COVID Lockdown: Impact on Young Children’s Life

Page: 108-111

Neelam Kumari and Renu Bala (Department of Human Development & Family Studies, I C College of Home Science, CCS HAU, Hisar, Haryana)

COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the lives of everyone from young children to the aged. Children especially preschoolers are highly energetic and love to go to school and do different types of activities. But because of corona pandemic lockdown, they only have their parents and siblings to interact with, play with, and do all other different types of activities. This qualitative study was conducted to explore the different types of changes that occurred in the lives of preschoolers and how their parents’ roles, responsibilities got influenced, and how they were handling their young children during this trying time of being confined at home. The objectives of the study were to explore that how children at home during the time of the pandemic spent their time and to map the changes in their routine life and its effect on their life and development along with this it was also tried to document the ways in which parents are engaging children during this pandemic. Interviews were conducted through audio and video calls. The responses were subjected to thematic analysis. The key findings highlighted that education plays a significant role in preschoolers but because of the negative impact of screen time parents were not interested in online classes. The children have become more engaged in digital media due to being confined at home without school for a long duration of around ten months and because of this the aggression level has increased as they had a low social development environment, and no peer at all.