(Try these activities in sequence)

Provide a sense of protection and assure safety: Look at your children and see who is the most terrified, give him/her a tight hug for some time while repeating reassuring phrases, such as: “you are fine, you are safe, we are safe, I am with you and protecting you, do not worry”. Allow the child/children express their fear by crying or trembling, this is a normal reaction in such situations. Try not to pressure the child to stop crying by either asking or shouting at him/her. Just stay close to him/her and say with a gentle voice words like: “you are brave, you are strong, you are not alone, we will all be fine”. If more of your children show the same reaction, a group hug will work as well. Together with another adult or an elder sibling, put the children in the middle and surround them with your hug for some time while using reassuring words that they are all fine and safe. Continue holding and reassuring them until the children calm down. When you release your hug, confirm to the children that all of you are well and safe by saying, “look around, all of us are here and we are all safe now”.

If a family member is absent at the time of the event, it’s natural for everyone to feel worried about him/her. Your role is important here in alleviating the family’s worry about the absent person by reassuring everyone that he/she will be fine and will return soon. Despite the difficult situation, calm yourself down with deep breathing, or in your own ways, so that your worries are not passed on to the children.

Calm the children and family: After achieving some sense of security and calmness, you and the children may perform a deep breathing exercise. This can be done by inhaling air through the nose while blowing up the belly softly like a balloon, then slowly exhaling air through the mouth. Repeat this up to five times to achieve greater relaxation. It’s good to perform the same breathing exercise as a family by interlocking hands of the family members in a circle with eyes closed. As an alternative to the breathing exercise, you can practice other familiar and desired rituals for the group while interlocking hands, such as saying religious phrases or singing a children’s song, which may bring a great sense of comfort, peace, and tranquility.

(Apply what you think is relevant from the following activities)

Respond to questions: Once the situation is calm again after the event, it is expected that the child/children may ask questions about what has happened; where and why, among other things. This is also a normal reaction in their attempt to understand the situation, and may help reduce their anxiety and tension. It is important and useful to respond to their questions because this helps them regain stability and balance.

While sitting with the children around you, give them a chance to freely ask and share their thoughts and feelings. Spend some time answering their questions simply and honestly by telling only the information they ask about, without giving too much information and without leaving any doubts about the event. At the end of this gentle talk, reassure them of their safety and tell them that you will always take care of them. You can also give the children a chance to present their own explanations and interpretations of the event and can then provide clarifications based on the information you know about what has happened. This helps them form a reality-based understanding of the event that may contribute to the regaining of emotional stability and balance necessary to recapture control.

It’s important to know that if children don’t get answers to their immediate concerns, they may construct their own imaginary version of what has happened. This may lead to their being trapped in an unhealthy thought process, where the imagined scenes can be more damaging than the actual event itself. Also, remember that it’s not advisable to deny what the children themselves have seen and heard because it may confuse them and make them lose trust in their own senses, in you, and in others.

Distract negative thoughts through a pleasant memory: After answering the children’s questions, now remind them of a pleasant shared experience from the past and recount it to them as a complete story with a sequence of events in an amusing and entertaining way. As you are telling the story, try to emphasize and describe each child’s role in the experience; for example, describe the setting, the nature of or reason for the event, who were present, what clothes they were wearing, what they said, did, ate, and perhaps how it tasted. Get into as much detail as you can to immerse the child/children in the experience with their own imagination and to retrieve the positive feelings that the pleasant memory from the past evokes. Try your best to make the narrative enjoyable, vivacious and funny by using a cheerful and expressive tone of voice and acting out scenes with facial expressions, gestures and movements in a joyful way. While you are presenting the narrative, allow the children to participate by asking explanatory and exploratory questions or telling what they remember from it. Be sure to respond to questions with as much detail as you can. When the children participate in recounting the previous experience, they are immersed in the story, which means that their positive thoughts and feelings have won over the painful memories of the terrifying event.

In case it is difficult for you or the children to remember a shared pleasant past experience, you can use one from your own life (e.g., a trip with your family during your childhood) or you can make up a fictional story with enjoyable content and a happy ending. You can also ask the children to remember and share a pleasant past event with the group. Your role here is then to encourage and help the child to construct the narrative by asking prompting questions that help him/her to retrieve and talk about the details; for example, how was the weather, who was there, what clothes he/she and other children were wearing, what did he/she say and do, what did he/she eat. The aim of this is to create a pleasant atmosphere, build the narrative together as a group and get to the closing with a happy ending which, consequently, will outweigh the painful memories of the terrifying event.

