Mom, you are a whore! With this phrase Jonathan painted all the walls of his new house. He had just arrived in Spain for family reunification and had discovered that his mother had another partner and that was too much for him, after 8 years of separation. Another day while he was playing a soccer game, he stormed off the field to the car where his mother and her new partner were watching the game because he thought that his mother, who had bent down to pick something up, was giving him a fellatio. His couple.
These situations show us in a very crude way how difficult these reunions are for children, after long years of forced separations that mark their childhood. In today’s world, with vastly improved communications, children coming and going are becoming a common reality. But, a child is not a postal package.
These forced separations affect attachment, which is a first-order instinct (not only in humans but in all mammals) and whose rupture gives rise to great mental suffering that increases the risk of suffering from a mental disorder in vulnerable minors. . These children cannot forgive the intense suffering they have experienced and are often cruel in dealing with their parents, they take revenge for the abandonment they have experienced. It is not uncommon in consultations to be completely indifferent to the crying of their parents and openly tell them that they hate them. Also, of course, parents are greatly affected by these forced separations and have difficulties re-structuring the family after the reunification, especially when the children are so vindictive.
A family that has been separated for a long time is like a vase that has been broken. It is not easy for all the pieces to fit together again. In any case, a lot of support is required, good conditions, stability, something that often does not happen and that ends up breaking down families.
Unfortunately, there is no type of institutional coordination to help these children and these families despite the serious risk posed by the situation they are living. With the formidable technological advances that we have, it would not be difficult, at least, to coordinate aid between teachers, between the city councils of the cities from which they come and to which they go, between teachers and the schools of the two countries, and to provide support to these families who live in such difficult situations.
We know that the migratory mourning of the children of immigrants is many times more complicated than that of the parents themselves, even when the whole family is together. It is not difficult to foresee what happens when the circumstances are so negative due to the experience of these long separations that the children experience abandonment.
In addition, to this situation is frequently added, as we see in many cases in the SAPPIR (Service for Psychopathological and Psychosocial Care for Immigrants and Refugees) in Barcelona, that many of these minors also suffer ill-treatment, sexual abuse, labor exploitation …given the radical defenselessness in which they find themselves.
Faced with this reality, from La Red Atenea, a global network of psychological and psychosocial support for immigrants in extreme situations http://laredatenea.com we want to start a coordination program between entities and administrations to improve the fate of these minors.