Psychological characteristics of social orphans. Psychological characteristics of orphans of different ages
I.General features of the development of a child left without parental care.
Features of the mental development of children raised outside the family, without parental care (in orphanages, orphanages and boarding schools) are a pressing problem of our time.
The rate of development of such children is slower compared to children raised in families. Their development and health have a number of negative features that are noted at all stages - from infancy to adolescence and beyond.
Pupils of closed children's institutions at each age level are characterized by specific and different sets of psychological traits that distinguish them from their peers growing up in the family.
The specific development of children raised in closed children's institutions indicates that many properties and qualities of their cognitive sphere and personality are preserved throughout the entire age period under consideration, revealing themselves in one form or another. These include features of the internal position (weak focus on the future), emotional flatness, simplified and impoverished content of the self-image, reduced attitude towards oneself, lack of formation of selectivity (bias) in relation to adults, peers and the objective world, impulsiveness, unawareness and lack of independence of behavior , situational thinking and behavior and much more.
Psychological characteristics of children brought up in orphanage, children's home and boarding school, and the features of their communicative activities are interconnected. The development of communication in children is largely determined by how an adult organizes and implements it. Interaction with an adult should ensure that the child develops age-appropriate forms of communication and its content.
Deprived of parental care, they, as a rule, have a need for communication, and therefore, under favorable conditions, a relatively rapid correction of their development is possible. Thus, deviations and delays in the development of the psyche and personality of a child raised in an orphanage, orphanage and boarding school that arise in the early stages of ontogenesis are not fatal.
Briefly formulating the characteristics of children left without parental care, we can draw the following conclusions:
1. Insufficient intellectual development of a child may consist and be expressed in weakened or unformed, underdeveloped cognitive processes, instability of attention, weak memory, weak developed thinking(visual-figurative, abstract-logical, verbal, etc.), low erudition, etc. The reasons for low intellectual development can be different: from disruption of normal brain function to the lack of a normal educational environment (pedagogical neglect). Lack of proper attention to a child's intellectual development can lead to serious educational delays.
2. Joint activities and communication between children and peers. During play, children are less attentive to the actions and states of their partner, and often do not notice their peer’s insults, requests, or even tears. Being close, they play separately. Either everyone plays with everyone, but joint games are mainly procedural in nature; there is no role-playing interaction in the game; Even when included in any general plot, children act on their own, and not on behalf of the role-playing character. In terms of its operational composition (according to the actions performed), such activity is very similar to a role-playing game, but in terms of its subjective, psychological content it is significantly different from it. Contacts in the game come down to specific requests and comments about the actions of a peer (give me, look, move, etc.).
3.The problem of gender identification of boarding school students. Stereotypes of women and male behavior enter self-awareness through the experience of communication and identification with representatives of their gender. In orphanages, children are isolated from these orientations. Preschoolers are already well aware of their gender and strive to establish themselves as a boy or a girl; in this they differ little from children raised in a family. However, qualitatively, gender identification has significant differences. If children in a family are identified with their parents, close relatives and peers, then children deprived of parental care are identified primarily with their peers, i.e. boys and girls from the group.
4. Problems of moral development of the personality of pupils. Problems of moral development begin at a young age school age and most often manifest themselves in theft, irresponsibility, suppression and insult of the weaker, in a decrease in empathy, the ability to sympathize, empathy and, in general, in insufficient understanding or non-acceptance of moral norms, rules and restrictions.
5. Socialization of orphans. By the difficulty of socialization, experts understand the complex of difficulties a child has when mastering a particular social role. By mastering these roles, a person socializes and becomes an individual. The absence of normal contacts for an ordinary child (family, friends, neighbors, etc.) leads to the fact that the role image is created on the basis of contradictory information received by the child from various sources.
6. Problems of emotional-volitional development of pupils. The greatest difficulties and deviations from the normal development of the personality of children in orphanages are noted by all researchers in the emotional-volitional sphere: in violation social interaction, lack of self-confidence, decreased self-organization, determination, insufficient development of independence (“personal strength”), inadequate self-esteem. Violations of this kind most often manifest themselves in increased anxiety, emotional tension, mental fatigue, and emotional stress.
Despite the presence of some common features that characterize the mental development of orphans, it should be borne in mind that as a subject of psychological and pedagogical support they represent a rather conventional group, internally differentiated. Essentially, the only reason for uniting children from orphanages is deprivation syndrome. At the same time, each child has his own individual history of orphanhood, his own experience of relationships with adults, his own special character of personal development, which not in all cases can be qualified as a lag or delayed mental development. Due to these circumstances, psychological and pedagogical support for the mental development of a child left without parental care can only be of an individual nature.
Also, the fact that he develops in conditions of deprivation has a great influence on the child’s personality.
II. The causes, manifestations and consequences of emotional deprivation in a child left without parental care.
Psychological problems in the development of both children and adults most often arise in connection with their experiences of deprivation or loss. The term “deprivation” is used in psychology and medicine; in everyday speech it means deprivation or limitation of opportunities to satisfy vital needs.
Depending on the deprivation of a person, various types of deprivation are distinguished - maternal, sensory, motor, psychosocial and others. Let us briefly characterize each of these types of deprivation and show what impact they have on child development.
Maternal deprivation. The normal development of a child in the first years of life is associated with the constant care of at least one adult. Ideally, this is maternal care. However, the presence of another person caring for the baby if it is not possible maternal care also has a positive effect on the mental development of the baby. A normative phenomenon in the development of any child is the formation of attachment to an adult caring for the child. This form of attachment in psychology is called maternal attachment. There are several types of maternal attachment - secure, anxious, ambivalent. The absence or violation of maternal attachment, associated with the forced separation of mother from the child, leads to his suffering and has a negative impact on mental development in general. In situations where the child is not separated from his mother, but does not receive enough maternal care and love, manifestations of maternal deprivation also occur. In the formation of a sense of attachment and security, the physical contact of the child with the mother is of decisive importance, for example, the opportunity to snuggle, feel the warmth and smell of the mother’s body. According to the observations of psychologists, children living in unhygienic conditions, often experiencing hunger, but having constant physical contact with their mother, do not develop somatic disorders. At the same time, even in the best child care institutions that provide proper care for infants, but not providing the opportunity for physical contact with the mother, somatic disorders in children occur.
Maternal deprivation forms the child’s personality type, characterized by unemotional mental reactions. Psychologists distinguish between the characteristics of children deprived of maternal care from birth and children forcibly separated from their mother after an emotional connection with the mother has already arisen. In the first case (maternal deprivation from birth), a stable lag in intellectual development, inability to enter into meaningful relationships with other people, lethargy of emotional reactions, aggressiveness, lack of self-confidence. In cases of separation from the mother, after an established attachment, the child begins a period of severe emotional reactions. Experts call a number of typical stages of this period - protest, despair, alienation. In the protest phase, the child makes vigorous attempts to reconnect with his mother or caregiver. The reaction to separation in this phase is predominantly characterized by the emotion of fear. In the despair phase, the child shows signs of grief. The child rejects all attempts by other people to care for him, grieves inconsolably for a long time, may cry, scream, and refuse food. The stage of alienation is characterized in the behavior of young children by the fact that the process of reorientation to other attachments begins, which helps to overcome the traumatic effect of separation from a loved one.
Sensory deprivation. A child's stay outside the family - in a boarding school or other institution - is often accompanied by a lack of new experiences, called sensory hunger. A depleted habitat is harmful to people of any age. Studies of the states of speleologists who spend a long time in deep caves, crew members of submarines, Arctic and space expeditions (V.I. Lebedev) indicate significant changes in communication, thinking and other mental functions of adults. Restoring a normal mental state for them is associated with the organization of a special program of psychological adaptation. Children experiencing sensory deprivation are characterized by a sharp lag and slowdown in all aspects of development: underdeveloped motor skills, underdeveloped or unconnected speech, and inhibition of mental development. Another great Russian scientist V.M. Bekhterev noted that by the end of the second month of life the child is looking for new experiences. A poor stimulus environment causes indifference, a lack of reaction in the child to the reality around him.
Motor deprivation. A sharp limitation in the ability to move as a result of injury or illness causes the occurrence of motor deprivation. In a normal developmental situation, the child feels his ability to influence the environment through his own motor activity. Manipulating toys, pointing and pleading movements, smiling, screaming, pronouncing sounds, syllables, babbling - all these actions of infants give them the opportunity to see from their own experience that their influence on the environment can have a tangible result. Experiments with offering infants various types of movable structures have shown a clear pattern - the child’s ability to control the movement of objects forms his motor activity, while the inability to influence the movement of toys suspended from the cradle forms motor apathy. The inability to change the environment causes frustration and associated passivity or aggression in the behavior of children. Restrictions on children's efforts to run, climb, crawl, jump, and scream lead to anxiety, irritability, and aggressive behavior. The importance of physical activity in human life is confirmed by examples of experimental studies of adults who refuse to participate in experiments involving prolonged immobility, despite the subsequent rewards offered.
Emotional deprivation. The need for emotional contact is one of the leading mental needs that influences the development of the human psyche at any age. “Emotional contact becomes possible only when a person is capable of emotional consonance with the state of other people. However, with an emotional connection, there is a two-way contact in which a person feels that he is the object of interest of others, that others are in tune with his own feelings. Without the appropriate attitude of the people surrounding the child, there can be no emotional contact.”
Experts note a number of significant features of the emergence of emotional deprivation in childhood. Thus, the presence of a large number of different people does not yet strengthen the child’s emotional contact with them. The fact of communicating with many different people often entails feelings of loss and loneliness, with which the child is associated with fear. This is confirmed by observations of children raised in orphanages, who show a lack of syntony ((Greek syntonia with sonority, coherence) - a feature of personality: a combination of internal balance with emotional responsiveness and sociability) in relation to environment. Thus, experiencing joint celebrations between children from orphanages and children living in families had a different impact on them. Children deprived of family upbringing and the emotional attachment associated with it were lost in situations where they were surrounded by emotional warmth; the holiday made a much less impression on them than on emotionally contacted children. After returning from guests, children from orphanages, as a rule, hide gifts and calmly move on to their usual way of life. A family child usually experiences holiday experiences for a long time.
III.Attachment. Types of disturbed attachment.
