BEHIND THE FRONT ROW: TAPPING THE LIVED EXPERIENCESOF OVERSEAS FILIPINO STUDENTS WITH FRONTLINER PARENTSIN THE STATE OF QATAR, A PHENOMENOLOGY

A new profound virus, COVID-19, spread all over the world including Qatar, resulting in the deployment of different frontliners to battle this pandemic. While there have been many studies highlighting the struggles of the main workers behind the crisis, the difficulties of their children are left unsung. Hence, this study scrutinizes their unspoken experiences, especially on the different life aspects the children undergo. Through a qualitative approach adapting the IMRAD format and phenomenologically designed, The study used the qualitative method of gathering the data, which was achieved by conducting key informant interviews. Related to the central question, “What aspects of life do Filipino students with frontliner parents are the most affected?”, a subquestion, “What are the common adjustments of Filipino students with frontliner parents?” was developed and used to gather specific experience-based information from the participants. The set of responses was treated and analyzed to produce the recurring themes which are found in the simulacrum.

A new profound virus, COVID-19, spread all over the world including Qatar, resulting in the deployment of different frontliners to battle this pandemic. While there have been many studies highlighting the struggles of the main workers behind the crisis, the difficulties of their children are left unsung. Hence, this study scrutinizes their unspoken experiences, especially on the different life aspects the children undergo. Through a qualitative approach adapting the IMRAD format and phenomenologically designed, the study examined the unraveled lived experiences of overseas Filipino students with frontliner parents. Data gathering was done through structured interviews stemming from the central question: "What aspects of life do Filipino students with frontliner parents are the most affected?", in which the data was later analyzed using inductive reasoning for thematizing. Based on the participants" verbal musings, three themes were constructed; the lived experiences of overseas Filipino students with frontliner parents revolve around: (1) Academic Relation, including their scholastic adjustments; (2) Societal Association, highlighting their social struggles; (3) and Psychological Comprehension that relates them into the reality of their situation. The phenomenological study shows that overseas Filipino students make critical decisions suited to the situation of their frontliner parents. It shows that because of the demanding job of their parents, many aspects of these children"s lives are greatly affected. The study, then, taps into the students" lived experiences of what they made to adapt to the circumstances and accommodate their frontline-working parents. The gathered thematized responses validate and demonstrate these commonalities among overseas Filipino children with frontliner parents in Qatar, which is the heart of the study. Acknowledgment of these children"s experiences means understanding how having frontliner parents with shifted priorities can also integrate them better into society, more independently, especially in their academic, social, and psychological aspects.
Despite finding a new method to provide quality education to the youth amidst the pandemic. Online learning has its conflicts because of the students" lack of available resources and personal interactions or socialization among teachers and students (Adnan and Anwar, 2020). With the new method of learning, many students are stipulated to adjust to these as a scholastic adaptation. As for the parents, Ataullah (2020),reported on the survey that was conducted by Peninsula Qatar that, for their child"s safety from the virus, most parents want their youngsters to stay at home and take online classes. Considering parental guidance as a significant factor for a holistic journey, the lived experiences of those whose parents are frontliners are now highlighted as the crux of the matter.
Several research studies have been conducted during this pandemic, mainly concerning the experiences or daily struggles of frontline workers. Without a doubt, a plethora of research has been written that centered on the frontliners; the jubilations, the challenges encountered at work, including topics regarding their psychosocial support, transmission, and even their stress levels (Buhat, et al, 2021;Bakar and Ramli, 2020;Nyashanu, Pfende, and Ekpenyong, 2020;and Luan, et al, 2020). Despite this, no research has been done on the influence of such rigorous jobs on their children's life. The research, thus, is a study that will take on unveiling the musings of the people behind the frontline, the children. According to the research conducted by Rho, Brown, and Fremstad (2020), a large number of frontline workers, approximately one-third (39.5%), have a family duty and a minor child. Consequently, this research revolves from the experiences of the Filipino students that have medical frontliner parents but at the same time, adjusting to the new way of learning.
This study aims to answer the central question: "What aspects of life do Filipino students with frontliner parents are the most affected?", investigating the conditions that affect the lives of overseas Filipino students with frontliner parents. Following the central question, the sub-question: "What are the common adjustments of Filipino students with frontliner parents?" is now related to the adaptation and management of the students towards the different changes they go through. These questions are formulated to narrow down the main inquiry to extract more specific responses. The students with frontliner parents are going through situational adjustments in the pandemic and with their struggles considered, the main objective of this study is to explore and understand the perspectives of the participants having to experience their different life aspects with frontliner parents. A phenomenological qualitative design made use to provide the researchers" insights and an in-depth view of the children"s life aspects, with regards to their academic lifestyle, adjustments, relationships, and perceptions.
The research aims to capture the participants' perspectives through the methods used, especially by asking questions and listening carefully. In this way, the researchers gain effective knowledge of their research. After data collection, the researchers made use of the first level of data analysis to make sense of the set of information incurred. Transcriptions were clustered to form a dendrogram. The aforementioned dendrogram would then reflect the themes and the sub-themes created. The study"s conceptual framework is embodied in the research"s simulacrum that shows how the parts are interconnected. Also, the second level of data analysis reinforces the themes and subthemes via the lenses of related literature and studies.
In a nutshell, this phenomenological study provides an in-depth analysis of how the children of frontline workers cope with the changes in their environment brought on by their parents' changing employment situations as a result of the worldwide situation. To understand the unsung experiences of these children who are Filipino students, who usually encounter the first-hand effects of their parent"s situation and are often overshadowed by their parents" accomplishments, an organized method was put to use in formulating the central question and sub-questions in a way that they are correlated with each other in particular to the struggles and adjustments of the participants. In this way, the researchers may formally acknowledge the participants" lived experiences, attempt to understand them given the context the children find themselves in, and share this knowledge with the world.

