How to Promote Friendship among Kids during the Pandemic?
Lockdowns and social distancing during the covid-19 pandemic have brought drastic changes in everyone’s lives. Children are no exception, they are being actively encouraged to spend most of their time online with laptops and phones to engage with digital technology because they now attain online schooling and have minimal contact with people outside their immediate family like friends and peers. Friendships are essential for your children’s happiness as well as health. Social interactions, from the age of two onwards, strengthen children’s immune systems, enhance motivation and reduce stress. Unfortunately, most of the children have been separated from their friends since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic due to social distancing, school schedules and shifting parent schedules.
The internet, applications, social media and the use of digital technologies have quickly become an integral, significant part of most children’s lives. During the covid-19 pandemic, the demands of social distancing mean that most children’s communication with their friends and teachers has shifted online. Although there have been studies of children ten years and older developing and maintaining friendships online, there are some studies of children younger than ten years of age that research the ways they can participate online to maintain friendships. Here are some ideas to help your kids enjoy with their friends and keeping them safe at the same time:
1. Schedule a Virtual Meeting
The way we as parents used to let our kids go out and play with their friends in the evening, similarly we can fix a time and let them meet online using video chatting applications such as Zoom or Skype. Meeting in person has not been an option during COVID-19 and screen time should be limited but there is no harm if it is compensated with social connections.
2. Watch a Movie or TV Series Virtually Together
Parents can choose an age-appropriate movie or television series and invite their friends and their family virtually. Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, many streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon offer a feature for online viewing parties.
3. Organize a Cooking Competition in Your Neighborhood
Cooking is one of the most recommended skills that kids should try to learn not because they need food but because of the fact that cooking enhances all the senses in kids. By cooking under the guidance of parents, their touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste senses are strengthened. So, parents can organize a cooking competition in their neighborhood and reap the benefits of skill learning, being competitive and healthy social interaction.
4. Fill Your Friends Letter Boxes
The art of letter writing is dying. Why not take this opportunity to teach our kids how to write a handwritten letter to their friends. This will enhance their writing skills and keep them excitedly engaged and connected with their friends. You can ask them to make the letter paper at home from scratch to make it more personal and fun.
5. Start a Pandemic Book Club
Ask all the parents of your kid’s friend circle to select a book and make them read it. After finishing each chapter the friends can share insights, ideas and views through online meetings. This way they will interact, develop the habit of reading and enhance their vocabulary as well. It is recommended to read at least 2 books a month.
6. Let Them Play Online Video Games
Kids used to go to each other’s houses to play video games and it is an integral part of their childhood. So, parents can let them play online video games for a reasonable time. We have to try to ensure that they do not miss anything because of this pandemic.
Social relationships are the groundwork for children’s learning and development as they participate in their particular culture and social norms. For children, the avenues to forming friendships start either in their family with cousins, their immediate neighborhood or at school, with parents and teachers playing a vital role in providing support and arranging gatherings. However, parents and teachers have to explore how children shall engage with digital technology with friends in different contexts. The aim should be to find the ways children use digital technology to support and retain their friendships and the content of these interactions.
Children are able to maintain their friendship and explore imaginary and creative play while adopting different roles in the play through telephonic or online meetings. Virtual worlds provide children the opportunity to build on imaginary spaces that contribute to sustaining their relationship through emotional and visual connection. Digital technologies are an important learning tool that allows kids to create a collective social situation of development that integrates imaginary, real and virtual worlds. The children can play online games following the rules of the game different from what may occur in some face-to-face play. The combination of real, imaginary and virtual worlds supports the kids to experience an array of emotions such as happy moments, sympathy and attunement as they encourage each other to participate in the online world and sustain their friendship connection.