The question is how to find mutual language With adopted child and build with it trusting relationship worries almost every foster parent. And this question is not easy. After all, a child who falls into new family, as a rule, has negative emotional experience of relationships with close adults and separation from them. Some children have experienced neglect and even abuse from adults. All this cannot but affect the building of relationships with members of the new family. To better understand what is happening to such a child and how to help him establish a fulfilling life, it is useful to turn to scientific facts.
Shows of affection
Attachment is formed in infants from about 6 months. Its first object is the child's guardian, most often his mother. Later (after 1-2 months) the circle expands to include the child’s father, grandparents and other relatives. The infant turns to the person who is the object of attachment for comfort and protection more often than to other people, and in his presence he feels calmer in an unfamiliar environment. The following signs indicate that an attachment to a specific person (parent) has formed:
- the child responds with a smile;
- is not afraid to look into the eyes and responds with a glance;
- strives to be closer to an adult, especially when it is scary or painful, uses parents as a “safe haven”;
- accepts parents' consolation;
- experiences age-appropriate separation anxiety;
- experiences positive emotions when playing with parents;
- experiences age-appropriate fear of strangers.
Stages of attachment formation
The formation of parent-child attachment goes through a number of successive stages:
- Stage of undifferentiated attachments(1.5-6 months) - babies already distinguish their mother from surrounding objects, but calm down if they are picked up by another adult. This period is also called the stage of initial orientation and non-selective addressing of signals to any person - the child follows with his eyes, clings and smiles to an arbitrary person.
- Stage of specific attachments(7-9 months) – at this stage, the formation and consolidation of primary attachment to the mother occurs. The baby protests if he is separated from his mother and behaves restlessly in the presence of strangers.
- Multiple attachment stage(11-18 months) – the child, based on primary attachment to the mother, begins to show selective attachment in relation to other close people. However, the mother continues to be the primary attachment figure—the child uses her as a “secure base” for his exploratory activities. If we observe the baby’s behavior at this moment, we will see that no matter what he does, he constantly keeps his mother in his field of vision, and if someone obscures her, he will definitely move so as to see her again.
If a child lacks attention, warmth in relationships, and emotional support, then he develops attachment disorders. These include the formation of insecure types of attachment. Psychologists have conventionally identified the following types:
1. Anxious-ambivalent attachment. In children, this disorder manifests itself in their experiencing anxiety and feelings of insecurity due to the fact that their parents demonstrated contradictory or overly intrusive behavior towards them. These children themselves behave inconsistently - they are either affectionate or aggressive. They constantly “cling” to their parents, seek “negative” attention, provoking punishment. Such an attachment can form in a child whose mother demonstrates insincere emotions towards him. For example, by not accepting the baby, the mother is ashamed of her feelings for him and deliberately demonstrates love. Often she first confirms the need for contact with the child, but as soon as he reciprocates her feelings, she rejects intimacy. In another case, the mother may be sincere, but inconsistent - she is either overly sensitive and affectionate, or cold, inaccessible, or even aggressive towards the child for no objective reason. As a rule, in such cases it is impossible to understand the mother's behavior and adapt to it. The child strives for contact, but is not sure that he will receive the necessary emotional response, so he is often worried about the mother’s availability and “clings” to her.
2. Children with avoidant attachment They are quite reserved, distrustful, avoid close relationships with other people and give the impression of being very independent. The parents of such children showed emotional coldness in their communication with them; were often unavailable when their participation was needed; in response to the child’s appeal to them, they drove him away or punished him. As a result of such negative reinforcement, the baby learned to no longer openly show his emotions and not to trust others. To avoid negative feelings and protect themselves from unpredictable consequences, such children try to avoid intimacy with others.
3. The most disadvantaged type is disorganized attachment. Disorganized attachment is typical for children whose emotional needs were not met by their parents or whose parents responded to them inappropriately and often showed cruelty. If such a child initially turned to his parents for emotional support, then in the end such requests made him fearful, discouraged and disoriented. This type of attachment is typical for children who have been subjected to systematic abuse and violence and have never had attachment experience.
Within clinical psychiatry early age There are certain criteria for attachment disorder (ICD-10). Psychiatrists believe that the onset of clinical attachment disorder is possible from 8 months of age. They classify the dual type of attachment as a pathology—an insecure attachment of the anxious-resistant type. Insecure attachment of the avoidant type is considered conditionally pathological. There are 2 types of attachment disorders - reactive (avoidant type) and disinhibited (negative, neurotic type). These distortions of attachments lead to socio-psychological and personality disorders and make it difficult for the child to adapt to kindergarten and school.
Studies have shown that these manifestations of attachment disorders can be reversible and not accompanied by significant intellectual impairments.
Development of attachment in a foster family setting
All children, without exception, need to form a successful emotional attachment to their parents. However, for children who come into a family from an orphanage, this process occurs with great difficulties. Emotional Relationships between a child and his biological parents develop, among other things, due to a biological connection. There is no such connection between the adoptive parents and the child. However, this does not mean that a successful emotional attachment cannot be established between them. On the contrary, with some effort and a lot of patience it is possible. To cope with the difficulties in the emotional development of an adopted child, it is necessary, first of all, to understand what these difficulties are.
Research shows that almost all children from an orphanage, even those who were adopted in infancy, have problems forming attachments to their adoptive parents. This is because a secure attachment is formed when the caregiver responds to the child’s needs in a timely manner, which creates a sense of stability and security in him. If the relationship with this person is interrupted, then the secure attachment relationship is destroyed. In an orphanage, a child is usually cared for by several people who pay more attention to routine issues than to actual needs. Adoptive parents, in turn, are strangers to the adopted child, and the establishment of a relationship of true affection is not established between them immediately, this process lasts months and years. But parents can make it faster and more effective.
The most favorable period for adoption is up to 6 months of age, since attachment has not yet formed and the baby will not experience separation as acutely as an older child. In general, according to numerous adoption researchers, it is easier to form healthy attachments in children in an adoptive family if the child has been securely attached to his or her birth parents (or their surrogate guardian). However, the developmental history of an orphanage pupil is not always successful until the moment of his adoption. Children often grew up in dysfunctional families before being placed in an orphanage.
Among the reasons that complicate the development of secure attachment in orphans, researchers name the following:
- Separation from parents and placement in an orphanage.
- The situation of death of a parent or person caring for him, especially violent.
- Violation of family relationships and the development of insecure attachment. A child with attachment disorders that arose in the parental family has great difficulty in becoming attached to new parents, since he does not have favorable experience in building relationships with an adult.
- The adoption of one child after the formation of attachment to the other parent or the eldest child in the family.
- Maternal prenatal alcohol and drug use.
- Violence experienced by children (physical, sexual or psychological). Children who have been abused during their early years can expect similar treatment later in life. new family and exhibit some of the already familiar strategies to cope with it.
- Neuropsychiatric diseases of the mother.
- Drug or alcohol addiction of parents.
- Hospitalization of a parent or child resulting in the child being suddenly separated.
- Pedagogical neglect, neglect, ignoring the needs of the child.
Signs of attachment disorders in a child’s behavior
The risk of attachment disorders increases if the listed factors occur during the first two years of a person’s life, as well as when several factors are combined.
Manifestations of attachment disorders can be identified by a number of signs.
- Reduced mood background. Lethargy. Wariness. Tearfulness.
- A persistent reluctance to come into contact with others, expressed in the fact that the child avoids eye contact, quietly watches the adult, does not participate in the activities proposed by the adult, and avoids tactile contact.
- Aggression and self-aggression.
- The desire to attract attention with bad behavior, demonstrative violation of the rules accepted in the house.
- Provoking an adult to have an uncharacteristic strong emotional reaction (anger, loss of self-control). Having achieved such a reaction from an adult, the child can begin to behave well. In this case, parents need to learn to sense the moment of provocation and use their own ways of coping with the situation (for example, count to 10 or tell the child that you are not ready to communicate now).
- Lack of distance in communication with adults. “Clinginess” to an adult. Children from an orphanage often demonstrate clinginess to any new adult in their environment.
- Somatic disorders.
The readiness of the substitute parent to give emotional warmth and accept the child for who he is are decisive for achieving success in forming the child’s attachment to the new family. Including a child in a new family means involving him in its rituals and customs, which may differ from his own. The quality of relationships with other family members and their willingness to accept the child and emotional openness are also a necessary factor in the formation of attachment. But the most important factor is attachment integration- previous and newly emerging ones, building the child’s relationship with his past and parents. The family may not be able to cope with such a problem and requires organized help from service specialists.
Thus, the condition for adaptation and socialization will be the placement of the child in a new family and the organization of an educational space that allows, in the process of interaction and mutual acceptance of the child and family, to compensate for the negative consequences of trauma, to form a new attachment and create conditions for the successful development of the child.
IV. The concept of “grief and loss” in the life of a child left without parental care.
To understand the essence of adaptation and to properly organize the work of teachers and foster carers, it is necessary to understand the dynamics of the states of a child who has experienced a break with his family. Let's consider stages of grief and loss :
- Shock and denial ( main feature The child's behavior at this stage is that he does not unconsciously perceive the loss).
- Anger stage.
- Depression and guilt (anxiety, melancholy, depression, guilt).
- The final stage is acceptance.
In general, during the period of adaptation to a foster family and coming to terms with loss, the child’s behavior is characterized by inconsistency and imbalance, the presence of strong feelings (which may be suppressed) and frustration. educational activities. Usually adaptation occurs within a year. During this period, educators can provide significant assistance to the child, and this will serve as the “cement” that holds the new relationship together. However, if any of the above manifestations persist for a longer period, the help of specialists is necessary.
The above description relates to the internal experiences of children faced with the problem of breaking up close relationships and the need to form new attachments. At the same time, there is a clear dynamic in the process of building external relationships with those people who care for the child and become close to him, to one degree or another replacing parents.
