Cot the little ones making predictions about the future is particularly difficult, but beware: it is good news! The life of children by its nature speaks to the future tense, is stretched forward, it is surprisingly programmed to take place, so adults who were wondering about the very young at this moment can rest assured overall: among all the developmental groups involved in the current health emergency, the little ones are the ones we can imagine will fare better. Thanks to their plasticity, they will be able more than others to integrate this experience with the rest of their personal novel. Of course, provided they are suitably facilitated by the adult who should not be found lacking in words and emotions to give order to what is happening: grown-ups should bet their chips on the "reverie" function, which mothers of infants know well . It is the competence of those who offer good quality thoughts that have already been thought out, to make them available to those who are smaller and would not be able to mentalize events on their own.
Stefania Andreoli, president of Alice Onlus, adolescent psychotherapist.
Adults, you can't control everything
The lesson for adults is to review their ambition (as high as it is naive!) To manage and control everything: life happens for better or for worse, and this scares adults more than children precisely because the former are more rigid. and structured. Now more than ever it is as if our children are showing us the way, which is that of adaptation and, often, of improvisation.
Proximity to the little ones, distance to the big ones
The parents seem to me that despite themselves they have experienced firsthand how the relationship with their children is definitively stripped of the elements of sacredness and mystification typical of our culture: families are made to love each other, but at a safe distance and in the proper roles! Adults are not (any longer) just mothers and fathers, but professionals, friends of others, users of gyms and courses, hopefully also spouses. However, I believe that in quarantine they have come back into contact with the real needs of young children: up to the age of three for sure, but then at least up to six, that of being so "inside", facing the family, with mum and dad. In short, much less oriented towards the "outside" and external stimuli than the families who made their debut on the social scene early, only to take them back when they grow up, in the throes of a thousand often unjustified fears. So let's put in our pockets the opportunity to get back in touch with the deep needs of the children: presence for the little ones, distance for the adults!
Our wealth? relations
Every crisis contains an opportunity, this too will contain some good. It must contain some coupon. The responsibility of educators will be precisely to enhance it in order to be able to do something with it, and for me the precious piece will be the return to the essential: attention to the presence dedicated to the other, in which to invest much more in relation than in things to do. Serious for us and for the little ones, if we forget everything without having learned anything of how relationships are our most authentic form of freedom.
And what have you learned from this period?
Take part in our research!
Article Quarantine with children, the lesson they gave us by staying at home with them seems to be the first of iO Woman.
