The adaptation to school
Conference of Jordi Torné, psychoanalyst.

To satisfactorily solve the fundamental conflict of starting school for a child, an attitude of communication and support for the child, of listening and respecting his/her own individuality, is basic. This would be the fundamental thesis of the conference given by Jordi Torné in Barcelona, September last, organized by ADDIA. Together with this subject, other subjects were also treated, such as the convenience or not of insisting on the cultural origins of those adopted children proceeding from other countries, the "true" experience of abandonment, etc.

One of the central subjects of the debate which took place after the conference, was the repercussions that starting school can have for a small child who has been previously abandoned and who has then lived in an institution. In this respect, Jordi Torné pointed out that the first adaptation that a child of these characteristics has to undergo is the adaptation to his new parents. And this need to adapt, not only of the children to the parents, but also of the parents to the child, extends to all such cases, including biological motherhood and fatherhood. And it is an adaptation necessarily previous to any other one.

The phantasm and the fear of being abandoned, present in all children and which is heightened again at the moment when they start attending school, it is more than a threat in the case of adopted children: "This child has really experienced abandonment; for them it is an historical fact, it belongs to their biography, it is not a phantasy such as that of the other children. It really happened". This is the reason why in these cases it is more important than ever, according to Jordi Torné, that we explain to the child that later we will pick him up, providing him with a temporal reference so that he/she may understand who will pick him/her up, what shall we do later on... "This will help him/her to elaborate on that experience which was so painful and see that it will not happen again".