Israel-Hamas War: How to talk to children about the Gaza war

Israel has three million children under 18, one-third of our population. Gaza has a million children 18 and under, almost half its population.

The total fertility rate in Gaza is similar: 3.54. Three out of 10 women there are married before the age of 18. The million children in Gaza – and some 30 Israeli kids held hostage by Hamas – are one of a multitude of complexities facing the IDF at present.

Recently, my wife, Dr. Sharone Maital, a veteran educational psychologist who has worked with children during wartime hostilities for decades, was asked to speak to a large group of US Jewish grandparents by webcast. The topic was “Talking to Children during Troubled Times.”

There are stress responses which are common to all of us. They are automatic responses. They are not responses that we can always control – flight, fight, freeze.

Each person responds in a way that is partly a result of their personality and partly a result of their interpretation of what’s going on. They are normal behaviors in an abnormal situation.

The children I’ve met explained that their mothers did things to make sure that they had something to fight with, to give them a sense of security. It is important to recognize that people have those inner strengths and do fight and defend themselves.

The horror and trauma following the October 7 massacre has disrupted and challenged our basic beliefs. One of the biggest challenges is to rethink our beliefs – how can we change or maintain our beliefs that help us function?

There are different ways of coping. We can talk about social support, particularly when we’re with children, helping them to know that they have a parent or a grandparent that is with them and is listening to them, looking after them.

Another aspect is being able to think it through. And that’s one of the things that’s most damaged during the initial shock of a crisis. Suddenly, thinking gets suspended. We need to help children develop a coherent narrative that makes sense to them, at each child’s developmental level.

Another thing people do to cope is to do physical activities. We know that physical needs are very important, providing people with warmth, food, drink, all of those kinds of things, and also enabling them to do something – preferably, involving play and cognitive activities.

During the Lebanon War, we recommended that each family help their children make a basket with their favorite toys that they could keep with them when they went to the safe room. When they had activities they could do, being active – not just sitting and waiting, doing nothing – was very helpful.

In today’s age when social media dominate, we have indirect traumatization. Our children and grandchildren see things on television and social media, they hear things that the adults are talking about. And those also create a threat, what we call a secondary traumatization or a secondary crisis through indirect exposure. There’s a sense that there may be physical danger, difficulties in coping, and feelings of helplessness. Those are just some of the things that it arouses. Many of us professionals perceive a sense of communal crisis, a national crisis. [See box]

As adults, in normal times we start to think things through. We use our prefrontal cortex, which usually covers the whole middle part of our brain and gives us executive functions – the ability to control what we do and to control our emotions. It tells us, ‘This is what’s happening, and I can do this or that in response.’

In a crisis, in extreme stress, the executive function lid is flipped. One of the important things is to help put the lid back on things with information, with thinking.

One of the differences between adults and children is that children’s abilities to do this are not as highly developed as they are among adults. They don’t have all the experience that we have. Even among adults, when we don’t have experience or when emotions activate things that were traumatic in the past, especially events as horrific as the deadly massacre of October 7, sometimes it’s very hard to bring the prefrontal cortex, the thinking abilities, the cognitive abilities, back down to help us cope.

One of the things that’s perhaps the most important, step one, is self-awareness. We need to think about how we are responding to what’s happening. Even before we think about talking with our grandkids. What are we feeling? What are we doing when this happens? Are we sitting in front of the television and listening to news nonstop, almost in a freeze, a catatonic freeze?

Are we staying at home and can’t do anything because we have to know constantly what’s happening? Or are we going about trying to act, to do constructive things?

Children have very sensitive antennae. We say, ‘Oh, I’ve calmed down. I can talk to the kids.’ But behind the cool-headed mom trying to present herself as calm and cool, kids know exactly how she feels. They see what we feel. They feel what we feel, and they respond in return.

If we are avoidant and don’t want to talk about things, we don’t have to tell them, ‘Let’s not talk about that.’ They sense it, they know it. Their antennae are very, very keen. And one of the things that we need to realize when we are talking to children and to grandchildren is that a key factor is how we are feeling and how we are coping. And it is important to talk to children honestly – at the level they can understand. When we avoid talking to them about the situation, they draw their own conclusions or make up their own story.

If we can cope, if we feel that we have resilience, that we have resources that we can draw upon, then we can transmit that to the kids. That’s a key thing.

We need a lot of patience in talking to children because the chaos and the rupture of our basic tenets have not been repaired. We must find experiences that can help us feel that we belong, that give us hope. And we need to help kids look ahead and emphasize positive thoughts. Taking action, doing things, is really important. It helps us move into the mode of using our executive skills, our thinking.

If I think about the kids that I’ve been seeing these past weeks who escaped the terrible massacre. I asked a 10-year-old, ‘What should I tell grandparents in the US about how you cope?’

And he said, ‘Tell them that we’re going to change things, and we’re going to get at these terrible terrorists and things will be okay.’ And I thought that this is amazing. This is a kid who’s been through the worst things possible, and yet he was looking to the future. He was saying, ‘We’ll move on.’

