Maxim’s mother was deprived of parental rights, and he ended up in a boarding school. He was one year old then. For the next 15 years, the boy lived in an institutional facility, and after graduation, he had to undergo a difficult adaptation to real life in society.
How staying in an institutional facility affects a child and what challenges a lonely teenager has to overcome – in Maksym’s candid story.
Further – his direct speech.
Half an hour of free time and one bike for everyone
I definitely don’t remember how I ended up in a boarding school. When I was one year old, my mother was deprived of parental rights due to alcohol abuse, and I never saw my father.
At first, I was brought up in a kindergarten at a boarding school. I remember that we got up together with other children, ate together and went for a walk.
I was told that in kindergarten I sometimes hit my head with a toy if someone wanted to take it away. But I don’t remember having a favorite toy. There was a common box where there were absolutely all the toys, and everyone was fighting over them because they wanted a better one. The feeling of ownership, that it was really mine, appeared when I already had a phone.
The understanding that you are in a residential institution appeared already when they started preparing for school. A class was formed from our group in the kindergarten, and so we went to school.
At 7 in the morning, the teacher got us up, we all brushed our teeth together, washed up, went to exercise, lined up and went to the dining room. I had to get dressed for school before breakfast. Next – lessons, lunch, a walk, preparing homework. Then we were given half an hour of free time (in high school there was more time), during which we could ride a bicycle. But he was one for everyone.
Then we had dinner and went to bed, the teacher handed us over to the night nurse. It’s a classic boarding school day. To avoid confusion, they were all signed. But the competition and struggle for things was constant. And only in high school did something personal appear.
In the first grade, I found out that my own sister was in the same boarding school with me. You still don’t understand what a sister is, but you have an inner feeling. When we lived in a boarding school, we didn’t communicate much – she studied in a different group and there were few opportunities to see each other, it’s not like in the family.
She said that she ran away from children’s services to avoid going to a boarding school. Now we communicate very closely. We stick together, because family is the only thing.
Maxim is in boarding school
From Maxim’s archive
“On the birthday they gave out candy – that’s the whole holiday”
I knew my birthday was September 1st. But it’s just a fact for you. A special feature of a birthday in a boarding school is that candy is distributed to the group where the birthday boy is, that’s the whole holiday. In addition, a birthday on the day of knowledge, when you are on the line for half a day, it is so.
Other holidays, Christmas or New Year, we simply called – vacations. Whoever had the opportunity, who had a guardian or relatives, went home. I did not have such an opportunity. I stayed in a boarding school. To save resources, we were all grouped together.
In those days, there were fewer children in the boarding school, fewer educators. It felt like you were just fooling around. There is no education, no one cares about you. In the days leading up to the holiday, various benefactors often came. Everyone was gathered in the assembly hall, gifts were distributed, there were always mountains of candies. And then you sit in the room and think: “What should I do with all this?”. There was no feeling of something family.
When those who were lucky enough to be at home or with guardians on the holidays returned, we asked them about everything. Where they were, what they saw, what they ate. I was jealous because they were free.
We were told: “Look, the state provides everything for you.” But to be honest, you would trade all this security for a family. When I think about how much I missed – what happened to children who had a family, it becomes sad.
Demo version of the family
Life in a boarding school is as if it were always winter and cold – cold-cold. But when you turn back, you remember pleasant moments, because the brain tries to remember only them. Somewhere in the fourth grade, we had a new teacher. She was young, with modern views. And it seems to me that she had other methods of working with us. She was less strict. In contrast to others, you perceive a more normal and good attitude towards yourself as a gift of fate, and you begin to love it.
Every evening, when her shift ended, this teacher came to our room, and we were 10 boys, and told different stories. We really waited for these 15-20 minutes that she told them. These are some of the best memories of boarding school.
I don’t know what made her like me, but somehow I asked to go home with her. It happened twice or thrice. It was one of the first trips outside the boarding school that I remember. I came to her house, and there were my parents, my younger brother, who at that time had a computer, a delicious homemade breakfast in the morning.
For me it was a demo version of the family. When you see family not in a movie, but in life. When you sit down in the kitchen at the table, and you they serve breakfast from a frying pan, but in the boarding school you never saw this, because all your life you just take food from handouts. When you can’t wait for everyone else after you’ve eaten. What I saw motivated me to create a model that I later implemented. It was only 2-3 days, and I carry memories of them for the rest of my life. Already after school, I met with this teacher and thanked her for those days.
At the age of 1, Maxim entered a boarding school
From Maxim’s archive
“Everyone called us an incubator”
I understand that in a boarding school, the logic is that the food should be conditionally balanced, a diet according to the state standard. Tasty – not tasty, but when you have to feed 200 people, the most important thing here is to have something to eat. Of course, it is good when there is something to eat, but I also wanted something “forbidden”.
I will not say that everything was tasteless. Sometimes we had both sweets and fruit, because I was just in a demonstration boarding school, which was later turned into a lyceum. But when there were dishes that you don’t eat, you don’t like them, you had to starve. Bread always helped here.
