Today was my thirty-second day as a volunteer at the Ocalenie Foundation safe space for children in the Ukrainian Refugee Reception Point / Humanitarian Aid Center in Przemyśl, Poland. We only had about 18 kids register in during the course of the entire day, and it would have been a very quiet time except for two little brothers who would just not stop “bouncing off the walls” all day long. The boys are about 6 and 4 years old, I guess, and just super hyper. They are fun, good natured kids who never get mad about anything, but they simply will not listen to instructions or follow rules. We had to watch them constantly to make sure they wouldn’t destroy some other kid’s art project or something like that. It’s not fair to let these rambunctious kids spoil the other kids’ fun, but if we adults didn’t watch them constantly, that’s invariably what they would do. They also have a 2-year old sister who also would simply not stop moving from one activity or toy to the next — non-stop until one of the other volunteers lulled her to sleep and then cradled her in her arms while she napped for nearly two hours. These are really high maintenance kids. But with such incredible energy and curiousity, I would also say they are also over-achievers, and will probably grow up to be “movers and shakers” in whatever field of endeavor the engage in as adults.
It seems like a rather larger proportion of the kids we care for in the children’s safe space tend to be hyperactive. I know, when I was their age, I didn’t have nearly the energy these kids seem to have. I wonder if there hyperactivity is perhaps a reaction to the stress they are living under as refugees driven from their homes? It would be fascinating to conduct a research study to find out, because the answer to that question could help with planning educational interventions for such kids, and might also be used as one vector in an algorithm to calculate trauma damages in post-war legal proceedings. Unfortunately, times of crisis are usually not good times to organize research studies. Maybe as a future project, in anticipation of future crises, RAYA should set up a program to survey cohorts of kids who are likely to become refugees, and then continue to track them through crisis (in the event the anticipated crisis occurs).