How to Ease Isolation From Teen to Parent

Three tips that you shouldn’t forget.

I recall that when quarantine began, social networks flooded with indignation about kids and teens not being over the moon with the lockdown. “Isn’t it nice to spend quality time with family?” they said. “Can’t you stay off your damn phone?” they said.

As a Gen-Z’er who survived three months of quarantine, let me tell you that no matter how loving and caring they are, for a family to function it needs to stay separate for the better part of the day. With the perspective of normal life still far to grasp, adjustments to our current style of living need to be made to recreate the ideal off-on-its-own environment created by work, school and college, so here there are three teenager-approved tips:

Physically shutting the rooms down — whenever the family member needs to — can be beneficial to the overall health of the members. Engaging nonstop, indeed, is likely to become exhausting for the whole family. It is OK to stay alone. Implementing a rule of not breaking into closed rooms could be exactly what your aching family needs.

It might sound counterproductive, but all families have moments when all members come together and speak about the day — don’t give them up for good. As soon as new territories have been established (see above), joining to tell each other what’s new will serve the purpose of creating that illusion of the old normal. It will draw the attention from the unity of the family to the individuality of the member, aiding at recreating the livable environment of a COVID-free world.

While all sorts of collective approaches might be taken care of, it is up to the individual to fill their newly found alone time with quality activities. Albeit more challenging than just scrolling down the phone, active kill timers such as writing, programming, and playing an instrument will feel more productive and regenerating than passive activities such as watching TV series, reading, or listening to music. If those are your preferred choices, I suggest looking at ways to make them more entertaining. Are you a bookworm like me? Think about taking notes of your thoughts about books, with a banal tracker or even on incredibly clicked sites such as Goodreads and Amazon — not to talk about Medium, which is a little more time-consuming. I would suggest similar habits for music and cinema. Transform the passive into active.

Ultimately, though, these suggestions could be useful post isolation too. Sharing a home isn’t the easiest task, even in a COVID-free world.

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