In boarding school, you can’t choose what to eat. But I found the experiment a bit difficult when they offered two dishes to choose from. And I felt – my opinion is taken into account! It was nice, but not for long.
When children who had such an opportunity came from home and brought some pie – you tasted it and discovered something new. And you understood that a person has the right to choose what to eat.
The same applies to clothes. We always had something to wear, but there was no question of expressing our personality through clothes. We were all dressed the same. And everyone called us an “incubator”.
In the 7th-8th grade, we went on an excursion to Kyiv. I had a jacket exactly the same as my classmate’s. But we moved out of the boarding school, and I wanted to be somehow different. So I just ripped off the stripes that were on this jacket right on the way, so that it wouldn’t be the same.
We got clothes from a warehouse, and it often happened that girls wore boys’ clothes and vice versa.
“Brought out in front of the class and took off their pants”
Of course, there were punishments. I remember how after we plugged the wires into the socket, we were taken out by Mrered the class and took off their pants. It was very embarrassing. They could give a occiput. You know, it’s such a “boarding school culture” that you don’t get in over your head. Although we are all punished anyway – by growing up in a boarding school, which could be worse.
In this “box”, that is, a boarding school, there is a lot of cruelty. Often older children could hit in the corridor. Psychologists worked with us, but when a child is offended by the world, he begins to offend others.
Looking back, I remember how we cleaned the snow or cleaned our rooms in the winter. I’m not against keeping things clean, when you clean things up – you appreciate it. You know what’s still a shock to me? When once a month we crawled on our knees on the floor and cleaned every tile in the dining room. I think it’s too much, it shouldn’t be like that.
“I’m in a boarding school, so I’m bad”
I lived in a boarding school for 15 years. I was lucky that I was constantly in the same institution and I did not have to go through adaptation moments. Now I think that when I will be 30, I will spend more of my life in freedom than in a boarding school.
When you leave the boarding school, you don’t know how to live in society, you seem unfit. There are a lot of people who have gone down the wrong path among the boarding school graduates. Partly because it seems easier for them in prison than in society. Boarding schools are evil, because you feel doomed, many people think: “If I’m here, then I’m bad, and therefore I have to make up for all the years.”
I remember we stood on the line and listened to the anthem of the boarding school, and there were the words: “The stork waved its wing to the orphan” and these solemn phrases: “The school is your home” – this immediately marks you. You feel inferior for a long time. They immediately say that you are from a boarding school, which means that you can steal something. This attitude is very noticeable.
There were other difficulties. For example, when I entered a university in Kyiv, it was difficult for me to even calculate the social scholarship that you are given. Because you don’t know how to manage money properly and buy things you don’t need and get into debt and loans.
You find yourself in a situation where you have to cook, buy food and clothes yourself. And you don’t know how to do that. Because it’s as if you were in laboratory conditions, where you are fed and clothed, and here you go out into the world and you don’t even know how to go to the store. The hardest part for me was adjusting the schedule and sharing my boarding school story with other classmates.
But there were also conditional advantages – when I got into a hostel, it was not difficult for me to adapt to the bad conditions or the fact that I was sharing a room with someone.
Maxim (right) with his family
From Maxim’s archive
“A child needs its own Person”
There was a year at the boarding school when my aunt took care of me. And I spent the winter holidays at her house, it was in my first grade. Then sometimes I talked with my relatives. It’s like a breath of fresh air, and then you drown again, returning to the boarding school.
I’m talking to my mom right now. I asked her how it happened that I ended up in a boarding school. She was in difficult life circumstances and had no support. I left the boarding school and began to support her.
I started visiting my mother in the 11th grade, she lived in terrible conditions, when there was no water in the apartment, but still, I felt that I was at home. I was free here and staying in these terrible living conditions was still better than a boarding school. Now my mother has already changed, it turned out that she just needed support. And removing the child is not an option. This should be prevented.
My mother was able to recover when she received support. Now I understand how much I lost as a child growing up in a boarding school: love, care, family. Yes, there were teachers, educators, and some even treated you better than others, but you never had exactly your person.
Life in a boarding school is like living in an aquarium. They feed you, they watch you. From time to time some officials and deputies come, conduct an audit and say – there is food, there is a bed, what else do you need? And you think, well, what else is needed? “Your” person!
“Adoption should be done with love, not selfish motives”
Now I hear that there are almost queues for adoption. Because an adopted child makes it possible to be reserved from military service. But this is from selfish motives, not from love.
I had a similar situation. I was already in the 11th grade, there was still a little left until graduation. You are already formed, everyone already knows you, you know everyone. You have been in a closed society for 11 years, without loved ones for 11 years, and you are already used to your team. And sometime in April or May, when I was preparing for the final exams, a married couple came to the teacher’s office and said: “Maxim, we want to arrange guardianship for you.”
And I think – why now? Where have you been before? I already see freedom and I don’t need people to control me. It affected me a lot. I thought then that I had already served my time.
It is necessary to adopt children and it is necessary for children, and they should do it in order to love them, and not for other reasons.
The material was prepared as part of the “Muffled Voices” campaign, which is implemented by the international charitable organization “SOS Children’s Villages” in support of the deinstitutionalization reform.
