Rebecca Tortello
(In a letter to the Editor)
IT IS well understood that children have the right to be safe, to play freely, to be protected from violence, and to be able to walk to and from school without fear. Many children in Jamaica, especially those living in inner-city communities, are denied these rights. Children who live elsewhere are also affected by the images seen and heard discussed in the media.
I therefore read with interest Petrina Francis' article, 'High Crime Traumatising Children' in the October 24 Sunday Gleaner. Francis explained the Trauma Intervention Programme at the Ministry of Education, Youth and Culture's (MOEYC) Guidance and Counselling Unit. The 1995 statistics she referenced that over a majority (60 per cent) of our inner-city students had witnessed street violence, gang wars, gun shootings and stabbings can only have got worse a decade later in a country that has in recent years averaged more than 1,000 deaths by violent means annually.
When a violent act and/or loss occurs, children need to: (i) understand and begin to make sense out of what has happened, (ii) identify, validate and express in constructive ways strong reactions to loss, (iii) commemorate a life that was lived and (iv) learn to go on with living and loving.
INFORMATION AND TRAINING
Access to information and training is needed on a broader scale and certainly before violence occurs. Our teachers who are working on the 'front lines' need to become familiar with ways of coping with trauma in children from before they even step into the classroom. Parents, too, need training. To that end, the following tips taken from a training flyer used in workshops organised by Chichibud Ltd., an educational NGO, may prove useful. They can be adapted for different ages.
Outside/inside masks Sometimes how you look on the outside is not how you feel on the inside. Ask children to make two circles and call one 'My outside mask' and one 'My inside mask' and draw how they feel outside and inside.
Dreams, nightmares and scary thoughts can often help us work out how we feel. Ask children to draw and/or write about a dream they had after a person they loved died.
Saying goodbye is often helpful in grieving. Ask children to draw/trace the hand they wave goodbye with. On each finger list a memory of something they did with the person who died, something they liked about the person and/or something they want to say to them.
HARD TIMES
Holidays can be especially hard times for people who have lost loved ones, especially children. Suggest to children that they can: (a) Listen to the favourite music of the person who died. (b) Put flowers on the person's grave. (c) Pray to him/her on a regular basis. (d) Look at photos of him/her. (e) Draw a picture of a special memory with the person. (f) Write and/or draw what they would like to say to the person who died. (g) Light a
candle in his/her memory (with supervision).
Chichibud works to raise awareness of this crucial mental health issue through its Soul Power project which includes annual summer camps and term time field trips for inner-city children, organising workshops for guidance counsellors and donations of sets of bereavement therapy resource books for the MOEYC's Guidance Counselling Unit, the teachers' colleges and the parish libraries.
We are currently awaiting word on a grant that will allow us to expand by providing picture books dealing with grief to these same institutions. These stories should help children to make sense out of the violence by facilitating validation and self-expression aspects of bereavement therapy that are critical in the face of epidemics like our crime situation, our HIV/AIDS status and our post-Ivan state.
DR. REBECCA TORTELLO,
www.chichibud.org
Director, Chichibud Ltd.
