Name: Parenting and the Pandemic | Life in Japan Episode 94
Uploaded: 2021-02-12T19:15:20.000Z
Duration: 13 min 14 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

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Today we're talking about parenting during the pandemic, check it out.

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Well, it's 2021. Parenting has never been an easy job,

But especially during a pandemic, it is very challenging.

And whatever the state of your family was before the pandemic,

The pandemic came, and it just exaggerated whatever was happening.

So if there were problems inside, it exaggerated those problems,

If there were good things happening, it actually kind of strengthened those things.

But today we want to look at how can you live and have a happy family during pandemic.

For you, what was the biggest like change and challenge of parenting here with the pandemic?

Well, I think first of all having the kids home 24 hours a day...

All of a sudden all of us moms instantly became teachers.

It wasn't like a choice to teach our children, we were just kind of tossed into that.

I mean there's just totally, a totally a different dynamic to having your kids home all the time.

I love summer breaks, I love breaks when my kids are home,

But one thing I find totally interesting when my kids are home is

We eat lunch — let's just pretend like we eat at noon.

At 12:15 they will come and say "Mom, we're hungry. What's there to eat?"

And this was months of this because everyone was stuck at home.

And you're trying to balance healthy eating and healthy routines and school and tons of laundry

Because kids are home all the time, making messes and cleaning house,

Husbands are home with work, it's just...

And there's still more of it here that we're working through now.

I'd say one thing that probably really helped for us too was finding fun things to do together

Like Becca and Anna like to play Catan, so we'll play Catan with them

Or Joshua and I, we like to play MarioKart

Uh, even the whole family really gets into MarioKart.

Making purposeful times with the family together.

I think establishing a healthy routine is very important.

It helps you manage your day a little more instead of just wondering

"Well what am I going to do now? What am I going to do now?"

It wasn't like we were all just on vacation for months,

And the kids still had school, so they had their school time,

Then meal time, then play time and study time,

We just had to figure out a routine that worked with us all being in the house at the same time.

Another thing I think was very helpful was establishing healthy eating patterns.

Because if I let my kids raid the fridge and feed themselves, Oh gosh

They would be eating cereal and chocolate and bread.

Plain rice. Just rice. Sarah would ask for it with a little shyoyu, soy sauce.

During this whole time we started experimenting with healthier options like whole grain rice and more vegetables

Like different soups and foods that are healthy but fun

It's amazing — eating healthy helps you have the right type of energy

Sugar high and then you fall and you drop and you're cranky.

And it would fill them up so they're not begging for food every 5 minutes.

So a lot of people comment, they're like "What a beautiful, wonderful family! You guys look perfect."

We definitely have had our moments, especially during the pandemic, has brought it out

When you're with each other all the time Yeah

And our house is much smaller than the house we had either in the States or in Brazil,

So you're in each others' business all the time

What— how have we kind of dealt with that?

When someone's got a little upset or when the kids need to be alone or one of us...

Needs to be alone. Well at one point we said "Well the car's available."

If anyone needs some alone time, you can just go sit in the car a little bit.

I'll go get in the car and go for a little drive to a park I really like

And it's the perfect time to kind of, like, just stretch out a little bit.

So you know a lot of things that really helped me was having close friends that I could call up

I'd call up my sisters, I had other friends that I was texting,

And just getting advice and encouragement

Or just complaining a little to someone who understood what I was going through.

And having that support system really, really is helpful.

Because raising children is not something that we just all know the answers to, you know?

Seeking advice from our parents and our grandparents or older ladies...

We have a lot of wise ladies in our church that we can—that I like to seek advice from

I think it's very important to, if you don't know what to do, if you don't know the answer, to find someone who can help you.

And don't feel ashamed to open up about something that maybe you feel like is embarrassing

Because chances are somebody else is also struggling with the same thing,

Wondering how to keep their kids in line, or keep them entertained or just to keep a happy family atmosphere.

A healthy family atmosphere really does take work

One thing that we always do too is every evening we have family devotion time

Where we read the verse of the day from the Bible

And we take turns praying — praying for people that are sick or for our family

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Parenting and the Pandemic | Life in Japan Episode 94

stick

pandemic

routine

exaggerate