Remember that you can practice “the pleasant memory activity” anywhere and at any time of the day or night, also while in bed. This activity is useful at all times, even if there is no specific terrifying event, as it relieves the general stress caused by war conditions and provides a sense of comfort that helps the child to regain control and hope.

Direct thinking towards a positive mental task: To engage the child/children in a pleasant thought process rather than the painful event, you can organize a round of simple puzzle-solving and riddles with short wording and reasonable difficulty appropriate for the child/children age. However, it is important to present the puzzles and riddles in a joyful, enticing and exciting way. In solving the puzzles, the children may compete, work together, or take turns making sure that each gets a chance. You may create puzzles or riddles about fruits, vegetables, food, birds, animals, science and math, or anything that comes to mind. Give the children a chance to present puzzles or riddles to the group as well. It is also possible to practice other similar enjoyable activities, such as telling jokes, creating word-chain games (finding a word that starts with the last sound of the previous word), and other joyful activities that you know.

Direct thinking towards a positive practical activity: To distract children’s thoughts away from the painful event, you can involve the children in doing something practical, as individuals or in a group. For example, you can ask them to organize the place where you are staying, to help prepare food, to take care of and sing to a younger sibling, to read schoolbooks or any available stories, or do any other practical activity. Consider that after exposure to war trauma, children may avoid doing things that they used to do before. This is normal and to be expected. So you should accept this and suggest a different activity that they are able to do.

Direct thinking towards a positive psychosocial activity: You can also encourage the children to play a group game that they know. Remind them of one that they were playing before the war or teach them the games that you played during childhood. They may play in pairs or as a group and you can play with them. Your choice of play depends on the tools or materials available, but there are many games that do not require ready-made materials or that may use materials made with simple things available in the environment. Retrieve memories from the days of your childhood and you will probably remember many such games. The most important thing here is that the children play together as it relaxes them and brings the group or family closer together, which is very supportive to their mental health.

(Apply the following activities in sequence)

Helping the child/children to rebuild hope for the future may wipe out the remaining negative feelings and strengthen resilience. Achieving this depends mainly on retrieval of positive past memories. However, it is important that the helping process realistically takes into account the changes that the war has caused in their lives. Depicting future prospects too idealistically may cause harm to the child later, when confronted with a different reality.

Assure that the suffering will end: Tell the child/children that, “this situation will come to an end, many people and countries are working on it and the situation will be safe again for all of us soon”. Use your skills to assure them that the war will end for certain, even if it takes a while.

Retrieve pleasant past memories: Remind the child/children about how life was before the war, motivate them to retrieve what they remember about that time and to talk about it. Then let them imagine that this is how it will be after the war. Try to remind them about the details related to how the life of the family was in the home, neighborhood, school and market. Encourage and give the child/children the chance to talk about and share their experiences freely. At the end of this talk, assure them that you will go back to doing the same things and will enjoy life together again. Encourage them to imagine the situation as it will be when they have a proper home again and to talk about the things they intend to do after the end of the war.

Establish realistic expectations and build hope: It is essential that you tell the child/children enough information about the damage that has happened to their home, schools and/or neighborhood, so that they may construct realistic expectations. At the same time, reassure them that you will rebuild what is destroyed together, that life will return to normal and you will enjoy it together again. Here, you may also recall some difficult experiences you have gone through in the past and show how you were able to overcome them together.

Now, after you have gone through the above steps in the process of helping the child/children, it is crucially important to monitor and see if any of them is still irritated or uncomfortable. You can determine this by observing their body language, facial expressions, tone of voice and breathing rhythm. If any of them is still irritated, make sure you do not leave him/her alone in such a stressful situation. Instead, help him/her to achieve stability and regain balance. You can do this by bringing this child closer to you and gently touching or rubbing his/her head, along with giving hugs and kisses. Tell the child that you understand and feel his/her suffering, and that you are always there for him/her. This, in turn, will help the child to stabilize and regain balance and control.