of work, distant relatives and neighbors in past places of residence. With most of them, connections have long been lost, but they were pleasant people and, as a rule, well known to both husband and wife. Given the fact that most of our contemporaries have accounts on social networks, they are quite detectable. Moreover, the very search for them and the beginning of communication is a positive and interesting process in which the husband and wife are involved. Given the noticeable decrease in the number of news during the quarantine, stories about who and what have achieved over the years and decades increase the spouses' interest in life and pride in their family. After all, family success, like everything else in the world, is known by comparison. Therefore, data is needed for this comparison! In addition, communication with old friends can always be arranged in the form of an online corona-virus-party, via Skype or other video messengers. That will create the effect of presence and wash away the sadness-longing from sitting in four walls.

Of course, in a period of pandemic and panic, nothing strengthens the family like the stocks of toilet paper and buckwheat created in the apartment. However, you can see for yourself - those ten family activities during quarantine that I have listed will have a much longer lasting effect. Buckwheat will be eaten, toilet paper will be spent on its disposal, but the memories of how warm, fun, creative and loving the days of quarantine were spent will strengthen your family for many more years, if not decades! Which is what I sincerely wish you.

I wish you all good health, and we will definitely defeat the coronavirus soon!

Best regards, family psychologist, Doctor of Science, Professor Andrey Zberovsky.