A flexible parental mindset is the foremost important management to deal with these challenges and to reinforce the holistic development among teenagers. Parents should consider every teenager is a person and has diverse needs. Parents need to recognize and respond to these requirements keeping flexibility in their minds. Both teenagers and their parents jointly participate in different awareness programs to increase their understanding of nutritional, personal, sexual, and environmental health and hygiene. This can help parents to update their knowledge and teenagers can be a better decision-maker to live a healthy life.

Supportive care to deal with physical changes

The physical transition during teenage due to the onset of puberty requires some supportive care to avoid misguided your child from unauthentic sources. [2] During this stage, following parental supportive care require to cope up with the changes:

• Give stress to build self-esteem and confidence to your child so that he/she can positively accept his/her physical changes. Do not compare with others or criticize them.
• Play a positive role model by eating and offering nutritious foods and healthy drinks. Teenagers require a more calorie supply to match the physical demand. Healthy eating habit at this crucial stage of life remains its benefits until their later stage of life.
• Encourage physical activity to burn excess calories and help to keep themselves physically fit. [3] This can help to develop a positive self-image and they also tried hard to become a role model for the society.
• Express parental love by showing respect to their physical space but keep in touch with maintaining an open level communication.
• Allow teens to apply grooming habits and accept their prolonged bathroom time to sustain a sense of control over their developing bodies in their advanced adolescence age.
• Answer sex-related questions honestly but in a knowledgeable way. Show them proper images and educational videos for better understanding by referring to educational websites.

Supportive care to build cognitive development

Your child may not decide their life at their nascent stage but start thinking of their life after reaching their teenage. The concrete thinking operation processing in the brain starts developing after seven years of age and is completed at eleven years. At approximately twelve to fifteen years of age, teenagers developed advanced reasoning skills. Teens usually give priority to their feeling during the thinking process because at this stage brain develops meta-cognition processing. Realistic thinking, logical strategies, memory retainment are the parts of cognitive development during adolescence. [4] These cognitive changes require the following parental supportive care:

• Carefully listen to your teens and show respect to their process to develop a genuine trustworthy relationship.
• Discuss with your teenage boy/girl about their opinion on different behavioral rules. And encourage them to act in a safe environment and deal with the consequences of the reality check.
• Give chance to your teens to take risky actions under your supervision in a fully controlled environment.
• Share your bitter experiences with teens and what you learned from them, so that they may not repeat the history.
• Provide an opportunity for teens and encourage them to participate in community services for their overall development.

Supportive care for psychosocial development

How teens interact with family and friends is an indication of their psychosocial development. Often psychosocial development of teens influenced by peer pressure, as they spend more time with their friends and lesser time with family. Therefore, both acceptable and non-acceptable social skills are developed, and teens practice them in the influence of their peer group. But teens tend to make their long-term decisions related to their education and values in the influence of their parental inspirations. But they used to showcase themselves as a cool guy and want to enjoy life. Their interest frequently changes due to their fickle mind. [4]

Teens have a demand for their own space and privacy. They are more curious about sexuality and want to know how their parents handled this issue, but unable to ask. They start reading different articles and watch the video to get the answers. Often, teens tend to feel they know to become argumentative and start questioning the values and judgments of adults. [4] Therefore, following supportive care help teens to build consistent psychosocial behavior.

• Provide a safe and structured environment where a teen can get the opportunity to create their behavioral guidelines and deal with the consequences. This will help them to become a responsible person for their actions.
• Keep a close watch on friends and associations of your son and daughter. Try to make a friendly relationship with parents or guardians of your child’s friend circles. Discuss your views about them with your daughter or son and aware of them if you don’t feel anything right about their behavior.
• Give enough opportunity to your home, so that teens feel comfortable to chill out.
• Do not forget to praise teens for their efforts, and accomplishments.
• Exhibit your cool acceptance of their physiological growth and development. Like, mother and daughter go for lunch to celebrate her first onset of the menstrual cycle or a father can arrange camping and enjoy it with his son when he starts to shave.
• Helps teenagers to attempt realistic goal and reward their achievements and do not forget to praise them. This helps them to know the requirements to live a healthy and happy life.
• Give your teens importance by listening to them carefully and spending quality time with them.

Different supportive care systems require to deal with behavioral changes that occur during teenage. Parents have to understand the situation from their experiences and provide support to overcome the behavioral challenges their teens faced during their adolescent period.  Parents need to be always calm and showcase their care about their child’s help to avoid developing aggressive behavior among their teenagers at this stage.

