Children here are intelligent. They are energetic and happy for most of the time but grumpy/moody at other times. Their parents’ diminishing role in their nurturing and upbringing is becoming noticeable.
It’s sad but I can see why…Demotivation, depression & feelings of uselessness
What is it that they provide? Warmth and love? No. Where’s the warmth in a deserted factory!
Guidance and advice? No. How could they, when they’re in a country they don’t speak its language and don’t understand its culture!
Living and bread-winning? No. They wait for food distribution every day.
Men in particular are in a more miserable situation. At least women cook for their children and help them with the daily caring stuff. Men don’t, Arab men (usually typically) don’t.
So what are they left with? Their role is very marginalized. They’ve moved from being effectively their own house heads, to now being effectively less useful than their own kids (who have picked up the foreign language quickly and so have more access to the new community, and have more energy to learn more stuff).
They wait for the government (be it Greek or other receiving countries) to decide the fate of their families. They wait for some organization to carry out food distribution. They wait for their women to cook that food, and so on. This situation has made it technically very difficult to carry out their parenting role.
In fact, I think the whole family dynamics is now upside down, with children obtaining the maximum exposure to the new society (at least by leaving the camp for school and by having the energy to learn new stuff) and parents are caught by and trapped in the past.
No wonder they wait for the volunteers to do a lot of the parenting on their behalf. Somehow they think we can better decide for their children, which cannot and shouldn’t be true. I can feel they think that being here is their failure, but its not. They managed to travel with their children crossing countries and seas, to give their children a safer future. They can’t be a failure. The fact that they feel they can’t do parenting at the moment is probably an issue of time, and this I can find many of excuses for.
On a different note, some women have recently had newborns. They were taken to the hospital, delivered their babies, recovered and then brought back to the camp. This! This doesn’t leave me with any mixed feelings, only negative. How can someone be so irresponsible to bring a baby to this life when they’re so unsure themselves about their own future and destination?
And how can they be so cruel to bring a child to a world they have seen is very bloody. I know this time too I’m judging from far away. I also know it’s ignorant to judge when I haven’t been there. They could have their reasons? Of course they do. But from where I stand, none of those reasons can be comprehensible to me.
Seeking Refuge in Refugees 