41
The study used the qualitative method of gathering the data, which was achieved by conducting key informant interviews. Related to the central question, "What aspects of life do Filipino students with frontliner parents are the most affected?", a subquestion, "What are the common adjustments of Filipino students with frontliner parents?" was developed and used to gather specific experience-based information from the participants. The set of responses was treated and analyzed to produce the recurring themes which are found in the simulacrum.

Methods:-
This study is qualitative in general and categorically, a phenomenological research design, as it aims to understand the lived experiences of the participants. Qualitative research is a process of a naturalistic inquiry seeking an indepth understanding of social phenomena within their natural setting (UTA Libraries, 2021). The main aspect of this approach is to understand the essence of the experience that participants share within a common ground (Padilla-Diaz, 2015). A phenomenological research approach was applied in this study as it is designed to understand the participants" experiences and perceptions, regarding living as a child having frontliner parents and at the same time, being a student. As discussed by Huseerl (2003), phenomenology is the only discipline that incorporates the mental and rational state of the subject, stimulating the concept of descriptive or analytic psychology by describing and analyzing the different types of mental and emotional processes that one is going through. Thematic data analysis was used to identify the common themes of our study, namely: Academic Relation, Societal Association, and Psychological Comprehension, as well as with its corresponding subthemes gathered using inductive reasoning for further thematization. The inductive approach aims to gather meanings from the data set collected to determine patterns and relationships in building a theory (Bernard, 2011, p.7). Moreover, this approach is also based on the learnings from the experiences of the participants.

Research Locale and Sample
This research was conducted at Philippine School Doha (PSD), a learning institution offering fundamental education with the Philippine Curriculum for Filipino youth based in Doha, Qatar. A total of seven children with medical frontliner parents were selected as the participants of this study. The researchers made use of a qualitative purposeful sampling strategy to choose the seven participants. This is characterized by the incorporation of specific criteria met by the participants at the moment of selection (Padilla-Diaz, 2015). The participants were chosen considering their status of being an Overseas Filipino student who has frontline-working parent/s, while their uniqueness was based on the number of their medical frontliner parents, 42 whether the participant only has one or both parents working as frontliners; the number of family members depending on if the participant is an only child or has siblings; the participant"s level of education, in which the study"s parameters coverthe high school level for more substantial responses; the occupation of the non-medical frontliner parent, wherein it may vary in case the other parent is a housewife or househusband.