References

1. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222714094_ISSUES_IN_HOLISTIC_DEVELOPMENT_OF_ADOLESCENTS
2. https://ceufast.com/course/adolescent-holistic-health-issues
3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK201497/
4. https://ceufast.com/course/adolescent-holistic-health-issues

We did not realize the importance of an organized lifestyle, which we followed before the COVID-19 pandemic. The initial phase of lockdown brought lots of changes in our thought. We realized our home is the safest place. And our family members are our best friends. To inspire others, we have started capturing and uploading pictures of our different happy family moments and commenting on posts of others on social media platforms. But we do not realize when it becomes a habit of many of us to stay online for a prolonged period. We used to catch up with our old friends on other social media platforms. Our connections are increasing day by day during this lockdown. Many of us installed different OTT channels on smartphones and SmartTV. ‘Financial Express’ reported a 60% growth in Amazon and Netflix subscriber base during this lockdown. [1]

‘Work from Home’ has become a trend and necessity during the Covid19 lockdown. Many organizations are allowing their employees to serve their job from home. This is a huge opportunity to earn money safely in this pandemic condition. Kids are doing school from their home through e-learning so that their education should not be bothered. But on the other side ‘Work from Home’, ‘e-school’ reduce traveling time, social interactions, and also disturb routine timetable. But we do not realize, ‘Work from Home’, ‘e-school’ trend already increase our screen time, then why should we spend our additional hours on screen. We often scold our children why they playing games on mobile, PC or laptop. But have we, adults comprehend how much time we spend on screen in this lockdown?

Is increasing screen time as serious as an addiction?

Spending screen time for a prolonged time can be classified under behavioral addictions. General people know the consequence of drug addiction, but their screen loving attitude may not know how harmful it is. The popularity of smartphone, Smart TV has a deep correlation with addiction. Most of the addicted people unable to control their behavior due to internal drive which inspires one to give priority to that substance and ignoring other activities. Currently in many families facing issues due to screen addiction symptoms of their loved ones. Frequent irritability due to alteration of mood, relatively low tolerance, salience, conflict, withdrawal symptoms, and relapse are addiction symptoms common problems of many families occur due to increase screen time. [2]

People stay at the same house, but instead of talking with each other, giving priority to the screen should not be a new normal. I know many of us may not take this seriously or think this is part of life in this social distancing moment. But ignoring addiction symptoms may create a new problem in the post-pandemic world.

I am very much optimistic about medical advancement and believe soon we will get the victory over COVID-19. But during this tough period, we must be more concerned about our current lifestyle, because this will negatively impact our post-pandemic health. Excessive screen time not only hampers mental well-being but can cause physical illness like backache, carpal tunnel syndrome, neck pain, headaches, insomnia, dry eyes and other vision problems, poor nutrition due to unmindful eating habit, weight gain or loss, poor personal hygiene due to using a mobile phone in the bathroom. [3]

How to diagnose?

I know if you tell any of your family members that he or she is screen-addicted, they will not believe you and may accuse you of the prejudice. Even you may be concerned about your screen-time. Like any other ill-health condition, screen addiction requires proper diagnosis. The following are five indications of screen addiction: 

• Constant thinking about past and future utilization of screen activities related to the internet, OTT platform, or others. 
• The increasing rate of screen time to gain satisfaction
• Unable to control repeated use of screen 
• Attempt to control screen use leads to depression, irritability, or mood swing
• Increasing online activities than the previous practice 

How to deal with screen addiction and normalize family life?

Not even me, the general population also have a belief that loss of self-control and free will are two factors that inspire one to get addicted. Therefore, self-control and some extent of restriction of free will in our lifestyle can prevent and treat addiction. Everybody loves to add fun to their lifestyle so that our daily life would not be boring. I am sharing some funny lifestyle measures, which will not only help you to stay away from the screen but also improve your overall well-being during this lockdown.  

Gardening

Gardening is a therapy that provides effective health outcomes at multiple levels. Gardening is a rehabilitation tool clinically applied for a personal change of addicted persons. Research evidence has proven that connectedness to nature triggers the positive emotions of the addicted person. [4]

The warm and sunny climate is perfect for gardening. It not only enhances the natural beauty of the home but also helps you to reduce depression, anxiety symptoms. Gardening improves life satisfaction, quality of life, and a sense of community, which are essential to cope up with the present situation. [5] You can select certain herbs like lemon balm, sweet basil, chili pepper for the kitchen garden. Whereas sunflower, lavender are some plants perfect for terrace gardening. They not only enhance the attractiveness of your garden but also have various medicinal benefits. If you do not have enough place in your home, do not worry! Pot gardening, bottle gardening are other options to deal with a screen addiction problem.

