This article presents a qualitative study in which families recorded themselves reading a child-friendly book about a bear in lockdown and combines ethnographic and autoethnographic methods to examine the reactions of home educated and traditionally schooled children during Aotearoa New Zealand's COVID-19 lockdowns. This research theorizes data sourced from family reading sessions through the writings of Philippine psychologist Virgilio Enriquez and the indigenous Philippine concepts of "kalayaan" (relational autonomy), "katarungan" (justice), "karangalan" (self-respect) and "kapwa" (shared inner identity). This research considers how children's experiences of lockdown differed according to their investment in a primarily school-based identity. It argues that pedagogies of love and care, along with the prospect of supporting children as they cope with the pandemic, should entail a recentering of reciprocal modes of thinking, doing, and relating.