Circuit Breaker: A Time for Families

I know that coming out of their Wuhan lockdown, many families started divorce proceedings. I know also that incidents of family violence have gone up during the Circuit Breaker period. People who don't get along have nowhere to go to get away from each other.

The news has been very negative about the Circuit Breaker's impact on families.

Since I do parent coaching, I have a privileged view of the internal dynamics of many families. After reading so much bad news about fighting families, I thought that I would have to brace myself for SOS calls from many people.

The first 2 weeks, this was true. People were settling into new routines and fearful of what it would be like to do Home Based Learning. Once I had coached them on a few strategies, things settled down.

As weeks flowed into months, families began to enjoy each other. Husbands and wives had more time together. Parents had more time for children. Typically, the fulltime working mom comes home after a long day, tired and frazzled. She is in a hurry to get HW done and the children to bed. A mom like this, is a task-focused one. Children don't feel loved. They feel pushed and prodded and forced. Even the Stay-At-Home moms get tired and frazzled, coordinating volunteer work, CCA schedules, dropping and picking up different kids at different times. Normal life is so busy. People are short on time. There are always things to get done quickly. No mom has time to enjoy the children.

During the Circuit Breaker, Moms played football with their sons. Moms and Dads went jogging behind the bicycles of their children. Moms, Dads and children cooked up a storm in the kitchens. People cuddled each other, read books together, watched movies together. Mothers explained to me that they hoped their children would remember how happy the family was during the Circuit Breaker.

Children acted up less. They were less tired out by endless waiting around in school, and listening to teachers. The autistic children were calm, and learnt better, because they no longer had to deal with hours of sensory onslaught and the need to process social information. 

The Daughter and I work from home. The Daughter is always busy. Her day is filled with back-to-back conference calls and Zoom meetings. The rest of her day is filled with preparing for those meetings or following up on those meetings. However, she no longer commutes to work, saving her 2 hrs a day. She can sleep more. Her skin has begun to glow in the way it has not glowed since she started work. Once in a while, she takes a break and we get to chat in a way that we have not chatted since she was in preschool.

I think the message is not enough said that the Circuit Breaker is something to be thankful for. It is not the Circuit Breaker that causes family violence. That propensity for family violence pre-existed the Circuit Breaker. The Circuit Breaker simply makes it impossible for families to ignore pre-existing issues. For normal families, the Circuit Breaker is a time together to be treasured and savoured.

The Circuit Breaker reduces money all round. Jobs are lost. Salaries are cut. However, it gives an abundance of another resource - time. It is again, a choice, what we choose to do with that time. So, let's not buy in to the idea that the Circuit Breaker is a miserable time. Let's make lemonade when life gives us lemons.

If GDP had a component measuring strength of family relationships, I think we would see it go up. This is something to be thankful for. The strength and resilience of a nation sits on a foundation of family strength and unity.