In order to overcome the negative consequences of a break with parents, the child needs certainty and a sense of security, physical care, and consolation. The basic sense of security, determined by the quality of attachment, determines the degree of adaptation of the child and affects the level of general mental development (Bardyshevskaya, Maksimenko). A child's need for safety is basic. The satisfaction or frustration of this need depends on the parenting strategy that the new mother chooses. An anxious child who does not feel safe tries to satisfy the need for security by choosing a certain strategy of behavior, often inadequate to reality: hostility in order to pay back the rejecting adult; over-obedience to return the love of a significant loved one, self-pity as a call for sympathy, idealization of oneself as compensation for feelings of inferiority. The result is a neuroticization of the child's needs. The characteristics of the behavior of a substitute adult during communication with a child determine the quality of the type of attachment that is formed in him, and the formed attachment contributes to intensive and versatile mental development (Andreeva, Khaimovskaya, Maksimenko). New parents need to initiate positive interactions with the child, be the first to show attention and interest in his affairs and feelings, ask questions and express warmth and concern, even if the child seems indifferent or sullen. They need to be attentive to the memories of the child, who needs to talk about what happened to him, about his family. It is necessary to preserve memorabilia and help in organizing life and study. Parents of children with insecure attachment demonstrate excessive interference in the child’s actions (violation of boundaries) and do not take it into account own desires and needs and do not respond to his requests (Grossman). Disturbed maternal relationship, inadequate organization of communication with the child, the mother’s manifestation of authoritarianism, rejection, overprotection or infantilization of the child contribute to the frustration of his needs. Excessive guardianship gives rise to infantilism and the child’s inability to be independent, excessive demands - the child’s lack of self-confidence, emotional rejection - increased level anxiety, depression, aggression. Maternal attitude must correspond to the developmental needs of the child. E. Fromm designated as “heteronomous influence” the mother’s attitude, which is contrary to the natural growth of the child, in which the free, spontaneous expression of the child’s desires and needs is subject to various restrictions, which causes various mental pathologies. E. Fromm also studied the differences in the influences of a child’s attachment to mother and father at different stages of child development. They were shown that as they grow older, attachment to the mother loses significance and after 6 years the child’s need for fatherly love and guidance becomes actualized. “The development from the attachments centered around the mother to the attachments centered around the father, and their gradual union, forms the basis of spiritual health and allows one to achieve maturity. Deviations from the normal path of this development are the cause of various disorders.”
Thus, the strength and quality of attachments largely depend on the behavior of parents towards the child and on the quality of their attitude towards him (Ainsworth, Mukhamedrakhimov). This fully applies to foster parents. The foster family must have experience in raising such a child, understand the patterns of child development and the consequences of loss of attachment to blood parents, the influence of their own attitude towards the child on his development, i.e. To be sufficiently prepared, in the future such a family will need the help of specialists.
Children raised in an orphanage have a number of characteristics in their mental development that manifest themselves 1. In intellectual development. B) the cognitive need is extremely weakly expressed, even in such primitive forms as interest in new facts, vivid life examples, unusual phenomena, etc. Here they can even be compared with inmates of juvenile colonies. However, the latter also have weakly expressed motivation, but they can still find an area of life that is of direct interest and at the same time very bright. C) with a generally normal level of intelligence, it is not completely used by students either in school or even in life. This can be explained by the fact that he is to a certain extent disconnected from the motivation and, in general, from the personality of these children. This can be called “intellectual passivity.” 2. In the development of the motivation-need sphere C) For children from orphanages and boarding schools, compared to children at home, motives related to the present day or the near future prevail. There is a narrowing of the time perspective, a tendency to live for today, not caring about tomorrow, or even completely ignoring the passage of time. 3. In the development of “I-concept” B) self-esteem in children from the family is more often positive and more complex nature than in orphans. A child from a family can struggle with his negative qualities, but still love himself. Children from orphanages have a more unambiguous attitude towards themselves. C) orphans often experience the discomfort of success. This is explained by the fact that it is more important for a person to maintain his usual attitude towards himself, even a negative one, than to have an uncertain, confused idea of himself, a confused identity. D) Development of the “sense of We”, orientation in self-esteem to the opinions of others. 4. Problems with the development of gender identity. B) Often children from orphanages experience difficulties in creating their own families, have great difficulty entering the parental family of their wife or husband, and have many problems communicating with their spouse. C) there are problems in the formation of gender-role behavior: the craze of pupils for such purely women's activities like embroidery, knitting, etc. D) problems in the formation of sexual attractiveness. D) early onset of sexual activity. Moreover, children are not ashamed, but proud of it. E) ideas about the future family and motherhood often carry a small share of responsibility. 5. Problems in communicating with adults and peers. A) Distrust of people B) Full, emotionally rich contacts with adults and peers have not been formed, even when it comes to their siblings. C) Frequent manifestations of aggression as a consequence of dissatisfaction with the need for love. D) Manifestation of dependence, often negative, on adults. |
Certainty: It is important for the child to know what will happen next, what the order is in the place where he finds himself. Try to tell your child in advance about other members of your family and show them photographs. Show the child his room (or part of the room), his bed and a closet where he can put personal belongings, explain that this is his space. Ask if he now wants to be alone or with you. Try to briefly but clearly tell your child what will happen next: “Now we will eat and go to bed, and tomorrow we will look at the apartment again, go for a walk in the yard and to the store.”
Comfort : If your child is depressed and showing other signs of grief, try to gently hug him and tell him that you understand how sad it is to leave those you love, and how sad it can be in a new, unfamiliar place, but he will not always be so sad . Think together about what could help the child. Important: if a child bursts into tears, do not stop him right away. Stay with him and calm him down after a while: if there are tears inside, it’s better to cry them out.
Physical care: find out what your child likes from food, discuss the menu with him and, if possible, take into account his wishes. Make sure that the night light is on in the hallway at night, and if the child is afraid of the dark, then in his room too. When going to bed, sit with your child longer, talk to him, hold his hand or stroke his head, if possible, wait until he falls asleep. If at night it seems to you that a child, even a small one, is crying, be sure to go to him, but do not turn on the light so as not to embarrass him. Sit quietly next to her, try to talk and console. You can just hug the baby and even stay with him overnight (at first). Important: be careful, if the child tenses from physical contact, express your sympathy and care simply with words.
Initiative : Initiate positive interactions with your child, be the first to show attention and interest in his activities and feelings, ask questions and express warmth and concern, even if the child seems indifferent or sullen. Important: do not expect reciprocal warmth right away.
Memories: the child may want to talk about what happened to him, about his family. Important: postpone your tasks until later, if possible, or set aside a special time to talk with your child. If his story gives you doubts or mixed feelings, remember - it is more important for a child to be listened to carefully than to receive advice. Just think about what your child might be experiencing then, and how he feels while talking to you - and sympathize with it.
Memorabilia : photographs, toys, clothes - all this connects the child with the past and is the material embodiment of a significant part of his life. Important: every child who has experienced separation or loss should have something as a keepsake, and it is unacceptable to throw it away, especially without his consent.
Help in organizing things: Children often feel confused in a new place and with such major changes in their lives. You can discuss and plan their affairs together, give them specific advice about any activity, write memos, etc. Important: support the child if he is angry with himself for his mistakes: “what is happening to you is a normal reaction to abnormal circumstances,” “we will cope,” etc.
There may be traits in the character of your adopted child about which you can safely say: “This is no longer his grief, but mine!” Please remember, you can't fix everything in a shortcut. First, the child must get used to you, accept the changes in his life, and only then will he change himself.
Most children, whose experience of living in a family was not catastrophic, and whose trust in adults is not completely undermined, look forward to a new family as a means of healing from loneliness and abandonment, with the hope that everything will still be good in their lives.
However, simply moving to a new situation and helping to cope with the loss is not always enough for the “new” life to turn out well: past experiences, skills and fears remain with the child.
With the normal development of communication (from 3 to 6 years), three forms of communication alternate, each of which is characterized by its own content of needs. In early preschool age, as in early childhood, the leading form of communication is situational and businesslike. The child perceives the adult as a play partner and highlights, first of all, his business qualities.
By about the age of five, non-situational-cognitive motives for communication take shape. Interest in the surrounding world is no longer limited to the sensitive properties of objects, but extends to more significant, although not directly given, properties of things and their relationships. However, the child’s limited experience and capabilities do not allow him to independently understand the patterns and relationships of the world around him. In order to understand and assimilate all this, the child needs an adult. An adult acquires a new quality - he becomes a source of new knowledge and ideas about the world. Along with the cognitive motives of communication in preschool age, the need arises for the respect of an adult, for his positive assessment of the child’s knowledge and skills. This need manifests itself in affective reactions to adult remarks and reprimands.
The highest achievement of communicative activity in preschool childhood- an extra-situational-personal form of communication that develops towards the end preschool age. The interests of older preschoolers are no longer limited to surrounding objects and phenomena, but extend to the world of people, their actions, human qualities, and relationships. Distinctive feature communication at this stage becomes a desire for mutual understanding and empathy with an adult, a need for them. Extra-situational-personal communication is carried out on the basis of personal motives - an adult is no longer interesting only as a play partner or a source of information, but also as a bearer of individual qualities.
These are the main stages in the development of communication between preschoolers and adults that are observed in children living in families. The results of classes with family preschool children showed that by the age of 6, all indicators of children’s activity in the situation of non-situational personal conversation increase significantly. For preschoolers aged 3-5 years, the situation of playing together is most attractive, and children aged 4 years 6 months - 5 years 6 months prefer non-situational-cognitive communication with an adult. Moreover, with age, not only does the number of children’s statements increase, but their content also changes - children move from stating events and direct appeals to an adult to judgments, conclusions, cognitive questions, expressing their attitudes, and the like.
Children from an orphanage behave completely differently in the same situation and communicate differently with adults than children from a kindergarten: they turn to the adult more often and persistently, strive to capture his attention, cling to him, fight for the right to hold his hand. This kind of behavior is characteristic of both younger and older preschoolers, that is, children clearly experience a heightened need for the attention and goodwill of an adult.
Preschool children are characterized by more complex forms of the need for communication (for cooperation, for respect, for empathy). But among orphanage pupils, the need for attention and kindness remains dominant throughout preschool age.
An adult’s question about what the child wants to do with him more - play, read or talk - usually causes bewilderment: children are embarrassed, silent, or answer “I don’t know.” For the majority of preschoolers, this question turns out to be too difficult.
During joint play, that is, in a situation simulating situational business communication, the children felt most relaxed. At the same time, the desire for cooperation and joint activities with adults is practically not expressed.
Initiative statements or actions included in the game occur only in isolated cases. Children's play activities are carried out either independently of an adult or under his guidance. There is practically no need for cooperation, desire and ability to do anything together with an adult among preschool children in an orphanage.
While reading and discussing a book (extra-situational cognitive communication), the orphanage pupils also do not show cognitive activity. They do not ask a single cognitive question addressed to an adult, and not a single non-situational-cognitive statement. In an orphanage, educational conversations with preschoolers turn into passive perception of information, which tires them: after 5-6 minutes, children begin to get distracted, and then willingly agree to stop the conversation.
