After a lot of hard work, sweat and - yes - even tears, we have published a book containing 64 activities for use outdoors with children. The book is designed primarily for use by therapists and can also be helpful to parents, youth leaders and teachers. The activities vary in their challenge from sitting against an oak tree visualising a secret entrance to swinging on a rope across a ditch. Group challenges include building stepping stones across a small river and getting your whole team from one point of the forest to another without being seen.

Each activity has a therapeutic theme and purpose. The book is useful for building children's confidence and self-esteem as well as for enabling them to express feelings that may have been bottled up for years.

There are plenty of safety warnings in the book so that the facilitator can ensure maximum safety for children. Equipment is kept to a minimum and many of the activities can be done in a nearby woods or even a park.

We have written the book partly because we believe children need this kind of thing and partly to help our therapeutic work in Romania. Here we are developing play therapy and psychotherapy for children in poverty as well as children who have been abandoned, abused or traumatised. This is all very new here, but desperately needed.

If you want a copy of the book Therapeutic Adventure Game: 64 activities for therapy outdoors (price £10 plus £3 p&p)please contact us at romaniaretreat@hotmail.com All money from the sale of this book goes directly to the work here.

Roger & Christine Day

 

We're thinking about Christmas here in Romania. We're getting really busy with workshops and organising presents and things for friends and family in the UK. It's more difficult as Christmas isn't quite the big event it is in the West. The shops don't sell many Christmas items of the quality we are used to. Even Christmas paper is difficult to get hold of. Thank goodness for internet shopping.

The one big family occasion in all villages in Romania is the 'cutting of the pig' ceremony. The family members all return to their villages for it. A fattened pig is slaughtered in front of the house in a ritual way and then butchered so that the family has lots of fresh meat for Christmas and the New Year. People even have their own manual machines to make sausages. What is left is smoked to last the bitter winter from January to March.

We were privileged last week to visit families in poverty and bring some cheer and laughter to children (between 7 and 11 children in each family) who won't be getting much in the way of presents this year. Some of them are young carers who look after dying or grieving parents. We hope to offer some play therapy to these lovely children in the New Year.

For the well-off children here they have a small present left in their shoe on 6 December by Mosi Nicolai (Old Nicholas) and then another present at Christmas from Mosi Craciun (Santa Claus). There is one day off work when most people go to church and celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Then it's back to work as usual.

It's so easy for those of us from the West to get busy at this time of year and forget what Christmas is all about.

Have a peaceful Christmas with your family and a New Year of family fun and play.

We just got back from a couple of days in another city, doing training for carers at a home for 12 children aged 5 to 12, all of whom have lived on the streets in the past.  The training went really well. The carers were inspired to help build the children's very low self-esteem.

We also got to spend time with the children. They are so hungry for attention and affection. Last evening we had 14 of them (including the house parent's two children) wanting us to give them personal attention all at once. It got a bit chaotic. At times we wished we were 14 people instead of just two. They are always so grateful for anything you do for them, however small.

They have material things as a result of the charity. What is missing for them is often years of lack of loving care.

These children wanted to talk. They asked us why we were taking the photograph and what we were doing. Then they were satisfied. 

I thought after nearly two years living in Romania I understood a little about culture. Yesterday I was going round the corner to the post office when a young girl (about 10 or 11) said the polite greeting to me, the usual one from a child to an adult: 'Saru mana' (literally 'I kiss your hand'). I replied: 'Buna ziua' ('Good day'). Then she wanted to engage me in conversation.

At that point I panicked and quickly hurried off to do my errand. I am so used to the UK culture, where talking to children in such circumstances would be viewed with great suspicion. I reacted with scare to this girl's polite desire for conversation.

Later I talked to a younger Romanian colleague who explained the unwritten rules about talking to children you meet in the street. It is fine as long as the child initiates the conversation. It is of course not OK to start talking to a child or to invite a child to your house without the permission of the parents.

Two other areas I've noticed are different from the West. Children in the UK are taught not to accept edible treats or rides in a car from a stranger. Here, very young children ask for food and money from the cars stopping at railway crossings. Children as young as eight or nine sometimes hitchhike for rides in strangers' cars in the villages rather than having to walk several miles to and from school.

Oh, well, we live and learn.

Roger

Typical Romanian house with ornate metal gates