Have your children started to get bored with home-based learning during temporary school closures due to the pandemic?

It has been about three weeks since the studying at home policy was issued because of COVID-19.

For schoolchildren, learning at home may also mean that they face a monotonous environment as every day they see the same people, either their parents who assist them in learning or (if they have) their brother and sister. Aside from that, with limited physical space at home, they cannot move as freely as when they are in their school yard and also, they are unable to study with their friends.

Sutarimah Ampuni, a lecturer and psychologist at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, says that instinctively, children and teens are fond of learning together with their peers and “the absence of fellow students in their study environment can make them less enthusiastic about their learning activities. But this does not necessarily mean that this cannot be solved,” she told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

As several parents have said, boredom is an inevitable experience that their children face as they study at home, with some even being exposed to stress.

Eno, 40, a marketing manager at PT Mandiri Maha Daya, an occupational health and safety training provider, in Depok, West Java, acknowledges that in the first week of studying at home, her three children, aged 12, 7 and 4 respectively, got bored with their learning and often whined to go out to play.

However, the understanding of their children’s entertainment needs prompted her and her husband to relax the family’s tight rules by allowing them to play with their gadgets and watch TV, which they were previously not permitted to do.

“We do it as a form of our appreciation for their cooperation and understanding about the situation,” she says, adding, “But they can do so as long as they have completed to do their homework.”

”We also provide them with snacks as another reward,” she remarks.

That way, she says, her children become familiar with the rhythm of studying at home and she and her husband manage to find the right assistance pattern when it comes to home-based learning.

According to Eno, time management and good collaboration with her husband have contributed significantly to making home-based learning run well. With good time management, she says, she knows when to do her office job remotely and when to be engaged with her children’s learning.

“Working together with my husband allows me to share the tasks and thus, this not only lessens my burden and but also brings my husband as a father closer to our children,” she says

Monika D. Siagian, 51, another mom, says she always praises her son, Alberto, who is in sixth grade at an elementary school, every time he finishes his homework, so that he maintains enthusiasm.

Facing the computer every day, she says, can lead to her son getting bored and to cope with the situation, “we conduct activities together such as a morning walk or cycling close to our house,” says Monika who teaches at a senior high school in town.

“We also watch TV, pray together, prepare a breakfast together, play games, play guitar or drums through an online course and so forth,” she says.

According to Monika, being willing to learn and adapt (to changes) is a good way to face the challenging situation.

“There is a beauty in it because this is something unprecedented,” she says.

So parents have their own approaches, ways and experiences in handling home-based learning. But psychologically speaking, what should actually parents do?

Sutarinah advises several steps that parents should take in this regard, including having good communication among family members, establishing good cooperation, setting healthy daily routines, being engaged with your children, providing children with an opportunity to contact their peers online and involving the children in household chores.

Like it or not, she says, parents should be fully engaged in their children’s business, including understanding the learning materials, adopting a learning method that their children enjoy, being involved in the children’s habit of playing, and so forth.

“This way, mom and dad can be both their children’s friend and teacher,” she says, adding that parents should be creative and full of stamina.

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