Thus, preschoolers, including those with HIV infection, growing up outside the family do not exhibit any of the known and typical forms of behavior for preschoolers. At the same time, a clear interest in adults, proactive actions addressed to him, heightened sensitivity to his attention and assessments indicate that children experience an acute need for the attention and goodwill of an adult, characteristic of a situational-personal form of communication. The motives that encourage children to communicate correspond to this need and are personal in nature: the child is attracted to the adult himself, regardless of his level of competence or ability to establish joint activities. Children willingly accept any appeal from an adult, but all contacts with him come down to seeking his attention and affection.
In preschool age, children also intensively form and develop their experience of communicating with peers. If communication with adults for children living in a family is much richer and more varied, then the opportunity to communicate with peers for children growing up in a family and an orphanage is approximately the same. As research shows, full communication with peers in preschool age is of great importance for the mental and personal development of a child.
But it should be noted that the contacts of children in an orphanage are less pronounced than in kindergarten. Preschoolers in kindergarten turn to peers for a variety of reasons. Children cannot experience curiosity, delight, joy, or resentment alone and certainly involve their peers in their experiences.
In similar situations, children at an orphanage show less interest in their peers. This suggests that the need for communication with peers among children growing up in orphanages is less stressful than among preschoolers living in families. They have virtually no role-playing interaction in the game. Even when involved in any general plot (family, holiday, etc.), children act on their own, and not on behalf of the role-playing character. In terms of its operational composition, such activity resembles a role-playing game, but in terms of its subjective, psychological content it is significantly different.
Thus, we can conclude that two spheres of communication - with an adult and with a peer are closely related: a lack of communication with an adult leads to impoverished relationships between peers; a child’s communication with an adult largely determines the nature of his contacts with other children. In itself, this opportunity to communicate with a peer, which children in an orphanage have, does not lead to the development of meaningful and emotional contacts among preschoolers. Communication between children does not arise and does not develop without the participation of an adult. Only an adult can teach children the ability to see the subjective qualities of another child and help deepen and enrich contacts between preschoolers. Children living in a deficit of communication with adults have their own characteristics. They differ from their peers in their involuntary behavior, that is, their inability to control their behavior. They themselves cannot find means of behavior control that would allow them to restrain impulsive movements and manage their own actions.
Observations of the behavior of preschool children in an orphanage indicate its situational nature, increased dependence on the subject environment. They are characterized by an inability to concentrate on any activity, to plan their actions, motor disinhibition, and impulsivity. During classes, preschoolers from an orphanage are much more likely to be distracted by surrounding objects than their peers in kindergarten (4 times), and constantly break rules in didactic games, in a free game they switch from one item to another, they do not maintain the plot of the game. This means that children growing up outside the family have poor control over their behavior and lag behind in the level of development of volition.
^ Social and psychological characteristics of orphans of primary school age
A study of indicators of mental development of children of primary school age (grades 1-4) shows that in closed institutions children exhibit predominantly average and low levels of mental development. Only in isolated cases is the presence of children noted general level whose development is higher. Studying the characteristics of the mental development of children with HIV infection at this and older ages is a task for the future.
In these institutions there is a very significant group of children who have a low level of mental development - the level of “risk”.
Students in the first to fourth grades show uneven development of various mental functions. The noted “disharmony” is clearly manifested when studying the intellectual sphere. According to the level of development of such elements logical thinking, as a systematization and conceptual classification, children raised outside the family are practically not inferior to their “home” peers, while the logical operation of reversibility, diagnosed by tests, is much less developed in them than in seven-year-olds from public schools and even in six-year-olds from regular kindergartens. Also, the development of visual-figurative thinking in children from boarding schools is at a much lower level.
A necessary condition for the formation of thinking at age is the richness and diversity of the child’s sensory experience.
It can be assumed that it is precisely the scarcity, limitation, of concrete sensory experience in children raised outside the family, in children's institutions, in conditions conducive to the emergence of the repeatedly described phenomena of “hospitalism” that negatively affects the formation of visual-figurative thinking, reversibility operations, and also affects peculiarities of perception, which is manifested in the primitiveness of the drawing.
For psychology, it is undeniable that, being formed in activity, any form of thinking requires practice in solving problems for its development, problem situations and so on. This practice, which is rich in a child raised in a family, is extremely poor in children from an orphanage.
The limited practice of solving problems, the poverty of concrete sensory experience lead to schematic, abstract, and rational thinking of the child, when the development of the formal aspects of the intellect (classification, systematization) replaces the imaginative, concrete, creative knowledge of the world.
Against the background of a low level of visual-figurative and some elements of logical thinking, classification forms of thinking among orphanage pupils turn out to be dominant.
This is very important, since in psychology there is evidence that the path of development of thinking according to the classification type is, in a certain sense, a dead end, preventing the development of the creative side of thinking. In cases where in preschool and primary school age children develop a classification type of thinking as the dominant one, it becomes very stable and manifests itself throughout school childhood in the way they acquire knowledge and in the characteristics of cognitive activity.
The characteristics of readiness for schooling are not limited to the characteristics of intellectual development. The development of voluntary self-regulation of behavior is important, so that the child can independently perform certain tasks in accordance with certain requirements. For the successful implementation of educational activities, it is necessary that the requirements initially put forward by the teacher subsequently act as requirements that the student himself makes for his own actions. This presupposes a fairly high degree of formation of self-control actions, the presence of a detailed “internal action plan.” In comparing the level of development of this aspect of readiness for schooling among boarding school students and children from families, the following features of voluntary self-regulation were revealed in the former. Orphans cope well with those tasks in which it is only necessary to consistently follow the direct and basic instructions of an adult. Their actions are step-by-step in nature: implementation and self-control follow directly from the teacher’s instructions. In those cases when the rule for completing a task is quite complex and is not introduced step by step, but is formed before the start of the activity, and even more so when the child must focus on several such rules, the effectiveness of the tasks performed by boarding school students becomes unsatisfactory. The latter indicates a relatively lower level of development of self-regulation of behavior in this group of children than in their peers from regular schools. This is primarily due to the lack of development of mechanisms for mediating actions by the internal plan among first-graders in the orphanage.
At first glance, the insufficient development of voluntary behavior among boarding school students is paradoxical. It is generally accepted that shortcomings in the development and independence and arbitrary behavior of children are caused by overprotection and excessive care on the part of surrounding adults. Children who, like boarding school pupils, live in closed institutions from an early age, grow up, rather, in conditions of hypoprotection and a lack of communication with adults. In such conditions, forcing them to be independent, it would seem that one would expect relatively high level development in children of the ability to organize themselves, plan their behavior, etc. However, such elements of the development of voluntariness are formed in primary schoolchildren from the orphanage to a much lesser extent than in their peers in the family. Thus, the limited, predominantly group communication of children with adults does not actually provide the child with independence: a rigid daily routine, constant instructions from adults - all this deprives children of the need to independently plan, implement and control their behavior and, on the contrary, forms the habit of step-by-step execution of other people’s instructions . A child raised in a family, on the one hand, naturally finds himself in a less stringent situation of demands and control, and on the other hand, by participating in complex, varied activities with adults (assembling a construction set with his grandfather, helping his mother prepare food), he learns not only to perform certain operations, but masters quite complex programs for planning, organizing activities, and controlling. In the family, the assimilation of all these complex elements of activity, the development of an internal plan of action does not occur in a situation of special training, but is naturally included in the context of activities that are attractive to the child. Such a variety of interactions with adults in various activities pupils of boarding-type institutions are usually deprived of it, as a result of which such central elements of voluntary regulation of behavior as planning, self-control, etc. are insufficiently formed.
The most important source of development of arbitrariness of behavior in preschool age is play, and play with rules, role-playing game developed in them to a very small extent, i.e. and this source of development of voluntariness turns out to be impoverished among the orphanage pupils.
The sphere of communication with adults of children, as mentioned above, characterizes intense communication needs. Against the background of the desire to communicate with adults and at the same time increased dependence on adults, the aggressiveness of younger schoolchildren towards adults is especially noteworthy. This not only confirms the frustration of the need to communicate with adults, but also speaks of the inability to take responsibility for the communication process, for how relationships develop in it, and also demonstrates a consumer attitude towards adults, a tendency to expect or even demand solutions to one’s problems from others.
Aggressive, rude responses that boarding school students address to adults and indicate that the distance in communication has not been formed. The formation of adequate forms of child behavior in relation to an adult is facilitated by the normal course of the process of identification with parents, which in this case is disrupted.
The paradox of the situation is that younger schoolchildren in the orphanage strive to be obedient and disciplined to the maximum extent possible, and try to please the adult. After all, if in a family a child feels loved, good and valuable to others, almost regardless of his behavior, then children's institution In a boarding school, a child must, as a rule, earn a positive attitude from an adult by fulfilling his requirements, exemplary behavior, and good grades. The need for a positive attitude from an adult is faced with a deeply frustrated need for intimate and personal communication with him, which, combined with the lack of development of adequate forms of communication with adults, creates an extremely complex, contradictory picture of this communication.
Thus, in the behavior of children of primary school age raised outside the family, a certain specificity is revealed, which should be defined not as a simple lag in mental development, but as a qualitatively different nature of its course.
In residential institutions, a certain type of deviation is formed, which is characterized by the underdevelopment of internal mechanisms of mediation, the formation of which precisely creates the possibility of a transition from reactive situational to active, free behavior. This underdevelopment of the internal mechanisms of mediation of the orphanage pupils is compensated by the formation of protective formations, the establishment of arbitrariness of behavior - an orientation towards external control instead of the ability to cope with difficult situation- a tendency towards an affective reaction, resentment, and shifting responsibility to others.
^ Social and psychological characteristics of teenage orphans
Adolescence is the last period of stay for most children in a residential care facility. Later they enter into independent life. Pupils are often not ready to be deprived of their usual care and way of life. That is why issues of personal and social maturity of a 14-15 year old graduate of a boarding school (orphanage) are of paramount importance.
Adolescence, difficult and critical for any person, is fraught with special dangers for children in orphanages. The areas of development of self-awareness, time perspective and professional self-determination, the formation of psychosexual identity are key for the formation of personality in this difficult period, and on the other hand, they are most vulnerable in conditions of upbringing outside of positive family influence. It is on them that the main work should focus on overcoming the negative consequences of staying in residential institutions and preparing adolescents for adult life outside its walls.
