The challenge of Catalan families surviving confinement at home

Telling a 16-year-old why he can't go to the neighboring village to see his friends for a couple of hours is not easy. Not because he doesn't understand why he's off school and largely confined to home, but because teenagers can't help but fight for what they want.

It is not so much a battle of wills as a game of six-dimensional chess in which reason and logic are mostly props, and in which 'no' is no longer enough and in which 'please' has lost its magic. It ends in an uneasy truce as both sides realize the futility of arguing.

It has taken five days of staying at home together before the family experiences its first showdown due to frustration at the restrictions imposed due to the coronavirus crisis, and it is hard to tell whether it has taken a long time in coming or is way too soon.

Spanish government officials have been saying that the state of alarm due to the health crisis will almost certainly have to be extended, while the Catalan authorities have been trying to get Madrid to decree that Catalonia must be locked down entirely.

In the meantime, while everyone waits to see how the situation develops, families all over Catalonia are, in many cases for the first time, spending 24/7 at home, with only brief trips outside to stock up on supplies, for unavoidable work commitments, or to walk the dog.

Walking the dog

The dog has never been so popular. It would normally take unreasonable levels of arm-twisting, guilt-tripping, bribery, or a straight-up order to get one of the two teenagers to take the pet out, but the dog seems to have developed an inordinate need to urinate.

Then there is the food situation. Filling up the fridge and cupboards to cut down on shopping trips was taken as a challenge to eat as much as possible at all times, and as anyone with teenagers knows, they are impossible to satiate, especially when watching Netflix.

The suggestion to take advantage of the time off school to read a book is met with the derisive laughter it clearly deserves, while a request to sweep the garage elicits a caveman-like grunt from the teenager who has plenty of time to invest in playing video games. Obviously, this cannot go on.

It is something parents in more than one household are realizing, such as in Gemma Johé's family: "With the confinement starting at the weekend, the first couple of days we got on with it, but then we saw that we needed a timetable, so that the kids have a routine," she says.

Gemma is a teacher in a school in Vilobí d'Onyar, in northern Catalonia, and so spends some of the time at home providing work on-line for her students. Her husband still has to go out to work, but not every day as he can sometimes work at home.

Leisure, studying and family time

The couple has two small children, aged four and seven, and they decided to draw up a timetable that "combines leisure, studying and family time, and also some time for the television and the tablet," she says.

The timetable, which sets out the day's activities from 8am to 8pm, is hung with magnets on the fridge door so that everyone can see it. "It's a set timetable, but it is in part agreed with the kids and they have their say about it," she adds.

While the children do the activities sent by the school, the couple also uses the internet to find online resources that help them get through the confinement, especially those that help them explain to their children what is happening and why they can't go outside.

Of course, each family will face its own challenges and it will depend on how many children they have and how old they are, but providing a structure to the day and balancing work and play seem to be the keys to surviving confinement that could go on for weeks.

Progress has even been made with the teenagers in this house: everyone is up before 8am, everyone has been assigned jobs in the house, homework is done, the whole family sits to eat together at the table, and some of the food is locked away, but the dog is exhausted.