Emilia vexler
08/16/2020 - 0:06
- Clarín.com
- Society
Five months was not 15 days. This Sunday, Children's Day falls on almost the entire planet in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. But in Argentina, with the longest quarantine in the world, it could mark the year in which children "grew up suddenly . " Age does not matter.
They are taken as the Avengers of quarantine , little "heroes" and "heroines" who resisted without classes since before the great ones isolated themselves. And they comply until today.
In March, no one had The Quarantine Family Guide . Nobody knew how to prepare them emotionally for the confinement that was coming. It had started downhill and without wheels.
For this reason, perhaps, the proposal that invites that this weekend "each sidewalk have a balloon, a garland or something that fills it with color and gives them a city dressed as a childhood" was viralized on social networks .
Boys and girls had to learn, then, new rules of a house that changed . The one they lived in after school. To which adults came after work. Rules that are never as lax as in that of grandparents or cousins, whom - if they did not break the quarantine - they have not seen for 150 days. That, of course, in households with more resources, where they were in an all-inclusive screen .
Lara (4) in Parque Chacabuco. (Photo: Germán García Adrasti)
Cell phone, video games, tablets and computer for virtual classes. But, in all the houses, without friends . No neighborhood club or soccer on the street. Without their equals. And with one main rule: have fun as protocol allows.
“The situation exposed some children to develop behaviors and habits that could be understood as a 'sudden growth'. But in these extreme circumstances it may be, in fact, a ' sobreadaptativo pseudocrecimiento': the result of the implementation desperate defensive resources against a complex, traumatic and threatening hyperreality , "he told Clarin Fernando Gomez, a pediatrician at the Hospital Children Ricardo Gutierrez and specialist in Psychiatry from the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association (APA).
It may sound very technical, but it is something that in recent months has been experienced in the living rooms of the most modest apartments or in the playrooms of country houses. Social class does not matter.
Andrea with her daughters Lara (4) and Ursula (8) in Parque Chacabuco. Photo Germán García Adrasti
"The girls had to give up a lot of things. Affections, friends, and we as parents have many obligations too, that made them even at home have to understand times for them and times for us," says Andrea Pecora (35) . With her husband and daughters, Ursula, 8 years old, and Lara, 4 years old, they live in an apartment in Caballito. She is a doctor in genetics and researcher at Conicet who a few days a week returns to the laboratory of the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA) to analyze swabs from suspected cases of covid-19. He understands, like nobody else, Children's Day in the midst of the coronavirus .
"In general I think that parents are not so flexible. Tolerance has not improved nor are we so permissive, because we are also tired and intolerant and that means that the children have learned to limit themselves in demands , because they found themselves with logical brakes," he says.
Why did they suddenly grow into a pandemic? According to Gómez, due to “the loss of that space and that childhood time necessary to be able to play, experience and experiment, in an essential face-to-face meeting of exchange with their peers, and with responsible adults capable of understanding the changing and growing needs of the child ”.
A 10-year-old boy, from Palermo, tells his mother that at 2:30 p.m. he is already waiting for the bell because she is going to be on a call in the sector of the architecture studio he runs. He knows there is a Mercado Libre package on the way. "Joaquín is very aware of the house itself, the doorbell, whether the bathrooms have paper, whether the cat has water, they are details like that but he takes it as a job 'to be useful' , to help me as he sees fit," says Nadia , his mom. "I distract him so that he does not listen to the news, because he is over-reporting and I do not want him to worry like us," he continues.
Fernanda Rivas is a psychonal specialist in childhood and the author of the book La familia y la Ley. She recognizes these "new laws" in boys and girls in video call therapy. "The memes that had begun to circulate with diplomas in which each child's name could be put are very representative, because of how well they were facing this new situation. They are the most perceptive and most permeable to the family climate. Some take their charge - unknowingly and unwittingly - the function of trying to calm their parents and they function as 'superheroes'. Something that is very important to monitor so that it does not become permanent, reversing the roles between parents and children, "he emphasizes.
And there are kids laws . "With my brother we decided to stop fighting while he is quarantine , because if not we have no one to play with", quote from a "little patient", as he calls it.
Thus, social distancing, so important to prevent the spread of covid-19, also has its effects on the psyche of the youngest. Why? By time.
“Except for specific occasions, they never went so long without going to school since the isolation lasted longer than the summer holidays, with which the children may present some resistance when it comes to going back to school”, says Andrea Abadi, director from the Neurodevelopment area of the Institute of Cognitive Neurology (INECO), about this attachment 24/7 at home.
An enormous curiosity mixed with fear was also unleashed by "the little bug" coronavirus, whom boys and girls play to fight with spears and swords. Or they also draw. For this reason, for Nora Vinacur, a psychoanalyst, a member of the APA, there was no sudden growth but only a change of functions in the inner circle .
Valentino, Carolina and Alejandro's "Avenger", during a picknick recreational outing. Photo: Fernando de la Orden.
"It is not the case in all the families that the children began to take care of cleaning the house, for example. In many, the adults did not give them that participation and the children did not ask for it. But, in the more organized families, it was He has asked them to play a different role. Everyone, both children and adults, "he clarifies. Like those who took care of their younger siblings.
In addition, there were absolutely new "positive" routines, Rivas adds. Hours of family play were inaugurated, almost like rituals, to share calming and creative moments. In some cases, especially the youngest, he says, "this has been a fundamental form of stimulation, the most effective, which is done by parents, which contributes a lot to psychomotor development."
Valentino, 5 years old, is from Villa Ballester and one of the 400,000 Argentines -most of them minors- who, according to unofficial figures, are in quarantine with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) . Carolina Wagner (39) and Alejandro, like many fathers and mothers, prefer that the diagnosis be called "Autism Spectrum Condition" (CEA), due to the social inaccuracy to which the word "disorder" leads among children. Among those who practice parenting accompanying this condition, there is also consensus on the effects of isolation on their children.
Valentino, in the Plaza Miter in his neighborhood, Villa Ballester. Photo: Fernando de la Orden.
"In these months Valen had to mature suddenly . And he did very well. His house, his space for games and pampering, also became the place for his various video call therapies. It was difficult, because at this age it is complicated communication via technology, because the bond, for them, is fundamental. The preschool was able to do it only a month before quarantine, so achieving a virtual relationship with the teacher was complex, "he saysCarolina, an essential worker who leaves in the morning and returns around 8:00 . But Valen made it.
"He was finding the space in the house for his moment of 'work', early -she continues-. And, in the afternoon, his moment of therapy". His dad, a graphic designer, says his son also learned to understand his home office hours . "That was difficult, to see the figure of the father at home and to tell him 'I have to work'. He understood that his father took the work home and that if the two of them were there it was not always for fun," she adds.
The quarantine continues until at least the end of August. But Valen - like many children - is already knocking on the door in the makeshift offices of adults. "Sorry, can I bother you?" He says to Alejandro. This Sunday may not receive a diploma to the child who behaved excellently in quarantine or does not see a balloon on the sidewalk because of a Facebook viral, but for his parents, he has been an Avenger for a while. The conditions don't matter.
ACE