ON THE BEACH, on the streets, in the courtyards. In this summer so different from the previous teenagers and children, after more than a year and a half of social restrictions due to Covid-19, they have resumed leaving the house, meeting and playing outdoors. To breathe even with the mind after a long period lived as suspended. The reopening of schools now marks a new, important step. How to best deal with it? “The benefits of the holidays just passed are permanent and open to the possibility of returning to a normal life,” he says Adelia Lucattini, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society.
The benefits of summer holidays
“Teens respond well and recover quickly when life changes for the better.” In the summer months they were able to satisfy basic needs such as seeing friends, living outdoors, playing sports. “Above all, they freed themselves from the fear that for so many months cloaked everything. Fear that is all the more dangerous the less aware and undeclared, which they could also identify in the prevention rules”. Eg? “It has been said that the mask protects but not completely, 94-96%. In this small margin can creep the fear that for a teenager becomes almost physically quantifiable” explains the psychiatrist.
The need for security
We have all experienced a summer since bound freedom. “But the constraints to which we have been subjected are a safety for children and adolescents, who do not want freedom without security. Children need rules, they are habitual: their mind is structured through the repetition of customs and schedules. Teenagers are more rebellious but they need guarantees and they love security of which they have a precise idea “.
The summer reassured them and removed them from a situation of uncertainty, which in some cases caused depression, fear, disorientation, even social withdrawal and isolation. The horizon has changed. Children have greater certainty, also given by the awareness of the availability of vaccines and by training in prevention measures such as the use of masks and hand hygiene.
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Back to class: three tips
In this context, how to best address the transition from holidays to school, from the outdoors at home? The psychiatrist’s first advice, regardless of how the teaching will be organized, is to encourage study in small groups. Also by creating links between the families involved and making themselves available to host children after school. “Groups composed of a maximum of five elements and which remain as stable as possible during the school year. A sort of ‘hard core’ of sociability, a precious tool also for overcoming any restrictions”.
It sport then. The youngest must go back to practicing it, individually or as a team. “It’s like a therapy. Many have abandoned training and competitions entirely during lockdowns and in the red zone. A huge damage. Mental development also passes through physical development: A sound mind in a sound body“remembers Adelia Lucattini.
Third tip: resume or start studying music and more generally to devote time to creative activities. “Music helps the little ones to structure an internal rhythm, which organizes emotions and thoughts. Artistic activities must be considered as necessary, they also help a lot to improve school performance”.
The future
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Finally, a message to leave for children and adolescents. “They need to know that there is the possibility of new social restrictions with the arrival of the winter months and of living indoors. But they must also be aware that they will be temporary: after a short period in Dad, for example, they will return to class. A separation is not a loss, it does not end everything, we find ourselves to be together again “, concludes Adelia Lucattini.
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