Data Collection and Ethical Consideration
Data collection began with constructing the list of inquiries that would make up the questionnaire that the participants will answer during the interview proper. The questionnaire was then handed over to selected teachers with relevant professional backgrounds for its validation. Afterward, consent forms were emailed to the chosen participants as invitations for them to partake in the study. The time and place for the interviews were scheduled according to the participants" availability. The interviews took place through the use of the Zoom software. Proceeding through, data gathering occurred through the interviews that took place.
The robotfoto and interview guide helped the participants express their lived experiences with the researchers. Orientation was also given to the participants to provide them with a run-through regarding the interview process. As for the recordings of the interviews which the participants consented to, the researchers made use of the Zoom recording feature. These recordings were necessary for the transcription of the shared experiences of the participants. Along with the transcription of the oral responses, data treatment, as well as interpretation and analysis, was utilized thoroughly as part of the qualitative research process. In the transcription, the confidentiality of the participants was observed, therefore, their names were not manifested, instead, they were referred to as P1, P2, P3, and so on.

Data Analysis
This study used data collected directly from the participants" perspectives and feelings. From their responses gathered through the designed interview, the research flow is then observed by using the following steps in data analysis: (1) Emic data transcription; (2) Emic to Etic transcription; (3) Cool to Warm Analysis; (4) identifying and analyzing themes through the dendrogram tool; (5) and the integration of these themes to the simulacrum of this research. This study gained a thorough and deep understanding of the topic through this systematic procedure, analyzing the experiences of the frontliners" children through thematizing. The first level of data analysis made sense of the set of information incurred, initially done by direct transcriptions then proceeded by data cleaning. The data treatment follows after, with the cool-warm analysis clustered and reflected to form the dendrogram, which then extracts the themes and the sub-themes created. The study"s conceptual framework is embodied in the research"s simulacrum that shows how the parts are interconnected. Then, the second level of data analysis reinforces the themes and subthemes via the lenses of related literature and studies.  Figure 2 shows the simulacrum focusing on the three major themes: Academic Relation, Societal Association, and Psychological Comprehension. These themes represent the significant life aspects of the children"s experiences with medical frontliner parents, namely, their academic, social, and psychological aspects. Additionally, different sub-43 themes were recognized, specifically, Parental Involvement, Time Management, and Self-Assessment under Academic Relation; Peer Connection, Education Bond, and Familial Relation under Societal Association; and Emotional Guidance, Contagion Avoidance, and Personal Percipience under Psychological Comprehension.

Academic Relation:
The first major theme indicates the academic aspect of children"s lives. The term relation refers to people"s connections; the way two people are linked with each other. Therefore, Academic Relation refers to how the children of the frontliners adjust to their academic challenges through their connections. It focuses on the struggles they encounter relative to their academic performance regarding them having frontliner parents. From this major theme, three sub-themes emerged, namely: Time Management, Parental Involvement, and Self-Assessment.

Time Management
Due to the changes that the children experience, they have also reflected modifications in their schedules to accommodate the involvement of both their parents and academics, creating a persevering balance between them. They replied:

Parental Involvement
Since frontliner parents have become busy with work due to the pandemic, their involvement in the scholastic matters of the children has reduced. It describes that the engagement of the parents is needed to motivate the academic performance and willpower of the children. The participants mentioned: "My parents always ask me how well I've been doing in school and they also remind me if there are any assignments to be done. Since they're that engaged, it uplifts my performance in my studies. It does affect me and that would make me do well." (P1) "They (parents) still make sure they are updated with me and my school, like still having the time to read weekly letters from the principal and managing their schedule so they can drop and fetch me in school. I believe that their level of engagement affects my performance positively." (P4) "My parents are more on the lenient side so they do not get involved unless needed. I sometimes feel unmotivated since they do not pay much attention to my performances but I thrive to find motivation." (P2) The participants had similar perceptions on their motivation, given that their parents are such a big factor in how they see school and where they get their determination to continue. Without their parents at home most of the time, they had had to find external sources of motivation at times that there was no tangible role model to look up to at home.

Self-Assessment
The children are most likely exposed to certain instances which allow them to reflect on themselves and their lives such as whether or not they would want to pursue a similar career path as their frontliner parents, based on the situations they see their parents encounter.

