HARD TRUTHS: The majority of children will not have failed to notice the war in Iraq. Some will be unconcerned, but others will be deeply affected. What can a parent do, asks Kathryn Holmquist
How do we help our children cope with the war coming into our living-rooms? Only each individual parent can decide that. Some children need - and are able to cope with - more information than others. Some children are interested in world news, while others couldn't care less. Anxious children may find themselves in information overload after even a glimpse of Sky News, while more resilient types may take it in their stride.
So parents have to follow their children's own sensibilities and sensitivities, as well as their own values, in deciding how to help their children interpret what they are seeing and hearing. Nobody knows your child as well as you do. To be able to protect your children completely by keeping the TV off may seem the ideal approach, except that children are hearing about this in school. Some schools are even encouraging children to watch the coverage.
At my local art and hobby shop, the model kits of stealth bombers and fighter planes are sold out, as children seek to become part of the glamour of war. This is a way of coping, to imagine yourself as the hero, rather than the victim, and it shouldn't be belittled. For some children, playing the hero helps them feel safe. So even parents who are anti-war should be careful about how they view such instincts.
While parents should be wary of sanitising the war, being aware of a child's sensitivities, isn't sanitising, it's protecting the child. As one Sky correspondent warned: "This is not entertainment, it's real people killing other real people". Our children need to know this too. The war in Iraq isn't an action movie.
All of this brings me back to my childhood, to scenes of the Vietnam war on TV, which affected me in a way that I have never completely dismantled. My parents (including my father, who was an Army captain) were anti-war and I cut my pacifist teeth marching on Washington as a child, while, at the same time, one of my uncles was a high-ranking CIA analyst who was pro-war. The arguments in our house between my mother and her brother were virulent and usually ended in tears. This was made worse by our family history of army men, damaged by participating in war. As children, we bore the brunt of the damage. Our own parents' conflict and sadness made it all the worse, although our parents didn't mean us to feel such anxiety.
Irish children haven't been spared either, having grown up with hostilities in their own local areas in the North or, if they live in the Republic, with a more distant perception of bombs and carnage across the border. So the feeling that such violence can be close to home is more a part of our children's interior landscapes than we probably realise. For many children, particularly those in Northern Ireland, the war coverage revives fears and old wounds.
The essential parenting task is to make children feel safe - which is ironic considering that millions of children in Iraq are not safe. It makes us see how privileged we are.
The call to prayer heard over loudspeakers in Baghdad, which often accompanies the anticipation of bombing raids, emphasises how we are all alike in our humanity, no matter what our political views. If it were you or I huddling in our homes, waiting for the roar of fighter planes and bombs, we would be praying too.
And we can pray now, because prayer is a powerful coping mechanism for children. Praying for everyone - for our political leaders, for the US and British soldiers, the Iraqi solders, the Iraqi families and children - is the only thing we can do that gives us some sense of wholeness with humanity. While we cannot control world events, we can at least channel our faith towards hope and healing.
In my experience, children find prayer reassuring. Letting children have a chance to create their own prayers, as the family sit silently with eyes closed, can also give parents an invaluable insight into what is going on in children's internal worlds. In a simple prayer, children may unselfconsciously reveal their fears, giving parents a chance to reassure them.
Many Irish adults have a memory of childhood prayer as stiff, boring, forced and focused on the rosary and memorisation. Prayer doesn't have to be religious and formal. It can simply be spiritual and some families may prefer to call it meditation. Muslim families I know have prayer as such a central part of their lives that when I meet them, I sense a tranquillity that most Irish families never attain. Prayer can be as simple as lighting a candle.
Whatever your way of praying, whether it's a pre-meal prayer or drawing a picture while in a state of contemplation, or time together as a family meditating, there is no doubt in my mind that it can help.
When we feel a loss of control of our lives, sometimes all we can do, children and parents alike, is give ourselves up to hope. Different cultures, and different families, have their own terminology - but the terminology doesn't matter. It is our children's world. While they cannot control it today, we can at least help them to feel secure enough so that when it is their turn to control the world, they will be doing it from a strength of personal spirituality that will see them through. And, let's pray that they'll make a better job of it than we are.
