Wars... and how to talk to children?

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Those who know me a bit better know that I've struggled with intergenerational trauma caused by wars and revolutions that my family survived and what happened to my family members during all the wars and opressive regimes. I've been doing well enough to raise from actual insanity to functioning quite reasonably, even if at slower pace.

Well, now... it's in my body. I wasn't realizing the power of it. I might need to temporarily give up moderating because I can't stop being aware of what's happening to people and places I personally know.

I don't know if and how to talk to my children about it... The Aspie one is already nearly overwhelmed with fear but I can't pretend. I'd welcome suggestions.

Thanks for everyone who told me words of support, here on the forum and by PMs

Oh my, that's quite a spot to be in.
I have no children & therefore no experience with the matter.

I was a child with my Dad in the US Navy during the cold war and as he got transferred almost every other year we lived in lots of places, Navy Bases, which would have received Soviet ICBMs in about 20 minutes if the big one began.

Can remember noting that and thinking there was nothing I could do about it, my more immediate problems that I could do things about were getting homework done and finding that model airplane part I had dropped.

But that's just me and my personal mental/emotional makeup.

I know lots of other people are not like me but I do not know how to be for them and their mental/emotional makeup.

EDIT: just realized I have no memory of what if anything Mom & Dad ever said about the matter. Which does not mean they said nothing; my memory of childhood has lots of holes big enough to fly a galaxy through.

EDIT 2: Wonder if it was easier for me to take the 'nothing I can do about it' attitude about potentially getting nuked because of the frequent moves, the loss of friends, classmates, bedrooms, locations, almost every other year as the Navy transferred Dad, a thing I also could do nothing about. I'm powerless over the issue so just let go of it.

Well, I searched for some child psychology articles and the consensus is: don't push it on children, don't pretend it doesn't exist. Care for yourself first.

Yeah, I guess that's right... my stomach is getting insane and my thoughts are there but my kids are happily in the playground with their friend. That's good, I guess.

I actually read an article about how to talk to kids about the war today during coffee break at work. It was in Finnish so there's probably no point in linking it, though. Basically, it focused on two main things:

Don't spread your own fears to your kids. If an adult feels the need to talk about the war, they need to find another adult and have the talk out of children's earshot.

If the kids have seen something in the news or heard something from their friends and are worried, talk about it with them even if you're uncomfortable talking about it. Use terms kids their age can understand and don't go to too many details, especially the negative ones. If the kids are the age that they're likely to look stuff up in the internet on their own, it's important to remind them that not everything they can find there is true.

There was also a mention that if the kids are still really small, like in daycare age or something, then they probably won't hear about it from friends or find it in media on their own and thus are unlikely to be worried unless the matter comes up at home a lot, but I think I recall your kids already being in school, so they're likely to hear some things there eventually. Anyway, you're probably more stressed about this than they are. Talk to someone and try to keep yourself together.

Yeah, they're 9 and 10 so it's not that they didn't know. Also, there's plenty of Ukrainians in the neighbourhood and we're expecting even more coming now, possibly with war experience - that's something I have been talking to them, for it's likely to affect them at school.

I need to have my own fear contained. For now, we are safe.

My ADHD(?) daughter is great!
She just dragged me to balcony to sing silly songs. She... I don't know how to say it but it was something I very much needed

Sometimes our kids are wiser than us

Thank god I never had children so I never had to deal with telling them that the adults that are supposed to care about and protect them are blithering worthless fools that want to destroy the world and everything in it. Well maybe they don't *want* to, but they do it anyway because humans are walking sacks of vomit, pus and feces that should have stepped aside and let another species become dominate about five thousand years ago, if not any sooner.

Yep….we need innocent perspectives.

Stay strong and take care, magz. That's all I wanted to say.

A lot of children's stories have simplistic black and white conflicts.

The best way to approach the subject is to first explain how a conflict can have two sides where neither side is right or wrong.

I hope my thread about the war didn't scare you into making this thread. I'm sorry if it did...but I'm scared too. Like a child, I have lack of knowledge in this subject and my brain doesn't store information about complicated things like this, so the only other option is for me to panic and get other people to reassure me with empathy and true information that is easy to read and understand. I don't google anything these days as the internet is an excellent way of scaring oneself even more, and I'm too scared to watch the news. It was the same at the beginning of the covid pandemic, I found it hard watching the news without flying into a panic attack.

I remember having a day off school back in 2003 when the war with Iraq had started, because I was just blinded with severe anxiety and panic. My mum was an anxious person and sometimes unintentionally spread her fears on to me and was like "yep, it's gonna happen." I thought we were all going to die then but we didn't.

I do love the way children view the world. It reminds me of the movie The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, where the little boy was so innocent but at the same time his innocence was what was right. He saw the Jews as people, not as "the evil enemy". Because Jews ARE people. The only evil enemy was Hitler. He was an evil monster.

I agree with Pepe; a break in mod duties is probably called for.

The advice to take care of yourself first, also sounds solid to me. You can’t take care of them until you care for yourself. If you are calm, they will take from that.

In general, I think it is better being straight with kids about what is going on, gearing it toward their level of understanding.

There is no hiding the ugliness and tragedy of war, especially when it’s on your doorstep.