The director of the Department of Welfare and Rehabilitation of People of Determination in the Ministry of Community Development, Wafa Hamad bin Suleiman, identified four tools that allow the detection of the extent to which children of determination have been affected by experiencing crises.
She stressed the importance of adopting a deliberate strategy to ensure that psychological damage to them is reduced during and after crises. First and foremost is to follow their education at home, integrate them into the family, and transparency in transmitting information to them, in addition to continuing to communicate with their teachers, and to cooperate with the professionals responsible for them.
Bin Sulaiman told «Emirates Today» that the four tools include direct observation of their behavior, analysis of the way they play, and reading the meanings of the shapes they draw, in addition to monitoring changes in their routine practices, stressing that people can intervene, and apply specific mechanisms to reduce the severity and persistence of negative influences in the range Run.
She explained that children’s behavior can be known during and after the crisis, through direct observation, indicating the need to monitor the child’s behavior, pay attention to any changes in his mood, behavioral, and health status, and make a comparison between his new way of dealing with the situations he faces at home and his previous methods, Or familiar. Bin Sulaiman added that playing time can also be used to find out the child's behavior, by analyzing the way he plays, the way he deals with games, and with others during play. It is also possible to know the new gameplay patterns, the concentration in play time, in addition to monitoring the speed of boredom and moving from one game to another.
As for the third tool, it is to analyze and read the meanings in the drawings that are expressed during the crisis, in terms of the elements of the painting, the symbolic indications, the characters used, the colors and the purity of the painting or its randomness, and how it differs from the method of drawing that was followed previously.
She emphasized that noting the changes in the details of the daily routine is also a way to know the changes in the child's behavior, in terms of his response to the events taking place in light of the crisis, changes in the sleep and wake-up system, the amount and method of food, watching TV, and the relationship with others in the family.
Bin Sulaiman said that crises and major problems may cause negative effects on the behavior of children in general, and on children of interest in particular, given their vulnerability to a greater percentage, adding that «the anxiety or tension resulting from living in crises may negatively affect the child’s daily life in the term The distant, which requires urgent intervention, is based on scientific methods and methods that enable the child to face these effects, to avoid their exacerbation.
Bin Sulaiman presented the most important axes of the strategy of dealing with parents with their children during crises, in order to reduce the psychological damage caused to them, pointing to some mechanisms and actions to be adhered to within the implementation of the strategy to support children during crises, which includes the obligation to listen to them and try to answer their questions, whatever Simple, not asking children more than they can afford, not expecting them to adapt easily to the crisis, helping them to understand what is happening in a simple way, and honesty in transmitting information based on facts, not rumors.
She added, "There must also be time for the family, for its members to be together, and for the child to be a person of determination who is integrated with them." It must also be integrated into the ordinary home life, and assigned to what he can do at home, and always reassured about the future. And not to anger when the emergence of non-adaptive behaviors, and to promote and praise his positive behaviors, and how to adapt to the crisis ».
Tools
Direct observation of the behavior of children of determination.
■ Play mode analysis.
■ Read the meanings of the shapes they draw.
Monitor changes in their routine practices.
7 bad thoughts
There are seven bad thoughts on the mind of a child in times of crisis that must be heeded and not ignored:
■ It will be vulnerable to disease.
■ It will be subject to death.
A member of his family or close to him would be vulnerable to illness or death.
■ that the virus is everywhere (if the crisis is related to Coved 19).
■ The closure will continue for a longer time.
■ that treatment will be unavailable.
■ Food will be unavailable.