Societal Association:
The second major theme discusses the social aspect of the children"s lives. Societal Association talks about how the child interacts with others, specifically, his or her family, teachers, and peers. It tackles his or her relationship with the people around him or her.

Familial Relation
Since the child"s frontliner parents have other duties to attend to and a lot of things on their plate, the children have made adjustments with how they interact with their parents, specifically, with how they share their problems with them. They replied: "When my problems get too hard for me to handle, I confront them (parents), but as my mom got busier, I shared less throughout the years because I know she is tired from work and does not have time." (P2) "I usually share little problems, the ones that will not stress them (parents) out, to keep the connection with them. When I do have bigger ones, I tend to keep it to myself, instead, for the meantime because I do not want them to be disturbed in their work. Then I eventually tell them at the right time." (P4)

Educational Bond
Teachers play an imperative, important role in a student"s life and they are known to be the closest parent figures after their parents. The circumstance of having frontliner parents can lead to children being comfortable in opening up and asking for guidance from their teachers rather than with their parents. Hence, building a close relationship with them is inevitable.

Peer Connection
Friends are the people the children choose to surround themselves with. As a result, they have built a connection with one another that, in some cases, may cause children to prefer spending more time with their friends than their parents.

Emotional Guidance
Parents working in the frontline may be loaded with situations at work that can be difficult to put aside, developing at some distance in the relationship with their children. With this, the children have to seek other people when they want to ask for help or even just to vent out their feelings.

Contagion Avoidance
Ever since the outbreak of COVID-19, frontliner parents have to risk their health and well-being every day for the health and needs of others, while also taking care of their families at home. Being their children who live with them, they have to follow precautionary measures around their parents concerning their jobs in the pandemic.
"...I am super cautious around them (parents), we have this protocol in our house that we won't go near them if they come home from their work unless they already took a bath or washed their hands because they came from the hospital…" (P5) "Sometimes I would get cautious but we take precautions anyway. For instance, whenever my parents are home from work, we shouldn't touch them as they should wash their hands first and change quickly." (P1) "...Actually, if my father gets close to us, my mother reminds us to stay 1 meter apart from each other even if we're family because of course, they're frontliners…" (P6) Additionally, the children also have to perform these precautionary measures when they are around other people besides their parents.

Personal Percipience
Because they are living a life with their parents as frontliners, the children are experiencing second-hand the stigma their parents face being frontliners. In return, the children have developed insights regarding this type of people or occupation as well as the situations these people face.
"I respect frontliners for how much they help and dedicate their lives to serving and treating other people." (P2) "I have sympathy towards the frontliners whenever I encounter them. I greatly respect them, especially that my mom is also one of them but I mainly worry about their health and safety." (P3) "...I do get hurt or get offended when someone doesn't appreciate frontliners. It rubs me the wrong way and makes me angry because they're literally saving you and you're just out here not appreciating their hard work…" (P7)

Discussion:-
Being the children of frontliner parents, the participants are bound to encounter circumstances that push them to make certain adjustments in different aspects of their lives in terms of: academic, societal, and psychological. The primary purpose of this study was to bring to light the unveiled experiences of the children who are overseasFilipino students combatting the impact of having frontliner parents. The participants have conveyed profuse insights, adjustments, and changes through the process. Hence, they have highlighted the following aspects:

Academic Relation
Academic Relation is connected to the various motivations and influences attached to the children.The participants displayed the level of immersion that their parents have rendered towards their education even during the pandemic.

