Where is the Village?

As a family, we are in the midst of the third week of illness - COVID, stomach bugs and other illnesses.

One of our kids has been off at least two days in each of those three weeks, our other one has only been ill in the latter end, my husband holding strong trying to work impossible hours to also be there for us. I was also down for a bit, which meant cancelling some of my one-on-one sessions and facing the guilt of not being able to fully focus on my work.

The nature of my work really puts me in unease, when I have to take time off work and equally it is one of my strong beliefs that it is our responsibility to keep ourselves away from others when we are unwell, especially for those of us who work in the communities. I also believe that it is important to model to others, especially children (ours and others’), that we need to look after ourselves when we are unwell. It's not about pushing through when we're unwell; it's about taking care of ourselves and acknowledging our limitations.

The past few weeks have reactivated some of my recurring thoughts about family life and screens and connection.

Our little family is just our little family. We have no further family support here. We are a classic case of a nuclear family. The unhealthy way of being a family - the one where you spend so much time attached to your children, even when you are unwell. In a healthy set-up you’d have the grandparents/ aunts and uncles around the corner who’d scoop up the kids and completely spoil and nurture them. Instead we are parents running low on energy, feeling the pressure of doing work and feeling the guilt of not giving enough to your children. And what do our kids end up doing a lot of? Watching stuff on the screen waiting for their inspiration to run dry. I am not a big fan of screens and I am known to say ‘no’ to them more often than ‘yes’. The last few weeks have been different and I came to the realisation that this is the best I could offer in order to not to completely lose myself. Being acutely aware of how important connection is and knowing that screens really disturb that flow of connection, I have noticed the reactions in my children that scream 'disconnect'. Having repaired this by coming together and playing games we were able to communicate about this together. We talked about how watching too much stuff can make us all mushy in our brains. I’ve laid the judgement against myself to rest, the judgement of too much screen time. And it was definitely way too much. But I also know that this is not a long-term event and that I will return to my old self of not having these screens to that excess.

So, do you think children nowadays are so attached to screens because we are lacking wider family structures? Is it time for us to build new structures with other families in which we can be the village for each other? After all, wouldn’t our children and us thrive if we had different influences? I would love to hear your refelctions and feelings on this.