Especially with the older ones, they have a lot of ideas of their own. And we need to ask them to tell us what they personally think to differentiate between their own views and our generalizations, what they hear from other people, try to get them to think about those things. And we need to listen while we suspend judgment. We need to let them have ideas that are different from ours.

With the little ones, we need to listen to them by observing and joining their play, to play with the children. I’ve been working with little children; they’re predominant in my thoughts right now.

When I asked the little children to tell me about what happened to them, they said they don’t want to talk about it. So, I said, ‘Well, would you like to draw?’ And they did. And in the process of drawing, they basically drew the entire scene of what happened. And then they started talking and telling me about it. The little four-and-a-half-year-old was not really drawing, but every once in a while she would go over and make marks on her brothers’ and her cousins’ drawings.

She would make marks that looked like they were like rockets coming down or it could have been crying, tears. Then she took the dolls, and she went around with a little doll’s teacup and a little teapot, and she served everybody something to drink. She was looking after their basic needs. She was telling us a part of the story that she had understood in the way that she understood it. And it was important for her that they had their food, that they had water, that they were looked after, and she was doing that.

We listen, we hear and see what children are feeling; and what they’re telling us is very often in the way in which they’re playing, in the way they draw.

Sometimes we do need to reassure children that there’s nothing really hiding under their bed, that they are in a safe environment. Among the children who’ve experienced trauma, we can’t always say that. Honesty is really the best way to deal with it. We must admit that most of the time we’re fine and there are things that can help us be fine, knowing that our parents are around, knowing that there are soldiers who are guarding us and looking after us. Those are important things. And yet not denying the fact that yes, it’s scary because we don’t always know for sure what will happen.

We do need to be able to talk to even young children and say to them, ‘Yes, that person is not going to come back.’ And it’s very sad, and it’s appropriate to be sad with them and to help them do things that can help. Help them remember the person, the good things about the person. Help them find ways to understand the sense that life goes on. The person is gone, but life goes on.

I would say with most teenagers, the conversations should be very adult. They are far more aware and sophisticated in their thinking. We have to help them use these abilities to analyze situations, to think logically.

Sometimes they will think out of the box in ways that are in a sense quite logical. They may not use what we think is our logic, but perhaps we need to listen to them because they have creative ideas and we should not put them down all the time. And at the same time, we also must acknowledge the difficulties they’re dealing with. They’re dealing with a whole lot of different things that are going on – social pressures and fear of standing out. Those are things that we must acknowledge and help them feel that they are independent, that they are making their own decisions and thinking for themselves, and at the same time planting different ideas and letting them examine them using their own skills.

A grandparent asked, ‘How do you recommend discussing recent tragic events with my Orthodox grandchildren who come from a viewpoint that everything is God’s will? I have to be very careful talking with my grandchildren about things that I see differently as a non-literalist, non-Orthodox Jew.’

I think this relates to the difference between dialogue versus debate. If I believe that I should win them over to my opinion, then it’s going to be very difficult. I really can’t talk to them. But if I’m willing to hear them out, and sometimes it doesn’t have to be either/or, it can be both, and we can both believe that things are God’s will and also believe that there are a lot of things that we need to do and a lot of things that maybe we didn’t do right that we need to change. So it’s not either/or. It can be both.

For many people, the belief in God and the belief that God is the overarching mover of things are a very helpful means of coping. I’ve worked in the children’s ward at Hadassah Hospital as a spiritual counselor; the religious families there very often were better able to cope with their children’s illnesses because they were able to look for the good, despite everything that they were dealing with.

DR. MAITAL notes that in general, 70% of those who suffer trauma recover without treatment. By employing wisdom, common sense, and good counsel in what we explain to our kids, we can help avoid having trauma become prolonged post-trauma. Research shows that a key factor in this is the presence of hope for the future.

Our children are our future. By providing them with hope and optimism, we also provide it for ourselves.

We Israelis have experienced a massive collective trauma. It has shaken our sense of security.

But for over 30 years, psychologists have known and studied a phenomenon called post-traumatic growth – the ability of those who experienced trauma to emerge stronger and better. More caring, more self-efficacious, more compassionate, more self-reliant, and with stronger faith.

We have a choice. We can focus on the dark, bloody tragedy and all the failings that caused it. Or we can find light in the amazing resilient response of the IDF and the whole population, uniting to endure and prevail. The choice is ours. ■

Israeli Foreign Ministry officials have been showing a 44-minute montage of video clips, portraying the atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7, to officials and select groups in over 30 countries. The goal is to dispel claims that these atrocities did not happen.

The video was shown to Israeli lawmakers. Some of them were unable to watch to the end, and many left in tears or worse. It was also shown to 200 members of the foreign press in Israel.

A question has arisen, whether Israeli adults and children should be exposed to this horrendous video. The Israel Psychological Association, and Health Ministry psychiatrists, have come out strongly against this.

Yes, we know the atrocities occurred. But showing graphic visual horrors will literally burn them into our brains and cause secondary trauma (arising from seeing other people’s trauma), especially among kids, that may never heal.