46
Parental involvement is seen as a key factor in their children's educational success and performance at home and school (Panol, et al., 2021).
The unseemly and unprecedented occurrences of the pandemic have greatly affected the wide population, causing such detrimental effects on society. It has brought about several changes, as the world sees today, wherein the new normal takes a special part of the people"s everyday lives. One part of the most significant populations that were affected was the children of the frontliner workers. Such a massive portion, specifically one-third, of the frontline workers, revolves around their duty as parents for a minor child (Rho, Brown, and Fremstad, 2020).
Parental engagement is one of the child's needs to perform well in their academics. A parent's engagement in their children's academics as early as possible would result in an improvement in the student's performance. Moreover, building a great parent relationship since the elementary years of a child builds a concrete path for the student's success and student's involvement in future opportunities (Dearing, Kreider, Simpkins, & Weiss, 2006, as cited by Waterford.org, 2018). Hence, the involvement of the parent in the academic life of their children is necessary since the children are motivated to perform well if their parents are engaged in their academics.
On the other hand, the inactiveness of the parents in their children"s academics will lead to the child feeling unmotivated. With this, the children of frontliner parents felt the need to adjust to today"s demands on a lot of responsibilities, all on their own, especially without the urgency for their frontline parents who are doing their utmost duty for the world"s healing. This is where time management comes in, aside from the effects of school closure, daily lifestyle changes, and sedentary routines, the children of frontliner workers went through rather unique experiences that are different from what other children underwent (S. Dubey, M. Dubey, Ghosh, and Chatterjee, 2020). Unique experiences such as doing their homework while being a parent to their younger sibling when their parents are not home led the children to fix their schedule in a way that they can accommodate their household duties, frontliner parents, and their studies.
Furthermore, in the months April and May of the year 2019 to 2020, some nurses are said to work beyond their regular working hours in which there are about 26% of people that are employed with professional nursing occupations that are said to work overtime (Carriere, et.al., 2020). With that being said, the increased working hours of the frontliners made their schedule hectic and made them spend more time at work than in their houses with their families. As a result, the children of frontliners had a hard time because their parents are mostly not at home and they can mostly interact with them only on the weekends.
Due to the time that the children are living with their parents and seeing their parents" job, the children may do a self-assessment and evaluate themselves on the career they want. Parents create an impact on the career decision that their children will make, it is because parents have a strong influence on the decisions of their children.
Although, the parents can either intentionally or unintentionally influence their child. The influence of a parent can only result in two events: the first is to motivate the children to explore different occupations or career paths and the second is that the children would pick a course or career that their parents like for them (Jasmon, et.al., 2020). Parents can also be the role models of their children in which the children may feel inspired and motivated to be like their parents since they have grown to take an interest in what their parents" jobs are.

Societal Association
Societal Association implies the adjustment of interaction with regards to the relationship the children have to their peers, teachers, and frontliner parents relating to society.
A lot of time is spent by students with their teachers in a typical academic year, which is enough time to build a relationship that could ignite the children"s lifetime love of learning and enough time for the dynamic to go totally off the rails (Sparks, 2019). Since then, teachers are seen as the second parents of their students and this kind of relationship is what we can call the educational bond.
Quality education is not achieved by just teaching the best way a teacher can but rather, promoting positive teacherstudent bonds. This kind of bond aids the student in achieving a positive and confident mindset that would lead to the student"s ability to create his or her own goals and develop the best version of himself or herself.

47
Moreover, the holistic development of a student is also one of the main duties of a teacher (De Luna and Canet, 2021). That is why most teachers are open if their students want to share a problem with them. Having this kind of bond will result in the students being comfortable in sharing his or her intimate problems with the teacher.
On the other hand, due to the busy schedule of the children"s parents, the parents cannot accommodate every personal problem of their children, resulting in the children adjusting to the schedule of their parents and keeping their problems to themselves mostly to avoid stressing out their parents further.
No matter how busy parents are, they should always try to make time for their children. This duty is based on the necessity of a child to have excellent quality time with their parents in order to stay connected with them (Rho, Brown, and Fremstad, 2020). Furthermore, the interaction that the parents have with their children can have a positive impact on the development of the social and emotional skills of their children (Rider, 2019).
However, in terms of comfortability in sharing their problems, a child"s top choice would be his or her peers since children or teens tend to manage their stress or problems better when they are with them (Knudsen, 2017). Through tough times, students tend to vent out their stance with their peers. Hence, it also showed how the parents are attentively cautious with the people that their children are interacting with since parents are the ones who should guide their children"s selection of friends (Andrews, 2020). The youth depend on their peers as they are more likely to understand present social norms and are less likely to experience social exclusion (Andrews, et al., 2020).