In children from orphanages and orphanages, the development of all aspects of the self (self-image, attitude towards oneself, self-image, self-esteem) differs significantly from the development of these aspects in children from the family. Czech researchers I. Langiejer, Z. Matejcek see one of the serious consequences in the deprivation of the need for parental love, in the lack of a sense of self-confidence among pupils of children's institutions. Arising in the early stages of ontogenesis, self-doubt becomes a stable formation, a characteristic of an orphanage pupil.
To study the self-image, the method of free descriptions is used. The student is offered the topics “I, as I seem to myself,” “I, as I seem to others.” The first description is a “direct self-portrait”, the second is a “mirror self-portrait”. The content of the self-image is described through a system of categories - groups of statements about the spheres of reality and various aspects of one’s own inner life, which a person uses when describing himself.
Only one category, Relationships with other people, is significant for both public school students and boarding school students. In other cases, children living and brought up in different conditions, different categories are identified as significant: in a boarding school - Behavior, Appearance, Attitude towards peers of the opposite sex, in a regular school - Skills, Interests, Abilities and Self-Esteem, personality quality.
Two groups of statements - a description of oneself as a friend, and one's ability to understand other people - are significantly expressed among schoolchildren and are almost not represented among boarding school students. That is. The significance of these particular aspects of communication for the self-image depends to the greatest extent on whether the teenager is in a family or in a boarding school.
It is strange that children from the boarding school write very little about themselves as friends: since they live in a situation of emotional deficit, one would expect rather the opposite effect - an increase. This indicates insufficient attention of adolescents from a boarding school to the intimate and personal side of communication with peers, although increased attention to the side of communication is one of the most important characteristics of adolescence. In the group of boarding school students, the discussed aspect of communication turns out to be undeveloped, which may be partly due to the special conditions of communication between these children and their peers. At school, relationships with peers are selective.
In a boarding school, they are constantly in a situation of mandatory communication with a fairly narrow group of peers, so selectivity fades into the background for them, giving way to the perception of contacts with peers as stable, inevitable, such that the teenager himself cannot change of his own free will.
Indication of interests, hobbies, and skills in a “self-portrait” indicates that this area is of paramount importance. It is through this that he defines himself, finds his difference from others. For schoolchildren, this sphere occupies a significant place in the image of the Self; for pupils, this sphere is on the periphery. It deserves special attention, since it is known that the development of interests, increasing their personal significance is an essential characteristic of older adolescence, directly related to the need for professional and life self-determination. Insufficient expression of ideas about one’s own skills and interests in the self-image of boarding school students may precede normal course the process of self-determination is important for the formation of personality.
So, the characteristics of the self-image of adolescents growing up in the family and outside the family differ in a number of significant parameters, the main of which are:
1) orientation towards one’s own personal characteristics (mass school) - orientation towards the external environment, towards adaptation (boarding school);
2) intensive formation of the self-image in the direction of adulthood, associated with it by a system of personal values from 7th to 9th grade (mass school) - the stability of these aspects of the self-image during the specified period (boarding school);
3) vivid expression of actual teenage characteristics (mass school) - inconsistency of some aspects of the self-image age characteristics(boarding school).
The point is not that the self-image develops more slowly under these conditions; what is important is that it develops somewhat differently, along a different path, than in adolescents growing up in a family.
Another important psychological development of adolescence is a focus on the future. Its study sheds light, on the one hand, on the broader problem of the formation of a person’s time perspective as its most essential characteristic, and on the other, on the process of professional self-determination - a relatively narrower, but extremely practically significant moment of personal development at this age.
Psychological self-analysis of professional self-determination indicates that the process is carried out differently in a boarding school and a public school. The essence of the difference is that in a regular school, at the beginning, some ideal ideas about one’s future profession are formed, which later (in the 7th - 8th grade) are replaced quite realistically, and in some cases quite complex, contradictory relationships arise between one and the other. Boarding school students early develop realistic ideas about their future specialty, so their attitude towards choosing it is, as a rule, consistent.
In this case, the lack of inconsistency in the professional definition cannot be assessed positively. A teenager from a mass school, choosing an “earthly” profession that is more appropriate to his abilities and the objective circumstances of life, abandons his childhood hopes and dreams and commits an act of conscious self-restraint necessary for professional self-determination. This act is performed by others for the orphanage pupil: professional self-determination is determined by the public education system (orphanages and boarding schools are strictly connected with only a few secondary specialized educational institutions, while studying in which students can be fully state provision). Essentially, the act of professional self-determination turns into a professional definition for boarding school students. But since professional self-determination at a given age is the most important component of personal self-determination, it is obvious how unfavorably this can affect the entire course of personality development.
The professional perspective can only be fully formulated as part of a holistic future time perspective. This includes motives for communicating with other people (the desire to have friends, get married), and motives associated with the development of one’s own personality, one’s own self. These groups of time perspective motives are also much less pronounced among orphanage students. They are represented insignificantly and relate only to the period of current life activity and the very near future.
Another area of mental development of the individual is the formation of psychosexual identity. IN adolescence, in the period of human maturation this area occupies a special place. It was at this time that problems associated with gender, psychosexual behavior and development, the formation of a system of certain needs, motives, value orientations that characterize a person’s ideas about himself as a man or a woman, that is, everything that constitutes the main content of the concept of “psychosexual identity” , come to the fore in the formation of the personality of children of this age.
A person’s awareness and experience of his gender identity presupposes the presence of formed models, standards of masculine and female images, models of masculinity and femininity.
The increased value of the family and insufficient experience of living in it contribute to the idealization by boarding school students of family relationships and the image of a family man. Their positive model is largely vague, not filled with specific everyday details, although not very emotionally rich. At the same time, there is another standard - a negative, concrete image of what these relationships should not be, what qualities a husband, father, mother, wife should not have. The collision of two images gives rise to a conflicting system of demands: idealized and uncertain on the one hand, and extremely low ones limited to the fulfillment of elementary norms of behavior on the other. A conflicting system of demands, which is also attributed to only one side of the relationship - the family side - can negatively affect the formation of adequate ideas about femininity - masculinity and, ultimately, distort the normal process of formation of psychosexual identity.
Schoolchildren from families evaluate men and women more comprehensively; their ideas about the family and the relationships in it are quite real and filled with specific content.
3.8. Algorithm for socio-psychological work with orphans and children without parental care of preschool and school age, including those with HIV infection
Over the past twenty years, a competency model has been developed and tested at the Institute of Pedology (in the Netherlands). We can talk about competence if a person has a sufficient amount of skills with which he can adequately perform the tasks facing him in his life. Everyday life. When forming tasks that are important for children and adolescents, the concept of “age-related tasks” is introduced (tasks facing children at each stage of development, determined by age-related characteristics). The social competence model is used in the practice of diagnosing and rehabilitating orphans, including those with HIV infection.
The concept of “age-related goals” is based on the idea that a person’s life course can be divided into different stages or phases. In the Netherlands, the following divisions into age stages are used: infant and preschool period; period of primary education (4 - 12 years); youth (12 - 21/25 years); period of parenthood with young children; children's growth period; the stage when children leave home; end of career; old age. Each stage (stage) is characterized by a specific theme, which corresponds to specific age-related tasks.
The more specifically the tasks facing the child are named, the easier it is for a social worker, psychologist, educator to observe and formulate the skills and abilities that children, adolescents and parents already possess, and to highlight those that are not yet available and, therefore, need to be learned.
We formulated the age-related objectives below based on the publications of the following authors: Achenbach (1990), Waters, Sroufe (1983), Masten, Braswell (1991), Selman (1980) and De Geus (1995).
Age goals for children 4 - 12 years old:
Ask a question, arrange a meeting with a peer, seek help, do not disturb the other (4 - 6 years);
Plan your actions taking into account the interests of others, the ability to consult (6 - 8 years);
Have your own opinion, form judgments taking into account the opinions of others, maintain relationships (8 - 10 years);
2. Independence - increased independence in relation to parents (educators):
Ability to keep oneself busy, development of independence (4 - 6 years);
Have your own opinion, take into account the interests of others, take others into account (6 - 8 years);
Manage your own affairs independently, seek help from adults in case of difficulty (8-10 years);
Fill your free time independently, plan your leisure time (10-12 years old).
3. Study - in primary school to acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to function in society:
Work in class together with other children and be active (4 - 6 years old);
Acquire knowledge, skills and abilities to study in primary school (6 - 8 years old);
Study diligently, apply effort, patience to master knowledge, be able to study independently (10 - 12 years).
4. Friendship - establishing and maintaining friendly contacts with peers:
Find a friend (friends) among children of the same and opposite sex (4 - 6 years old);
Maintain friendly relations, be able to be friends, take into account the opinions of others, be able to share with others, sympathize with others (6-8 years).
Resolve conflicts independently, have a permanent “best” friend (8 - 10 years);
Maintain friendship, be able to make friends with girls and boys (10 - 12 years old).
5. Household responsibilities - taking on part of the responsibility for running the household and in relation to brothers and sisters:
Put away your things and toys (4-6 years);
Help with housework (take care of animals in the country, etc.), take care of younger and other family members (6 - 8 years old);
Assignment of permanent responsibilities around the house, work assignments (going to the store, washing dishes, etc.) (8-10 years);
Help at the dacha and in the house (cleaning, laundry, etc.) (10 - 12 years old).
6. Use of basic infrastructures - the ability to independently use basic infrastructure facilities, such as public transport, the monetary system, means of communication, a means of spending free time:
Turn on and off the TV, tape recorder, player (4 - 6 years);
Use money public transport, telephone, know the value of money (6-8 years);
Independent use of infrastructure (8 - 10 years);
Have the necessary skills to use the infrastructure (10 -12 years).
7. Safety and health - the ability to make choices that ensure one’s own safety and health:
Be careful on the street, do not expose yourself to danger, be careful in contact with adults (4 - 8 years old);
Be able to make choices (8-10 years old);
Anticipate possible consequences their actions and their behavior from the point of view of danger (10 -12 years).
Age goals for teenagers (13 years - 21 years):
1. Liberation from dependence, acquisition of autonomy - the ability to become less dependent on parents and to determine one’s place in the family and among relatives in changing relationships:
Be able to build conflict-free relationships and negotiate with parents (13-15 years old);
Find your place in the family, define your relationships with relatives and parents, be able to solve problems without conflicts (16 - 18 years old).
