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

CHAPTER I
- Accusation and blaming: “My grandmother will always give me advice,
you see… so that I always feel guilty and of course I don’t like it! She
knows that it’s not my fault, I can see it, but she always does things so
that I am the guilty one”; “My grandmother will always tell me that it’s
my fault... that I am the one who started the fight, that I call names or I
answer back...”;
- Too high expectancies: “She wants me to be the best… She wants to
make me be the best in everything, but I cannot do all this, I cannot be
the best at mathematics… I just cannot…”;
- Physical abuse, violent disciplinary measures: “It happened when
she told me to do something and I didn’t do it and she got mad”. The
grandmother confesses she beats her grandchild in order to stop his
delinquent behaviour: “Yes, I had to punish him… I even beat him…, I
couldn’t believe he took this money from the house...”;
- The child undertakes too many domestic tasks, he is set strict rules:
“She thinks I’m too slow and then she gives a second thing to do before I
had even finished the first one...” ;
- Depriving the child of his decision-making initiative and freedom:
“Yes, as usual… I like it one way and my grandmother likes it the other”;
- Underestimating and/or neglecting child’s abilities: “I like to listen
to music… English music… and she says “What’s the point in listening to
it if you don’t understand anything?”, but you see I understand a bit… ”
Mistakes in a child’s education are caused by their parents’ migration determining
a mental imbalance of a family and tense relations between
grandparents-parents-grandchildren.
• Neuro-psychological factors conditioned by adolescence as an age
marked by internal and external conflicts are of utmost importance.
We can mention communication difficulties with peers, acceleration of
sexual development specific for modern adolescents causing inappropriate
affection, reactivity, emotional imbalance, and other manifestations
leading to latent or manifested conflicts against the environment. Most
importance, in the cases of children in difficulties as a result of parental
migration, is attributed to emotional development, the insufficiency of
which can cause emotional instability, inadequate evaluation of him/herself
and the environment he/she lives, emotional immaturity as well as
character disorder. These can result in insufficient behaviour control, opposition
and denial of social regulations, egocentrism, aggression, needs
distortion and the wish to be reprieved without taking any adequate efforts.
Children learn to behave within the environment they grow-up,
and this environment is deprived of parental affection and education
patterns. Some adolescents included in the study associate the leaving
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