By Annagiulia Mura
In the night between 23 and 24 February 2022, Russian armed troops sent by Russian President Vladmir Putin invaded Ukraine.
Most of the population started fleeing to neighbouring countries or where they had acquaintances or relatives – but then the Ukrainian government began to close the borders, mandating that all men between the ages of 18 and 60 had to stay behind and fight.
Currently, only women and children are allowed to leave Ukraine, and are scrambling to get to safe places such as Romania, Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom, where they hope to be welcomed in care centres and with families
But how will these children will fit into a new society, without knowing how long they will be living somewhere strange, without knowing the language and the culture, but above all having escaped from an emergency situation?
Therapeutic support
It is very important that countries offer adequate therapeutic support. To facilitate this integration in society and therefore in schools, it is also important that the children of the places they are hosting are ready to receive their new friends in a positive way and this is the task of parents, teachers and school psychologists.
Julia Ariccia, 32, a mother from Milan who has two children aged 9 and 5 and who works in marketing, has found her way of explaining war to her children: ”I don’t want them to know about it through the television. I do not allow them to see the blood and get scared and above all to learn what hate or the wrong words are.
“We talked about it together, also through the drawings because I want them to be ready to make friends with the new children at school.”
Hosting a refugee
There are also those who are even ready to take an important step and host families in their own homes.
Alan Batel, 43, a child psychotherapist who lives in Enfield, north London, has inquired about becoming a foster parent for a Ukrainian child. He already has an 11-year-old.
”When I was young, after the Chernobyl explosion, some families were sent to different states of Europe to improve their health conditions, even if only for a few months, and my mom and I had hosted a group of Ukrainian people,” he said.
“I have a beautiful memory of those children, and I told my son about it. I want to be able to do something. ”
War scares young and old alike and it doesn’t matter where we come from. Children experience it in a different way from adults and it is very important to do everything possible not to diminish the gravity of the situation in the eyes of children, but at the same time help them manage the trauma.
+ You can help people in the Ukraine by donating to the Red Cross at https://donate.redcross.org.uk/appeal/ukraine-crisis-appeal.
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