2. Health and appearance - a teenager should take care of good physical condition, appearance, eating well and avoiding unnecessary risks:
Independently monitor your weight, physical condition and development (13-15 years old);
News healthy image life, stop in time if available bad habits(16 - 18 years old).
3. Free time - arrange interesting events, fully spend time free from responsibilities:
Be able to choose necessary, useful, and enjoyable activities for your free time (13-15 years old);
To fully spend your free time (16-18 years old).
Social competence is seen as a state of equilibrium. We talk about the presence of competence if an individual has skills sufficient to implement the tasks facing him in everyday life (SLOT, 1988).
If age-related tasks are too complex or there are too many of them at one time, the balance may be disrupted - and then the person functions incompetently. The same happens if he has insufficient skills and abilities.
Competence is presented as a balance between age-related goals and the availability of the necessary skills. It simultaneously depicts both the factors that positively influence this balance (flexibility and protective properties), and those. Which can negatively affect and disrupt balance (stressful situations and pathology).
Tasks are what a person faces in everyday contact with society. We are talking about the most different tasks, facing children, including those with HIV infection, in accordance with age: do well in school, wash themselves, communicate with other children, put away toys after playing, resolve conflicts with other children, communicate with parents, tolerate their absence, loss, etc.
Skills are behaviors required to perform specific tasks; skills give a person the ability to perform specific tasks. A person has cognitive, social and practical skills.
Behavior is everything a person does, thinks and feels.
The term flexibility refers to the individual qualities of a person that help him adapt successfully, despite risks and failures. For example: self-confidence (feelings that difficulties can be overcome).
Protective factors are aspects of an individual's environment that protect him from risk and failure (Werner, 1994; De Wit et al., 1995). For example: support coming from family and friends (good relationships).
By pathology we mean a type of behavior that is not accepted in a given culture, accompanied by the following phenomena: suffering (for example, fear, pain or grief in the person himself or in others).
Stressful situations are situations from which it is difficult for a person to find a way out and which negatively affect his functioning. This could be the loss of a loved one, divorce or remarriage parents, chronic diseases, natural disasters and catastrophes.
^ 3.9. Algorithm for psychological and pedagogical diagnosis of orphans and children with HIV infection
Psychological and pedagogical diagnostics is based on the following principles:
Complexity of diagnosis, interaction of different specialists during the study of the child;
Integrity of diagnosis: interrelation and interdependence of individual aspects of the child’s organization (intellectual, emotional-volitional, motivational, behavioral).
Diagnostics based on the competency model. By diagnosis we mean making and checking a diagnosis. A diagnosis is an assumption regarding a child’s problem, made on the basis of conversations, observations, specialized research and other information (dossier, etc.). Based on the diagnosis, the most suitable shape assistance that meets the needs of the adolescent and family.
Diagnostics based on the competency model means that the collection and analysis of information and goal setting are focused on the six elements that define the competency model (skills, protective factors, flexibility, problems, stressors, pathology).
1. Analysis of pathology/problem behavior. There are different possibilities for this analysis. You can follow the diagnostic instructions and the list of complaints. Sometimes a case file is available and/or the child is asked questions about the nature, severity and frequency of complaints, about his problems, and about the time when the problems began. It is important to gain an understanding of the environmental factors that played a role in the development of undesirable/inappropriate (disapproved) behavior and the avoidance of desirable/adequate (approved) behavior.
2. Analysis of stressful situations. Here it is necessary to distinguish between situations that are objectively stressful and situations that are perceived as subjectively stressful insofar as they lead to strong feelings and leave quite significant consequences on the human body and psyche.
3. Analysis of tasks and skills. Questions that arise when analyzing tasks and skills: a) does a person take on tasks characteristic of the age period in which he is; b) whether the tasks are too difficult for him; c) whether this person has sufficient skills to perform the tasks.
Experience shows that with the help of a conversation, sufficiently structured and supplemented by observations, you can usually get a good understanding of what the child’s problem is. Along with this, there are various auxiliary techniques, the use of which provides the basis for building situations and problems for the child.
The analysis of tasks and skills can be supplemented with the following indicators:
Environmental factors that determine evasion from completing one’s task or, conversely, facilitating its implementation;
Find out the skills that a person uses when performing a certain task, and the ability to use these skills to perform other tasks. In this case, these skills could be called a person's “strength”. Listing strengths greatly increases motivation.
4. Analysis of flexibility and protective factors. The analysis of the social competence model described above often provides considerable material regarding protective factors. Yet getting a good understanding of flexibility and protective factors is challenging. The reason for this is also that the person seeking help often thinks in other categories. It is sometimes easier for him to explain what hurts him, what he senses, feels, than to verbalize the reasons for everything that is happening to him. It turns out that sometimes he doesn’t even really know whether the protective action of some person or authority is influencing him.
It is important for a competency model to include a life course perspective. Genograms, life lines, which mark the most important life events to this day, can also be used as aids. A life course review often reveals not only information about tasks and skills, but also facts that can shed light on stressors, protective factors, flexibility, and pathology.
5. Competency analysis is very important aid when providing assistance to children, adolescents and parents. It provides an opportunity to use their strengths. Below is the sequence of analysis (for convenience, we will talk about a teenager).
1) During the reception period (information collection), regularly ask the teenager (and informants from his environment) about his life (school, sports, free time, family), what he can do well, what he is strong at, what he can be proud of.
2) Observe the child whenever possible large quantities different situations to get an idea of his skills: what environmental factors play a role in the development of undesirable/inappropriate behavior and in avoiding desirable/adequate behavior.
3) Do - first of all for yourself - a competency analysis, to do this, divide a sheet of paper vertically into two parts: on the left side, write down as many of the teenager’s strengths as possible (skills, flexibility, social support, possibilities for its provision, etc.), on the right - the problems that the teenager has to face (too difficult tasks, pathology, stress factors).
4) Focus the competency analysis on one or more tasks that show problems or work on (depending on the purpose of the training).
In this case, it is necessary to pay attention to what subtasks the teenager faces in this moment, use the following questions: what subtasks are added to them in a possible new living/working situation, what skills the teenager has shown in relation to these subtasks, what strengths he has, what skills the teenager has not yet shown in relation to these subtasks, which ones can Recommendations for action can be derived from this, what existing skills, as well as flexibility and (or) social support can be used.
As you conduct a more detailed analysis of the balance between tasks and skills in a specific task, continually use an overview of your teen's strengths. A teenager's strengths in relation to some responsibilities can be used to resolve problems associated with other responsibilities.
The competency analysis can be supplemented by questions regarding pathology, flexibility, stress and protective factors:
What pathology and/or stress factors is the teenager currently facing?
What impact does this have on the overall workload and on individual tasks;
Are there factors that help you cope with all this? Which;
What protective factors or aspects of flexibility can be activated; For what tasks is this essential?
A psychologist in institutions for “at-risk” children must first of all be able to very skillfully diagnose the child’s personal development and determine what is blocking the child’s mental development or work mental processes, since without removing the cause blocking the activity of the psyche, practically little can be done. As experience in working in shelters, orphanages, and crisis centers shows, a psychologist must be able to conduct a comprehensive diagnosis of a child’s personal development. Such diagnostics take quite a long time, sometimes up to three months. But until the block that impedes the functioning of the psyche is identified, the use of various methods and techniques of working with children turns out to be futile. Without destroying the traumatic block, it may be impossible to help the child, or quite a long time must pass until the reaction to the injury becomes calmer.
All this changes the direction of the psychologist’s activity. First, the psychologist, together with other specialists (doctors (including an HIV specialist), teachers, social workers) conducts a comprehensive diagnosis of the child. After a consultation of specialists, a final diagnosis is made taking into account the traumatic block.
Based on the data obtained as a result of the diagnosis, a brief description of the child is drawn up, indicating what prevents him from developing normally and behaving without pathologies. Then, based on this analysis, an individual rehabilitation program is drawn up for each pupil. If there are several children who have similar problems, then you can create a program for a small subgroup or group and work with several children.
^ 3.10. Social correction and rehabilitation of orphans and children without parental care, including children with HIV infection
In recent years, psychologists have appeared in all educational institutions, including shelters, orphanages, boarding schools, crisis centers, family education centers, etc. An analysis of the literature shows that methodological support for the activities of psychologists in preschool educational institutions and schools has been developed and published. Less developed was the problem of providing psychological assistance to children in severe crisis situations, outside the family, in orphanages and those who are HIV-positive.
The problem of providing assistance to children at risk has been little studied today, which requires advanced training of psychologists, the development of special psychological methods and technologies, and justification for the construction of rehabilitation and psychocorrection programs.
To work with orphans, including HIV-positive children, two types of psychological assistance can be distinguished: 1) work of a psychologist in social and pedagogical support institutions (shelters, orphanages, crisis centers, boarding schools, etc.); 2) attracting highly qualified specialists on specific problems of children or areas of work, centers, services, consultations, etc.
A psychologist working directly with children in each specific institution must first of all rely on the age characteristics of children and neoplasms characteristic of each age period of the child’s development. The mental development of a child occurs most favorably in each age period, when the type of activity and social situation coincide development. If this does not happen, then we can predict that development has become problematic and may follow an irreversible path, leading to pathological forms of behavior. At the same time, the child’s psyche is characterized by flexibility, plasticity and the possibility of compensation. With certain types of rehabilitation and psychocorrectional work, it is possible to partially compensate for certain aspects of mental development and help the child master social competence skills that allow him to adapt to cultural types of behavior.
Psychologists from institutions where children with HIV infection are raised without parents note that it can be very difficult to find suitable methods for working with such children. Available practical materials often cannot be used when working with children, while it is impossible for children to cope with the proposed tasks, which children from families cope well with. Often, children who grew up in conditions of social deprivation (long stays in specialized departments of medical institutions) do not understand the meaning of the proposed tasks, they are not interested in them, they do not have the intellectual skills to solve tasks, they do not enjoy the work done, and, as a rule, such the work turns out to be ineffective.
But we can highlight the most effective types and forms of work with children from 3 to 18 years old, which can form the basis for the development of rehabilitation and psychocorrection programs.