Diary writing

Addiction often diminishes the ability to express your feeling with others. Instead of taking verbal mode, start writing your feeling when you feel the urge to sit in front of your digital device. In such a condition, I recommend diary writing is to express your thoughts when you may feel lost and try to recover yourself. Because writing is the best way to communicate when an addicted person does not have control over words and creates unnecessary chaos in the family. Diary writing will also help you to capture this unforgettable condition when every individual is afraid of a Coronavirus attack. This will also help you to intact your feelings years after years. Here I also want to mention that you can also mentally and spiritually emancipate through passionate writing. [6]

Music therapy

Listening to music is an effective entrainment medium than abusing screen time. Replacing screen timing with an audio device is a smart decision to avoid boredom in this lockdown. Listening to music or playing music enhances dopamine secretion in the brain and can give an equivalent mental satisfaction of enjoyment. Also, the endorphins release helps to balance emotion. The benefit of listening to music also controls hypertension due to its vasodilatory effect. [7]

Opt for Off-screen activities

Before this lockdown, we did not have much time to spent in our home with our family members due to our busy work schedule. Then why should we waste this time by unnecessarily keeping ourselves busy in front of the screen? Generally, most of us have some hobbies, but we often don’t want to invest time in it. Most interestingly, many of us even do not know our hobbies, as many things remain unexplored in our life due to lack of time. Therefore, it is the right time to explore those regular activities that could make you happy. I suggest do it for your own, but not for social media posting to get appreciation. I recommend this as you do so, soon you become more conscious, which creates mental pressure that will never be your me-time. Some of you may find some surprising changes within you. Previously, you might have some different thoughts about your hobby, but when you explore those, unable to find the expected mental pleasure as you feel earlier. Our mind and body evolve with time, you may feel happiness after playing sports, but currently, when you try to play table tennis in your home you do not find that spark. You need to give some more time to redevelop your interest. In such condition, involve your family, may your child inspire you to play again. I also suggest exploring new things and discover yourself to resolve screen addiction. I believe the quality of life is not always a health-related term, but it about how much quality time we spent in our life. Positive thoughts during this lockdown can be the best time if you spent quality time with your family by maintaining social distancing. 

• During this Coronavirus pandemic, we have to stay at our home as much as possible to stay away from this virus. In this situation, cleaning and sanitizing your home is a very important job. Apart from this, sit with your family members and plan some home décor tasks to make your home cozier. 
• Practice yoga with your family is the ultimate healthful practice. But I know your children may not interest to do so regularly and gradually you also feel demotivated. If you losing interest to perform yoga or aerobic session every day, then dance with your family with some funny moves. I am sure, this will not only help to manage weight but also freshen-up your mind. I am sure your children also enjoy this activity and inspire you to maintain regularity.  
• Utilize this period to spread our traditional folklore to our next generation by learning and teaching thoseFolklore together by reading books, but not e-books or listening but not watching them in a suitable device.  
• We are mainly concern about our physical and mental health. But spiritual health is equally important for overall well-being. Set a time duration as a family-divine time to improve the spiritual health of your family. And practice it even after everything will become normalized.  
• We all believe, soon the time will come when we can go out without masks. Do not miss this time and inspire each other to the care of skin and hair so that your neighbors feel jealous of your natural makeover by effectively utilizing this time, but not wasting time to spending time on screen. 

The above is some of my mantras which can help you to bring your family harmony. It is always welcome if you invent some more tips to get yourself busy without spending unnecessary screen time. 

References

1. https://www.financialexpress.com/brandwagon/amazon-and-netflix-witnessed-more-than-60-growth-in-subscriber-base-during-lockdown-velocity-mr-study/1965362/
2. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325744681_Is_smartphone_addiction_really_an_addiction
3. https://www.psycom.net/iadcriteria.html
4. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321134657_The_use_of_sensory_perception_of_plants_in_horticultural_therapy_of_alcohol_addiction_Journal_of_Therapeutic_Horticulture_272_-_2017_ISSN_2381-5337
5. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211335516301401
6. https://www.rehab-recovery.co.uk/articles/how-writing-assist-recovery/
7. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4040058/