Children Have Fewer Health Problems in a Family Environment
Posted on 03 November 2011 by Stefan Darabus
In the experience of the last 12 years in closing institutions for children, we learned that the love of a family leads to better health for children. When they linger in institutions, they suffer from loneliness, even if they are surrounded by so many other people: each child is alone in his or her own way, as the family spirit is missing. Institutions try to cover for this chronic lack of love by a large number of medical nurses, medical doctors and pills. But sedating children with medicine and the white gowns do not replace the love of a family.
The children with special needs, when getting into a family environment from an institutional one, they get much healthier. Suddenly, they do not catch colds, they do not fall victims to intoxication, they do not show the anxiety specific to the institutional environment. The warmth of a family and the humane environment give children a general positive and healthy state.
The trauma of family separation leads to shocking manifestations: the children stop talking; they stop eating; they stop learning to walk; they simply do not grow up, they do not develop physically. We observed a direct link between children’s development in a family environment and the acquisitions specific to their age. When they do not get the affection of a family, the children somehow refuse to develop and are hit by different types of disease, one after another. In a way, they leave their guard down, they do not have the power to fight with the world around them, conquered by the harsh blow of the lack of a family and love they get in a family.
