My son turned 3 recently. We had planned for a big party and to invite all his friends from the nursery. The little sweetheart only asked for one thing, a “minions” cake. My wife was able to get him one so it wasn’t a total bust. My parents dropped off presents at the door and ran off before we saw them. So he had some presents. I set up a laptop and plugged it into the TV with my webcam so we could set up a big zoom meeting, and all the family was able to dial in and watch him open his presents. Then everyone sung him happy birthday as we brought in the Minions cake and he blew out his candles.

Given the circumstances I think we did a pretty good job, but damn if it wasn’t heartbreaking for everyone involved. My son is struggling a lot with the lockdown, and at his age he is unable to express those emotions very well, so he mostly just acts out. We had been doing video calls with the grandparents at the start of this thing, but after a while it became clear that this was just frustrating him. He would be excited to chat with folks but as soon as they would appear on the screen he would hide behind me, run away or hit the phone out of my hand.

Last week I sat him down in the garden and tried to get him to talk about his feelings, to see if that would help. He told me (paraphrasing, with some prompting):

I’m sad. I am stuck in the house. I miss Gran and Grandad. I miss Granny and Uncle. I want to go to nursery but nursery is closed.

I think in general it was good to try and get him to talk about his feelings, although it put him in a pretty melancholy mood for the rest of the day. Last night though we managed to get about 2 mins into a video call with Gran and Grandad before he started acting out so that’s progress. They’re missing him too, and I’d like to think that if we could make the video calls work we would all enjoy them.

When this whole thing started my wife and I were very reluctant to explain Coronavirus to him in case we scared him. Unfortunately as the lockdown progressed we had to explain to him why the playparks were closed, why people were wearing masks, why we can’t see the grandparents and so on. Eventually we told him that there were are lot of germs around, and that germs are what make people sick. We told him that people who have the germs can give them to other people and make them sick, so we have to all stay away from each other until the germs are all gone. To our surprise he seems to have really understood the general gist of this, and when we take him out for walks he will stay away from other people we see and so on.

The big issue right now is keeping him entertained and sane, and frankly that’s a full time job. Here is what my weekday daily routine looks like right now.

06:30 Wake Up. Get breakfast. Don’t shower because everyone else is sleeping.

07:00 Log on to my computer and begin working.

09:30 Now that everyone else is awake, take a 5 min break to have a shower and get dressed.

13:00 Log off my work. Immediately start looking after my son while my wife logs onto her work. Try to get in any additional work or meetings if my son will give me the space.

19:30 Start preparing my son for his bed.

20:30 Son is in bed. I usually use this time to try and unwind a bit.

10:30 Go to bed.

It’s a hard routine. The weekends give us some respite, as we split them equally, giving me about 2 half days of rest. But the stress piles up a little more each week. Anyway, I think that’s all I have to say just now.