Week two in Italy and it has been such a wonderful week! I have been going on awesome excursions this week and learning so much. I am getting my master’s in Child Life and thankfully we have had amazing opportunities this week to work with children in Italy. Starting with going to school and facilitating medical play, visiting an old asylum for the mentally ill, touring a children’s hospital, and working at a Giardino. It has been a great week.
Working at the school we provided opportunities for children to manipulate medical equipment. This decreases their anxiety the next time they go to a check-up at the doctor. My classmates and I had water play where children could fill up plastic syringes with water and shoot it at the wall, arts and crafts where they made skeletons out of Q-tips and butterflies out of band-aids and gauze, and then medical toy equipment such as a stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, medicine, etc. that they could use on their stuffed animal to conduct an examination. Often I have done these activities at MUSC and the Children’s Museum, but here was a great experience because I needed to work through a language barrier to facilitate these activities. I learned how universal play was during this experience. Now at the hospital in the US, I know if a child speaks a different language, I can still provide play to help them cope with the stress of the hospitalization.

On Monday 6/10 my class visited an old asylum and we saw a wonderful presentation of what it was like when the asylum was running. We learned about the horrific treatment patients endured, and what minimal requirements it took to be placed in a facility like this. One woman was in the facility for 60 years because she refused to marry the man her parents chose for her. It was horribly sad, but important to learn about. This facility only closed in 1998. Now in Italy there are no more psychiatric wards like this. In the United States, though, there are still asylums open to this day. Working in the medical field it was important to learn about the injustices people used to, and still face today.
On Wednesday 6/12 my classmates and I visited a children’s hospital in Florence. It was absolutely beautiful—it didn’t even feel like we were in a hospital. We met with “Play Educators” which is a similar position to Child Life Specialists, and they explained their priorities and job description. It was wonderful to see the difference in medical care, and learn different things that I can apply in my future career.
The past three day my classmates and I have gone to the Giardino together for 2-3 hours each day to facilitate activities with children. Here I have been able to observe family dynamics that are different than families in the United States. At the Giardino, parents participated in activities; they were very involved and wanted to be a part of the fun. In the United States often parents drop their children off at activities and programs and don’t get involved, but it is different here in Italy. Grandparents were also at the Giardino participating in activities. In Italy, Grandparents are very involved in the children’s life, they usually live in the same household.
Another change I noticed about parents in Italy is they are much more relaxed than parents in the United States. A child completely whipped out in front of Brooke and I. The young girl looked at her mother, and her mom said, “You’re okay,”. The little girl got back up and kept running around without hesitation. This amazed me how relaxed her mother was and that the other parents weren’t judging this mom. Usually in the United States parents are quick to judge each other for their parenting style, but here it felt like everyone was helping to raise the children. At times I couldn’t tell which child belonged to which parent.
I am learning so much here and I am so grateful for this opportunity. From visiting the school, learning about Italy’s history of Asylum, touring the hospital, and facilitating activities at the Giardino I have observed so many difference about Italian culture and I have expanded my child life skills dramatically.