Banens, Maks
Gender inequalities in care for dependent relatives
- 2023.
32
In this article, we document a psychoeducational intervention aimed at promoting an attitude of resilience in Ukrainian refugee children. In accordance with the most recent literature on resilience, which views this concept as a dynamic and constructive process based on coping strategies, we implemented a three-session intervention centered on the joint reading of a children’s story entitled “The perfect moment.” The plot of the story, based on the trials and tribulations of a squirrel and its encounters with other animals, was chosen because it seemed to symbolically evoke what the children were experiencing. Fifteen Ukrainian refugee children (7 to 12 years old), hosted on a university campus in Italy, two Italian psychologists, and four bilingual Ukrainian-Italian social sciences students participated in this study. Session after session, children were involved in the story at different levels of representation, from decoding of the images of the book, and acting out the scenes, to explicitly naming the actions taken using three verbs: “to do,” “to say,” and “to think,” with all communication expressed in Ukrainian. These verbs were chosen to serve as linguistic signifiers of coping strategies capable of transforming negative feelings or events into constructive actions, in collaboration with peers. From the very first session, all the children showed very active participation and appropriate understanding of the exercise. This initiative could be proposed as a first step toward a more far-reaching psychoeducational intervention.