Psychological Comprehension
Psychological comprehension pertains to the massive mental and emotional effects of their condition. Having frontliner parents includes practicing given precautionary measures to a great extent. Children of front-line COVID-19 responders are especially vulnerable because, first and foremost, they typically have to endure home quarantine without the company of their parents, who are compelled to work longer hours or with altered schedules (Tang, 2020).
These precautionary measures are often practiced by the children of frontliners,not only just to avoid getting infected by the virus, but alsoto fulfill their responsibility since their parents are frontliners who are exposed to the virus every day. During this pandemic, many adults have the fear of catching the virus, but children, in the same way, are also troubled and psychologically affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fears, uncertainties, significant changes in their routines, physical and social isolation, and a high level of parental stress are the things that affect the children during this tough time (Imran, Zeshan, and Pervaiz, 2020). Knowing how dangerous the virus is, children are worried that they or their parents might catch it. Similarly, the children of the frontliners are worried about the safety of not just their frontliner parents but rather frontliners in general since they know how dangerous a frontliner"s job is.
In addition to that, because of their bravery and dedication to their job, the children of the frontliners truly commend and respect the frontliners. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, stigma, and discrimination of Asian people, people that traveled internationally during the pandemic, and medical frontliner workers are implemented by people in different ways (Corpuz, 2021). With that being said, the children of frontliner parents stated that they are "offended" when they hear people discriminating against the frontliners instead of appreciating them for their sacrifices during this pandemic.
When it comes to the emotional state of a child, undergoing quarantine is not an easy experience for the parents since they need to balance their personal life, their work, and their children, while being left alone with no other options. This kind of situation or experience for the parents exposes them to a higher chance of experiencing distress and disabling their ability to be supportive caregivers.
Hence, during this tough time, the lack of support that these children obtain can be the reason for their distinct psychological symptoms (Spinelli, Lionetti, Pastore, and Fasolo, 2020). The children of frontliner parents experience psychological problems that might be brought by the pandemic, academics, and even their personal life.

48
Due to the busy schedule of their parents, they often have their peers as their support system in which they can ask for advice or simply just to hear them out. On the other hand, they also approach their teachers but for problems that are related to school only.

Conclusion:-
This study attempts to obtain the overall perspective on the lived experiences, especially the specific aspects, of a select group of the children of frontliners, represented by overseas Filipino students in Qatar. Though involved with the same grievous situation: the pandemic, as with the people around the world by the recent years of 2020, these children encountered rather unique circumstances that only they, themselves, had different approaches to. Academic relation, as in all the children"s connections with their academics, help them identify who they are as students and how these learners utilize the resources available, as lessened as they are. This aspect takes into account the children"s time, their parents" help, and their scholastic selves, all considered in their uniqueness on how they manage these both as a child and a student at the same time. Then, societal association, dependent on the foundation that the participants grew to build on, recognizes the children of the frontliners as a significant part of society. This acknowledgment means understanding how having frontliner parents indicate that they can turn to other groups of the community, such as towards their peers, educational bonds, and other family members for assistance, guidance, and support instead of directly towards their parents. Furthermore, psychological comprehension, represents the children"s adaptability regarding the current situation, encompassing their empathetic behavior towards the frontliners aside from their parents and towards the people around them, as well. With abundant warnings from the frontliner parents, the children built up apprehension on the virus and therefore imposed this onto themselves, being assertive about precautions, as well.
This research has established the framework for future researches that may also tackle the experiences of participants with a similar background. The unprecedented reality: the pandemic and its aftermath, that emerged the lived experiences of the children of the frontliners have posed encouragement more than worry and fears for the participants to be open in whatever circumstance they are in, asking help from anyone they can talk to. The people around them should then be willing to listen to their struggles, being patient toward their needs as the children had limited guidance to support them in their development. Being a child of a frontliner entails so many responsibilities, as well, and the participants should only continue to adjust quickly to their environment, especially as students.
Having probed deeper into the views of the participants, this study then broadens the children"s capacity to identify their strengths and weaknesses in the various aspects of their lives, looking forward to bettering themselves in communication and interaction with people beyond their parents. With cooperation from teachers, friends, relatives, and all the community members around these children, the urgent need for familial support can be redirected toward society altogether. Impliedly, the backbone of these children"s guidance is from the environment they are exposed to and the daily intake of insights and understanding from them can create a caring upbringing.