The first form is play therapy, i.e. use of various types of games. These can be games in the form of games based on literary works, on improvised dialogue, on a combination of retelling and dramatization, etc.
Using imagery in play has a number of psychological benefits. Firstly, the most favorable conditions are created for the child’s personal growth, the attitude towards one’s “I” changes, and the level of self-acceptance increases. This is facilitated by limiting the transfer of the child’s emotional experiences associated with low self-esteem, self-doubt, and anxiety about oneself; tension is reduced, and the severity of the experiences is relieved.
A psychologist should know that the use of a game as a therapeutic tool is based on two reasons: a) the game can be used as a tool for studying a child (a classic psychoanalytic technique in which desire is repressed, one action is replaced by another, lack of attention, slips of the tongue, hesitations, etc. .d.); b) free repetition of a traumatic situation - “obsessive behavior”.
We see that play serves to reveal and treat distortions in a child’s development. Game therapy is valuable because it casts a shadow on the subconscious and allows you to see what in the game a child associates with a trauma, a problem, a past experience that prevents him from living a normal life. There are five signs by which the game is classified as a therapeutic tool.
1. Play is a natural setting for a child’s self-expression.
2. What a child does during play symbolizes his emotions and fears.
3. Unconsciously, the child expresses with emotions in the game what he can then realize; he better understands his emotions and copes with them.
4. The game helps you build a good relationship between the child and the psychologist and his behavior will be spontaneous.
5. The game allows the psychologist to learn more about the child’s life history. To work with children, a psychologist can use free play and directive (controlled) play. In free play, the psychologist offers children different game materials, thereby provoking regressive, realistic and aggressive types of games. Regressive play involves a return to less mature forms of behavior (for example, a child turns into a very small child, asks to be picked up, lisps, crawls, takes a pacifier, etc.). Realistic play depends on the objective situation in which the child finds himself, and not on the child's needs and desires. For example, a child wants to play what he saw and experienced at home: a search, drinking, a fight, violence. And he is offered to play what he sees in this institution: a circus performance, a theater performance, a birthday, a holiday, etc. Aggressive game is a game of war, flood, violence, murder.
In their games, children living in social and pedagogical support institutions constantly return to experienced stressful situations and will continue to experience them until they get used to what they have experienced. Gradually, experiences will become less acute and strong, and children will be able to transfer their experiences to other objects. But for this, the psychologist must teach children new ways of behavior and other experiences.
It is important for a psychologist to carry out rehabilitation work using elements of play therapy or using different types of games. To carry out rehabilitation work, it is good to include structured play material in the program he developed, which provokes children to express their own desires, master social skills, and learn ways of behavior. For this, it is effective to use human figures symbolizing the family, cars, objects and dolls, sets of toys, etc. For example, family figures, cars, bedding provoke a desire to take care of someone; weapons - contributes to the expression of aggression; telephone, train, cars - the use of communicative actions.
When organizing games with children, the psychologist observes what the child ignores: what toys, what color and what shape, and also records the child’s inability to play with a certain toy.
Application in the work of a psychologist different types games and specially developed rehabilitation and psychocorrection programs using games are very valuable, since games reveal an unknown form of overcoming traumatic experiences. This form appears when the integration of awareness and experience has been successful; through it the removal of mental stress, the ability to perceive new impressions and transfer the children’s imagination to topics not related to violence or experienced trauma is formed, which can contribute to the development of self-confidence, affirmation of one’s own “I”, increased self-esteem, and trust in the adults around the child. The use of games in working with this group of children is only a stage in the process of rehabilitation and correction of the child’s personality.
The second method is art therapy.
This method is based on the use of art as a symbolic activity. The use of this method has two mechanisms of psychological correction. The first is aimed at the influence of art through the symbolic function of reconstructing a conflict-traumatic situation and finding a way out through the reconstruction of this situation. The second is related to the nature of the aesthetic reaction, which allows you to change the reaction of living negative affect in relation to the formation of positive affect that brings pleasure. When working with children, the psychologist, using play therapy, complements it with art therapy methods. There are several types of art therapy: drawing, based on fine arts, bibliotherapy, drama therapy and music therapy.
As therapy through art. Psychologists can use applied arts. You can recommend tasks on a specific topic with a given material: drawings, modeling, appliqué, origami, etc. The psychologist offers children assignments on a random topic with independent choice of material. As one of the options, it is recommended to use existing works of art (paintings, sculptures, illustrations, calendars) for their analysis and interpretation.
Indications for the use of drawing therapy are: difficulties emotional development, actual stress, depression, decreased emotional tone, impulsiveness of emotional reactions; emotional deprivation of children, the child’s experiences of emotional rejection and feelings of loneliness; the presence of conflicting interpersonal situations, dissatisfaction with the family situation, increased anxiety, fears, phobic reactions; negative “I-concept”, low, disharmonious, distorted self-esteem, low degree of self-acceptance.
Psychologists can use the following types of tasks and exercises in their work with children at risk:
1) subject-thematic type - drawing on free and given topics. Examples of such tasks are the drawings “My family”, “I’m at school”, “My new house”, “My favorite activity”, “Me now”, “Me in the future”, etc.;
2) figuratively - symbolic type - the image of a child in the form of images. Topics can be: “Good”, “Evil”, “Happiness”, “Joy”, “Anger”, “Fear”, etc.;
3) exercises for the development of figurative perception - “Drawing by dots”, “Magic spots”, “Complete the drawing”; they are based on the principle of projection;
4) games-exercises with visual material for children of primary preschool age - experimenting with paints, paper, pencils, plasticine, chalk, etc. “Drawing with fingers and toes”, “Destruction-construction”, “Overlaying color spots on each other” etc.;
5) tasks for joint activities - writing fairy tales and stories using drawing. Techniques of sequential alternating drawing such as “Magic Pictures” are used - one child starts, the other child continues, etc.
Music therapy allows you to work with children experiencing fears, anxiety, restlessness. For example: when presenting calm music that evokes pleasant sensations, the child is instructed to think about objects that cause him fear, anxiety, etc.
Bibliotherapy. A method of influencing a child, causing his experiences and feelings by reading books. For this purpose, the psychologist selects literary works that describe children’s fears, forms of experiencing stressful situations, and a way out of situations that are scary for children. To carry out this type of work, we can recommend the use of works of classic literature for children of different ages - L.N. Tolstoy, B. Zhitkov, V. Oseeva, etc. Logotherapy is a method of conversational therapy, which differs from a heart-to-heart conversation aimed at establishing trust between an adult and a child. Logotherapy involves a conversation with a child aimed at verbalizing his emotional states, a verbal description of emotional experiences. Verbalization of experiences can cause a positive attitude towards the one who is talking to the child, a readiness for empathy, and recognition of the value of the personality of another person. The child does not always show self-exploration, i.e. the degree of involvement in the conversation. It can be defined as minimal when the child is asked to answer a series of questions with a doll or use dolls and characters (Parsley, Barbie, Malvina, Pinocchio, dog, tiger, etc.). Children can use their favorite image or toy for this purpose. The use of this method assumes the emergence of self-congruence - the coincidence of external verbal argumentation and the internal state of the child, leading to self-realization when children focus on personal experiences, thoughts, feelings, desires.
Psychodrama, or drama therapy, is the use of puppet dramatization in the work of a psychologist. Adults (or older children) perform a puppet show, “playing out” situations that are conflicting and significant for the child, inviting him to look at this situation from the outside and see himself in it. With children showing anxiety, fear, stress, various types injuries, the greatest effect is achieved by using the biodrama method. Its essence is that children are preparing a performance, but everything characters there are animals in it. Children distribute the roles of animals or beasts among themselves and navigate through conflict and life situations using the example of animals. When acting out a play, performance or situation, children act and speak differently than when using puppets. Children's experiences, realized through the images of animals, differ from human ones and at the same time help to understand the feelings of others.
Moritatherapy. A method by which a psychologist puts a child in a situation of having to make a good impression on others. The psychologist invites the child to express his opinion about something, and then corrects his ability to speak out, give an assessment, take a pose accordingly, use facial expressions, gestures, intonation, etc. In other words, this method helps to teach rules good manners, comply with the norms and rules of the culture of the society in which the child is currently located. A psychologist can recommend to educators and social workers how to study a child’s behavior in a specific situation in which he finds himself. For example, how to behave when visiting, how to talk about yourself, how to talk about what you do in your free time, etc.
Gestalt therapy. This method can be used by a psychologist for individual work with children, in heart-to-heart conversations. It is carried out as a transformation of a child’s story into action. An example would be a type of work such as “Unfinished Business”, “I Have a Secret”, “My Dreams”. The child tells the psychologist what he dreamed, and the psychologist asks him to show what he dreamed with the help of movements, actions, materials, toys, masks, plasticine, etc.
Behavioral psychotherapy is the systematic elimination of fears, bad habits, and unapproved behavior of individual children. This method is used in individual work with children or in work with small subgroups. This method can be recommended to a psychologist to use to work on overcoming fears. For this purpose, viewing slides, films, and videos is used, which cause children to experience a feeling of fear until the fear decreases. A psychologist can intensify the experiences of fear in children until they take on comic forms. The result of this work will be laughter between the psychologist and the child, humor, and the joy of shared experiences, which are a kind of catharsis.
Thus, a psychologist, when working with pupils of shelters, orphanages, crisis centers, boarding schools, and social hotels, needs to think through various forms of classes and methods of conducting them. Very important point Such work is the development by a psychologist of psychocorrectional and rehabilitation programs. It must be remembered that children who have experienced trauma and stress can be helped in two ways: daily training in the necessary skills of social competence and the removal of barriers that interfere with normal mental development (with the invitation of specialists of various profiles - psychologists, psychotherapists, consultants, sex therapists, etc.) .
A psychologist in social and pedagogical support institutions must work not only with children, but also with all employees in close unity: with educators, social educators and social workers, teachers, doctors, circle leaders, etc.
^ Determining the effectiveness of the institution’s comprehensive rehabilitation activities
Efficiency can be determined by the following criteria:
Health – stable clinical remission of the underlying disease, absence of severe complications and disability, positive dynamics of clinical, laboratory and instrumental signs of the disease, restoration of the physical pace of physical, sexual, neuropsychological development, restoration or correction of external functions of vision, hearing, movement, etc. ., normalization of sleep, physiological functions, relief of attacks;
Socio-psychological state: restoration or positive dynamics of intelligence development, cognitive abilities, communication skills, physiological balance of negative and positive emotions; physiological level of tension in emotional tone, adequate self-esteem, adequacy of claims, formation of educational and work motivation, formation of personal comfort;
Success in leading activities – satisfactory mastery of age-related educational programs at individual learning rates; identification and development of accumulations for certain forms of additional education.
