Helping Refugee Children to Adjust

Imagine seeing the place you once called home destroyed. Your friends and family, terrified, injured or killed and being told that the only chance you have to survive is to flee. Then you land here, in this new country with a different language, rules, history, and education system, etc.

Everything is different.

Many children will struggle to process the transition. They ‘act out’ emotionally or are closed and withdrawn and struggle to express themselves or have disruptive behaviour which impacts on other learners. Some children had to leave their immediate family behind, are in foster care or living with extended family causing separation anxiety.

These festering emotions affect their ability to learn with confidence.

I recently heard a story from a school about the response of some of these pupils during a fire drill test. Thinking it was an air raid alarm, they dropped to the floor and curled up in corners of the building. This is why we have a projects in place to help children who have come from war conflict zones.

NLP4Kids also offer one to one sessions with children. Firstly, a child will attend a free consultation, where they can learn more about the practitioner and what the sessions will offer them. The practitioner will learn more about the child and can begin to consider what techniques would be useful for them to learn to manage their emotions and behaviour better in the future. Each session will be unique to the child and their current needs.

As a result of having a healthier mindset and being better able to manage their emotions, children and young people will be able to:

• Engage more academically
• Increase their concentration skills
• React mindfully and reasonably
• Show empathy for others

Mental health problems can be an obstacle for learning and achieving full academic potential. This can drastically reduce their development into further education and employment.

These problems typically begin as anxiety, depression or stress and if left untreated can escalate into more severe problems later in life.

This carries a personal cost to those who are suffering, their family and even their community. It also becomes more costly as the problem, if left untreated, increases in severity over time. Putting extra strain on the health service when more costly interventions or medications are required. Benefits services can suffer too when longer term mental health problems prevent someone from working.

By helping children to overcome their traumas from living in conflict and the stress of relocating, we help them to better integrate into the local communities and forge positive and diverse relationships where they live. Creating community cohesion can in turn contribute to preventing radicalisation of the young muslims who come to live in the UK. It also leads to greater levels of tolerance for diversity amongst communities.

Our work enables children to develop emotional intelligence so that they are able to react with confidence and resilience whilst also feeling empathy for those who do not share their views of the world or who come from different backgrounds.

In helping these children, teachers are able to spend more time teaching instead of disciplining or reacting to emotional outbursts and pupils academic attainment has an opportunity to increase. In addition, teachers can learn from the practitioner about strategies that are most effective for these pupils so that they are able to implement them with other pupils who face similar challenges.

Parents and careers of the children will find that they are being less reactive and can enjoy their time with their children more. This will reduce the overall stress on families and our reporting mechanism for sharing with parents and teachers will enable them to support the pupils in implementing the practical strategies they learn and to keep them accountable for managing their mindset and emotions.

By Gemma Bailey
http://www.NLP4Kids.org/gemma-bailey