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The real deal
26 February 2010
When Estera was six years old, she and her sister Delia were placed into a residential institution.
Their mum was an alcoholic. Her parents had no work. As a result, all four of them moved in with their grandfather and lived together in one room.
Delia, who is now 14 years old, had difficulties adapting to the institution at the beginning, “because I was far away from my mother and I didn’t know the other children”. You were only allowed to go into the dormitory in the evening and every activity was decided by the teachers. Even the toys were given out by the teachers – “we never got to choose them”.
For Estera, the move was traumatic. She kept crying. She kept asking everybody to take her back to her mum. She never got used to the institution. Every evening, she cried for her mother.
Three years later, the children were reintegrated back into their birth family. Their parents had been offered financial support, so they could buy the bare essentials, and their mother had changed her attitude towards them. The two sisters are happy and have a lot of friends. They like staying with their mum, and helping her. They’re attending a local school, and are hard-working students. When you ask them what they learned at the institution, it’s that the best thing is being with your mother, living in your own house, and doing what you want. “And having your own toys, which nobody takes away,” says Delia. “I remember Christmas holidays,” Estera recalls, “when children sang and recited poems, and Father Christmas came with presents. But it wasn’t a real Father Christmas. The real one only goes to children’s homes. He doesn’t come to institutions. That one is a masked educator. This year, the real Father Christmas came to my home.”
