How Your Children Can Help Your Parents Get Through The Pandemic

One of the most difficult things about the Coronavirus pandemic has been the fact that grandchildren can’t see their grandparents. While grandparents can be an extreme help when it comes to childcare. As well as, children love going to their grandparents to get spoiled rotten and have endless fun. These are not the main reasons why it’s important that your children and your parents maintain a good relationship.

Times are tough right now. Most of the elderly population that are in senior home care or nursing homes are unable to have visitors. So now more than ever it’s important to keep your children’s relationship strong with their grandparents. Making sure they keep communicating via video chat and sending each other letters and gifts, and here’s why:

Knowledge for both

Children who have a close relationship with their grandparents learn a number of life skills from them. Grandparents tell stories about their lives, they tell them stories about you as a child, about other members of the family, and things that they have gone through in the past. You can still keep this up over video chat while they can’t physically see each other. Also, one of the main things that children help their grandparents with is keeping up to date with the latest trends and technology which right now is essential and will keep them connected to the outside world.

A Lower Risk Of Depression

It will come as no surprise to learn that most grandparents feel happier when they spend time with their grandchildren. However, this is more than just a happy feeling for them as a good relationship between grandparents, and their grandchildren. This has been proven to be beneficial for the psychological health of both.

The closer the bond, the stronger the anti-depressive benefits. At the moment, older people especially are feeling the effects of loneliness and isolation. If your children can do anything to help this, then it will make a huge difference. Whether it’s waving at the window, making crafts and paintings or drawings, chatting online, or making videos for them, it’s important to do what you can, and your children can help in ways that no one else can.

A Boost In Energy

It’s important to maintain this relationship throughout the pandemic so that when things have eased, and your parents can see your children again, it can help them to get back to their best. Caring for children can be exhausting and while you might not want to hand your children straight over to your parents when it’s safe to do so, being able to do this eventually can help your parents to become more active.

A Better Social Life

Having grandchildren can help many older people to feel socially fulfilled. According to a study from the US National Library of Medicine, being a grandparent “promotes a socially active lifestyle that may be beneficial to cognitive aging.” Obviously, as mentioned, this is difficult right now, but at least you can give your parents a good social life online to help them get through the pandemic.

Precautions

If your parents are still living at home and are really feeling isolated take precautions if you are going to be seeing them in person. There is also a lot of people that rely on the childcare provided by grandparents. With lockdowns looming and essential workers (like me) still going to work, this is often the only option for them.

If you are in this boat, the CDC recommends wearing masks indoors when you are not in your own home. They recommend opening a door or window for ventilation. As well as, of course, social distancing. Although not an ideal situation we are all in this together.

Trying to take care of your children and your parent’s health is the top priority for most of us right now. These are some things that not only take into account their physical health but also their connection to the world, their mental health, their energy, their social life, and if need be the precautions to take when being together.

I hope you all are staying safe, making Thanksgiving plans that are taking everyone’s health into consideration, and being smart about this pandemic. It’s exhausting but we are all in this together and if we all do our part we will come out of this better than before. If you have more ideas of how children can help your parents get through the pandemic leave them in the comments below. You can also find me on most social media @mamaofthedrama.

Until next time…