specific needs of children and elderly left behind as a ... - IOM Moldova

CHAPTER I
while the return of this person may cause indifference or even hostility.
These life experiences that bear a stressful character hinder children’s normal
psychological development: they weaken the development of social
relations, raise difficulties in the perception of new situations, reduce the
possibility of developing social competencies, determine the development
of self-identity weaknesses, etc.
While talking about the feelings that they experience regarding the fact
that their parents are abroad, some children motivate their state of happiness
due to increased financial possibilities and gained liberty: ,,we have
the possibility to buy more things. I can buy what I want more often as before.
I can have the things I want”; “more freedom” (FG_C_2_rural). This kind of
position that children adopt denotes a false perception of liberty.
Some children felt happy at first because of the decrease of their parents’
control but at last, they understood the seriousness of the separation
from their migrant parents. The fact that children are happy, because
they got the opportunity to feel free, reveals their tendency to find a compensatory
explanation for their frustration and internal conflicts caused
by the separation. Depriving children of a family environment constitutes
an essential share for their moral and spiritual development. These
peculiarities are more obvious when speaking about the institutionalized
children. Unfavourable contacts with close adults lead to the feeling of
discomfort, danger and instability. The psychology of memory demonstrates
that memories bearing a positive charge remain for a longer period
in one’s mind in comparison to those bearing a negative one. Emotional
memories are meant to develop in time. Thus at first the reproduction of
emotional experiences is intense, afterwards it fades. These observations
would explain the emotional distancing between parents and children
who are subject to separation.
Meanwhile the results of the study allowed us to highlight several peculiarities
of emotional processes experienced by children who are
left without parental care as a consequence of their parents’ migration
abroad for work:
The polarity of emotional processes, that is shown in their tendency to
gravitate either around the positive pole or the negative one, a tendency
that emerged as a result of the differentiated satisfaction or non-satisfaction
of a child’s needs and aspirations. The polarity is revealed by the
pleasant or unpleasant, sthenic or asthenic character of the emotional
states of children who are left without parental care as a result of their
parents’ migration. Thus, regardless of the fact that most of children left
behind by their family members indicated happiness and satisfaction as
emotions they experience intensely when their mother/father/parents return
home. We noticed that the same situation arose opposite emotions
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