Children at War Awoken in the middle of the night by ear-shattering crashes and shaking ground, screams from the world outside enter through the window. You’re parents come running into your room, pleading with you to get up. They tell you that it’s time to leave. You are bustled outside, where the night sky is lit up with the flames of your burning hometown. You nose is assaulted with the smell of burning flesh. Crowds of people are running, trying to escape. You and your family join the chaos, desperately trying to escape. You look up, only to realize that you can’t find your family anywhere. Separated in the crowd- at the age of only seven years old- you are now on your own.
This is not an unusual experience for a young child living …show more content…
One of the most damaging problems they are faced with is the loss of their family. Adolescents and toddlers alike have their parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, etc. taken from them. As stated in Children in the Heat of War, “The loss of the family places a considerable stress on children, especially since the biggest mediating factor in how they cope is a solid family relationship, say psychologists.” Without family, they are forced to take on new responsibilities that have been left to them, often at much to young of an age. This takes away any chance of having a …show more content…
While many people assume that the nonessential resources become scarce, they often do not realize that even the simple resources, such as clean water, become difficult to find. Without parents or other stable support, children are left to find food, water, shelter, and personal hygiene tools on their own. Most often these are not easy to find, leaving many to die of starvation, dehydration, or disease. They also are deprived of education. When war breaks out, the last thing that people are focusing on is making sure that children are being properly educated. This means that many are not able to read, write, or do simple mathematics.
Even after the war is over, resources are returned, and the children have grown into adults, there is lasting and often lifelong psychological damage. PTSD, depression, and anxiety are some of the more prominent psychological illnesses that war leaves behind. The environment that a country at war provides also normalizes violence in the minds of the people who grow up it. As stated by Deborah Smith in ” Children in the Heat of War”,
“The impact of war on children has also attracted the attention of the research community. Kinzie, Sack, Angell, Manson, and Rath (1986) followed up children who had experienced war trauma, 4 years after they left Cambodia, and found that 50% had developed PTSD and mild but prolonged depression.”
There is solid evidence that the
This is not an unusual experience for a young child living …show more content…
One of the most damaging problems they are faced with is the loss of their family. Adolescents and toddlers alike have their parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, etc. taken from them. As stated in Children in the Heat of War, “The loss of the family places a considerable stress on children, especially since the biggest mediating factor in how they cope is a solid family relationship, say psychologists.” Without family, they are forced to take on new responsibilities that have been left to them, often at much to young of an age. This takes away any chance of having a …show more content…
While many people assume that the nonessential resources become scarce, they often do not realize that even the simple resources, such as clean water, become difficult to find. Without parents or other stable support, children are left to find food, water, shelter, and personal hygiene tools on their own. Most often these are not easy to find, leaving many to die of starvation, dehydration, or disease. They also are deprived of education. When war breaks out, the last thing that people are focusing on is making sure that children are being properly educated. This means that many are not able to read, write, or do simple mathematics.
Even after the war is over, resources are returned, and the children have grown into adults, there is lasting and often lifelong psychological damage. PTSD, depression, and anxiety are some of the more prominent psychological illnesses that war leaves behind. The environment that a country at war provides also normalizes violence in the minds of the people who grow up it. As stated by Deborah Smith in ” Children in the Heat of War”,
“The impact of war on children has also attracted the attention of the research community. Kinzie, Sack, Angell, Manson, and Rath (1986) followed up children who had experienced war trauma, 4 years after they left Cambodia, and found that 50% had developed PTSD and mild but prolonged depression.”
There is solid evidence that the