Not only will the survivors of the Beslan massacre be traumatised, but children elsewhere may be distressed by the news. Andrea Clifford-Poston offers advice for understanding and responding to them
ARussian grandmother sobs that her small grandson has survived the Beslan massacre. 'But how will he ever understand? How can he ever get over it?' She voices the question in all our minds as the world reels in shock, disbelief, anger and even guilt that all we could do was observe as the tragedy unfolded. And because we live in a world of instant communication, children in Britain and around the world will see and hear accounts of what happened which may leave them worried and distressed.
For generations, children in Beslan have anticipated the new school year with the same sense of celebration and anxiety felt in families worldwide. All that is changed irrevocably for them now.
For most children, school is the next most familiar and safe place after home. Trauma explodes our sense of safety and security, yet these children will have to return to school. They will do so with the knowledge that fundamental experiences they took for granted and permanent have turned out not to be so.
In order to be secure, children need to feel they can trust their environment to be consistently predictable and protective. They need to feel they are closely attached to at least one adult. They need to feel contained, and they need adults who can absorb their strong feelings and help them to understand and manage them.
The children of Beslan will be turning to the adults to help them to regain their sense of physical and emotional safety - no easy task at the best of times, but in Beslan the adults too are so traumatised they may not be able to respond to their children's needs.
So an urgent need in Beslan is to help and support the adults. Practical help is essential. Knowing the physical things are in place, for example enough food, clothing and money for funeral expenses, will help to provide a physical structure within which emotional healing can begin to take place.
In order to help their children, the adults need to feel someone understands and accepts how they are feeling without criticism or judgement. They need someone to help them to think about what to expect from children.
Adults always find children's pain difficult to bear and in this situation it may be hopelessly overwhelming. We often try to neutralise children's distress with questions like, 'How are the children?' as though there is one prescribed response to trauma. But in Beslan, as everywhere else, children will respond to the massacre in as many ways as there are children.
Each child's response will be unique and individual, but certain common behaviours can be expected. Children may regress to one of their younger stages and act frightened and clinging. Others may refuse to be left alone or have irrational fears, nightmares and flashbacks.
It is common for bereaved children to fear that any ending is final, so that a simple request such as 'Put your toys away,' provokes a temper tantrum or panic because the child hears 'Put your toys away forever.' Some children will develop a cluster of physical and psychological problems amounting to post-traumatic
stress disorder and will need professional help.
Responses in Britain
In this country we can expect some children to be worried both at the idea of other children being hurt and also at the possibility that the same could happen to them. Their anxiety may be stirred more by Beslan than by some other world tragedies because school is within their daily experience. Some may ask perplexing 'why' questions. Others may not talk about the tragedy but may seem more anxious than usual, or play aggressive or even violent games. You may find them 'attacking' dolls and teddies in an attempt to play out what they have seen and heard.
These behaviours are normal, natural ways in which children deal with shocking experiences and difficult feelings. Indeed, in Beslan we would be most worried by a child who showed no reaction at all. So we should remember that a child is 'coping well' when they are showing their distress.
How children react will depend on their previous life experience and also on their age and understanding. Developmentally, children under five need an adult to feel close to, who will comfort and reassure them. In the middle years of childhood, children may feel guilty that somehow what has happened to them is their fault. They may also be outraged and angry, thinking 'it is so unfair.' They all need permission to feel whatever they are feeling.
Younger children may respond to adults who verbalise their feelings for them - 'Yes, you are sad and angry...' Older children will need constant reassurance that they are not to blame. They need to be reassured that there is nothing wrong with how they are feeling. We must be able to accept their rage and also to help them to cope by naming their feelings for them - 'You are angry because you are so sad and frightened...'
Most of all, children will be influenced by the behaviour of the adults surrounding them. Their distress and bewilderment will increase the children's sense of vulnerability.
Will they recover?
We live in a precarious world. More than ever, children need the adults in their lives to be adults - for example, to be able to think through their feelings about trauma, to process them and to help the children to do the same.
But there is a risk that we may be overwhelmed by our own horror at events and simply react to them unthinkingly. When children are puzzled and frightened, they are likely to feel even more at a loss if they sense that the adults around them cannot manage their own raw emotions. This doesn't mean that you can't let children see you being sad or even angry. But they need you to explain, 'Yes, this makes me so sad/angry but it is not your fault/I'm not angry with you ...'
The children of Beslan will not 'get over' this trauma in the sense that their lives can ever be the same again. However, research suggests that, given good enough support, many will be able to integrate this experience by understanding their place in the story of events, and move on. How well they recover will depend on how quickly their needs were identified and how appropriately they were met.
Helping our children
It is not surprising that we can feel helpless in the face of children's questions and responses to trauma. We are trying to help them to understand events which are beyond our comprehension; we literally have no answers. We may deal with our hopelessness by believing there are 'experts' who do know and will say 'the right thing'. We may be afraid of making things worse by saying 'the wrong thing.'
But what matters to the child is not that you have answers, but that you are trying to understand how they feel. Children are best helped by ordinary conversations with familiar adults whom they trust, as follows:
- Clarify your own thoughts and feelings so you are free to hear what a child is really saying. Don't presume what they are feeling. Try not to transmit overwhelming feelings of rage, bitterness or grief. Children will already be absorbing these from the media, and they need to see that you can manage these feelings. Sometimes, meeting as a staff group to discuss your response can help you to formulate it to the children in such situations.
- Be as simple as possible and as honest as possible. Children need facts to make sense of emotional experiences, but information should be kept at an age-appropriate level. If they offer up gory details, respond to their feelings - 'Yes, everyone feels frightened when they hear things like that...'
- Start from where the child is and accept whatever they offer. Children need to feel that what is real to them is real to someone else.
- Don't be afraid to admit that adults don't understand such terrible events.
- Reassure small children that nothing similar is going to happen to them and older ones that it is unlikely.
Andrea Clifford-Poston is an educational therapist and author of The Secrets of Successful Parenting - Understand What Your Child's Behaviour is Really Telling You
(How-to Books, 9.99)
