bhopal counselling centres and schools for special needs children are organizing various online and telephonic classes to keep children busy in activities and utilize their time to keep away from negativity during the lockdown cooped up inside for so long the special needs children are having a tough time dealing with the new scheme of thingsanil mudgal cofounder of aarushi told toi that special educators at the school are calling up the students every morning giving them tasks like practising art learning to prepare small meals like breadbutter sandwiches eggs and tea etc and helping their parents with the daily chores like sweeping and mopping the floor etc it is really important to keep the children busy at this time otherwise they will fall into depression as they are not able to meet their friends and teachers or go outside at the same time they are surrounded by so much news about coronavirus and subsequent deaths that they will just stress out said mudgalthe teachers call up students on a rotation basis and so every 23 days they are able to talk to all the children they assign them small tasks and ask parents to help them out as each child is special they have to devise new activities for each of them separately some sporty ones are assigned to play games like hopskipjump walk their pets etc while those interested in music are encouraged to play new songs on their instrument or dance to music children then send us the videos of their activities he addedkala mohan das founder of nidaan institute for mentally and physically challenged children said that children are becoming stressed and some are throwing tantrums to go out therapists have to console them about it every now and thenit is really difficult for children with mental disabilities as they were given occupational therapies like meditation music therapy etc regularly we are sending audios and videos to the parents to keep them engaged as we cannot leave them alone during this time it is not possible for the parents to pay them all the attention as they have to work from home and manage household chores too we have specifically asked the parents to keep their schedules the same as before and involve the children in daily activities like gardening hanging out clothes cleaning and dusting but children who need regular physiotherapy are really suffering as it cannot be done without experts or it may backfire she saidanother counselling centre providing counselling and therapies to the special needs children conducts online sessions as children sit down with their parents to chat with their teachers and do the activities the special educators and therapists tell them to dodr jagmeet chawala of aadhar counselling centre said on the first day the response was overwhelming but as children realised that teachers were giving them homework they started running away from the webcam and parents had to use tricks and rewards to make them do their academic work however the