To integrate the child into society, comprehensive medical, social, psychological and pedagogical rehabilitation services are provided. These services, performing their traditional, fairly autonomous functions, with their effective coordination, ensure the fulfillment of the integrative goal.
Each service plans its activities and coordinates with each other.
^ Algorithm for interaction between social and pedagogical services:
diagnostic (study of psycho-pedagogical individual characteristics personality and its microenvironment, constants. And definitions of deviant behavior, tracking the causes of conflicts);
prognostic (forecasting the most effective formation of the zone of proximal development, modeling a promising development zone, including life plans and so on.)
organizational (organizing leisure activities, etc.);
coordination (mediation between the child’s family and the educational institution, authorities, social assistance and social security...);
advisory (consultations of all participants in the educational educational process);
^ INTERACTION OF PARTICIPANTS IN THE REHABILITATION AND EDUCATIONAL PROCESS IN EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
| ^ Med. worker | Teacher | Psychologist | Social Teacher |
| | 1. Participates in the preparation of the child’s IPR | 1. Participates in the preparation of the child’s IPR |
| 2. Based on standard (basic) educational programs, develops individual programs that take into account the characteristics of the psycho-physical development of children | | 2. Trains other professionals in psychosocial knowledge |
| 3. Participation in PMPk | | 3. Creating conditions for neuropsychic, physical and social rehabilitation children: approaching the home subject environment, creating a positive background, establishing friendly attitude, equality between all children and adults |
| 4. Develops joint methods of teaching children taking into account health-saving technologies | | 4. Acts as an intermediary in the system of interaction between the individual and society |
| 5. Involves children with HIV infection in group activities | | 5. Studies age characteristics, abilities, world of interests, social circle, moral atmosphere, identifying positive and negative influences |
|
| 6. Improves skills in organizing the life activities of children with HIV infection in educational institutions | 6. Eliminates communication deficits | 6. Eliminates communication deficits |
|
| 7. Educational work among participants in the educational process | 7. Social legal support for children with HIV |
||
| 8. Exchanges experience with various stakeholders |
PMPK meets at least 2 times a year (more often if necessary).
A necessary condition efficient work is to monitor: 1) the implementation of the child’s IPR (assessment of the implementation of the IPR and, if necessary, its adjustment), 2) the social adaptation of children to living conditions in microsociety and the community as a whole. Monitorings are carried out once per academic year.
^ 3. 11. Stages of social rehabilitation of children with HIV infection
The process of social rehabilitation of HIV positive children can be divided into 4 main stages:
Stage 1. Determining the level of maladjustment of a child:
diagnostics (level of development in accordance with age);
immediate environment (social circle);
places where the child goes;
the child’s capabilities (compensatory and correctional): his rehabilitation potential in terms of further development;
social request of the family and expected result.
Stage 2. Specific steps and assistance:
inclusion of the child in rehabilitation activities;
working with your immediate environment;
rendering (updating) the situation;
correction family relations;
joint work of specialists and families on a child’s social adaptation program.
Stage 3. Integration.
expanding the child’s social circle (creating an integrative environment);
increasing the level of socio-psychological adaptability of the child and family to negative trends and influences of society - preparing the family and child for integration into children's institutions;
career guidance events.
Stage 4. Support.
Interaction with health authorities,
Interaction with educational authorities,
Visiting specialists at psychological, medical and social centers.
Psychological characteristics of orphans of senior preschool age.
Orphans, children left without parental care…. How often do we hear these phrases? And we hear them not in the post-war years, but in our peacetime, when no one and nothing, it would seem, can interfere with a happy childhood. To childhood, where love, attention, care reigns...
Not long ago, Pavel Astakhov (Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights) presented information that there are about 660 thousand orphans registered in Russia. For comparison, this is higher than in the 30s of the last century... At the same time, no more than 10% of this number are so-called orphans - children who have no parents, and whose upbringing was abandoned by other relatives. The majority of the presented number are children, at least one of whose parents is alive, but at the same time is a citizen deprived parental rights. In other words, more than half a million Russian children are social orphans, i.e. orphans with living parents and raised in government institutions.
And what earlier child breaks away from parental family The longer and more isolated he is in the institution, the more pronounced are the deformations in all areas of mental development.
Considering the psychological characteristics of orphans of senior preschool age, we can say that children who are in conditions of emotional and sensory deprivation have delays in psychomotor development. They experience significant difficulties in performing tests for static, dynamic correction and synchronization of movements. Subtle and facial movements are not sufficiently differentiated, pathological movements were noted. A decrease (relative to the norm) in general cognitive activity is also characteristic. Children demonstrate passive learning of the material; they are constantly guided by an adult’s assessment. In general, the intellectual status of children is reduced relative to the norm, and in their general characteristics these delays in intellectual development are attributed to the general social situation of development and speak of a deprivation syndrome.
In the characteristics of the cognitive sphere, a lag in the development of perception is noted: children experience difficulties in actively using standards of color and shape, although they can find the desired standard using a model, including a verbal one. This indicates that the corresponding sensory standards characterizing perception are insufficiently formed. In general, the perceptual status of children is somewhat below the age norm.
In the area of thinking, the greatest difficulties are observed in the following: generalization and classification in children are syncretic in nature with a pronounced mixing of bases according to the “type of chain or diffuse complex,” especially in 4-year-old children. In 6-year-old children, classification is carried out at the level of visual correlation; children find it difficult to verbally designate groups of objects. They typically lag in general awareness, such as their day and year of birth, seasons and months. The lag in the development of metaphorical thinking is clearly expressed. In the area of counting, a number of ideas and actions have not been formed, children find it difficult to count, make mistakes when operating with the concepts of “more - less” on numerical material, and do not understand what units of measurement are used to define space and time.
Children's moral judgments are usually syncretic. The moral content of an act is assessed based on the expected reward or punishment from an adult. A number of children of senior preschool age exhibit rigorism, which manifests itself in the form of demonstrating moral judgments such as abstract sermons against the background of the opposite type of everyday behavior.
In the area of memory, the greatest lag is observed in terms of the formation of the mediation function, which is one of the main general intellectual characteristics. It should be noted that delays in short-term mechanical memory are much less common. At the same time, most children are characterized by violations of indirect memorization, which indicates a general intellectual retardation.
With regard to the imagination, it is necessary to note the following: most of all, there is a reproductive position and a stereotypical interpretation of projective material, which appears not so much as a lag in the development of the imagination itself, but as a lag in the general personal orientation.
In general, a lag in gnostic development among children in orphanages is a characteristic phenomenon. Partially, it can be overcome within the framework of the educational process, while psychological correction itself should be aimed primarily at the formation of cognitive and creative activity, abstract figurative thinking, and voluntary self-regulation; however, these children are teachable, which indicates the validity of a favorable prognosis.
In the area of attention, there is a lag primarily in terms of its voluntary function. Children are easily distracted, concentration occurs at the level of spontaneous motivation, which in general acts as a manifestation of the immaturity of voluntary self-regulation. Disturbances in stability of attention and rapid fatigue are also characteristic, which may be associated with general psychoasthenia and organic pathology in a number of children.
In area speech development There is a usual tongue-tiedness, there is a delay in the area of syntax and content of statements. Children begin to use personal pronouns relatively late and do not understand phraseological units. With the developed ability to name objects depicted in pictures, children experience difficulties in describing what is happening and interpreting the meaning of the picture, since such a description presupposes the establishment of a relationship between reality and its symbolic representation, hence the lag in mastering graphic signs and, as a consequence, characteristic errors in reading and letter. Illiteracy is also contributed by the immaturity of phonemic hearing, difficulties in distinguishing hard - soft, deaf - voiced consonants, as a result of which perseveration of letters, syllables, and inconsistency of case endings appears in writing.
Another area in which speech development lag is manifested is social. Children comment on specific everyday events, but cannot always formulate their thoughts about the future.
The general characteristics of the emotional status are as follows: high anxiety and, in most cases, aggressive tendencies, obvious or repressed (according to project methods), loneliness, aggression, fears of fairy-tale characters (moreover, the content of fears can be used to judge tendencies towards developmental delays).
With regard to emotional lability or rigidity, we can say that the predominance of one of these characteristics as typical has not been revealed. At the same time, attention is drawn to cases of obvious manifestation of one or the other in individual children, which, in combination with euphoric and depressive manifestations, indicates the presence of emotional disturbances, a decrease in voluntariness of behavior and emotional self-regulation. This is also manifested in motor disinhibition or stiffness, affective reactions during frustration, poor self-control in social interactions.
Children raised in an orphanage have a number of personal characteristics, in particular, they do not learn productive communication skills in the presence of a pronounced need for love and attention; They do not know how to establish communication with others. Due to incorrect and insufficient communication experience, children often take an aggressive and negative position towards other people. The emotionally unstable situation of a child deprived of parental care leads to a violation of affective-personal relationships.
As research conducted by Mukhina shows, in the conditions of an orphanage the phenomenon of “we” is formed. Children develop a unique identification with each other. In a prosperous family there is always a family “we” - a feeling that reflects involvement in one’s family. This is an important organizing force emotionally and morally, which creates the condition for the child’s security. In living conditions without parental care, children spontaneously develop an orphanage (boarding school) “we.” This is a completely special psychological education. Children without parents divide the world into “us” and “strangers,” “us” and “them.” They jointly isolate themselves from “strangers”, show aggression towards them, and are ready to use them for their own purposes. They have their own normativity in relation to all “strangers”. However, within their own group, children are often also isolated: they may abuse a peer or a younger child. This position is formed for many reasons, but, first of all, due to the undeveloped and distorted need for love and recognition, due to the emotionally unstable position of the child.
Bibliography
1. Langmeyer, J., Matejcek, Z. Mental deprivation in childhood - Prague, 1984.
2. Lisina M.I. Communication, personality and the child’s psyche. Moscow-Voronezh, 1997.
3. Mukhina, V.S. Age-related psychology. Phenomenology of development. – M.: Academy, 2009.
4. Prikhozhan, A.M., Tolstykh, N.N. Psychology of orphanhood - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2005.
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