By Bob Kisiki
Trauma is not part-time. Trauma, untreated, can mete out the worst and most enduring damage anyone can face. Trauma is dangerous. And our children are right now living in times when trauma is lurking right around the corner. I will show you.
Tasha is only five. She last saw her father, a man who loved his three children with everything in him, five weeks ago, when he was taken ill and was admitted to hospital. Since then, he was in the ICU, till he breathed his last, four weeks later. So the last time Tasha saw her dad was, sadly, the very last. Even at the funeral, there was no viewing of his body. Tasha is inconsolable!
A friend’s father had been unwell for some time and they went from hospital to hospital; saw doctor after doctor, till a few weeks ago, when they discovered he was at Stage 4 of cancer! They were scared, but decided they would do their best to prolong his life. Daily, they visited him at home; sometimes taking him to hospital. Unfortunately, his condition suddenly became worse and he had to be hospitalised. Days later, he was gone! What did the autopsy say? He had contracted COVID-19! As it turned out, one of his sons had caught it and as he visited his ailing father, the old man caught it, too. Well, they buried the old man, but two days later, that boy passed on early morning, at 7:00am. At 4:00pm that same day, his older brother died too!
Even for adults, that is one numbing situation. Now consider children. Consider those men’s children and the old man’s grandchildren. How do they feel? And those are not the only children going through this. Too many people dying every single day. It is on the news; it is all over social media; it is in our neighbourhoods and even in our houses. And the children see it all the time. Many have probably never had death splashed before them this much, even interacted with it at close quarters, all their lives. It is not just scary; it is horrendous!
For children who are themselves sick, the first and unrelenting feeling is, I, too, am going to die. It is these children who need the most urgent help. You must tell them that they are not going to die. Give them the stats to show that more people survive than those who die. Tell them you are doing everything to ensure they recover. But more than that, be with them. Without necessarily endangering your own life, hang around them and reassure them that they are not alone.
Children are grossly impacted by whatever they witness around them. Whether they understand those things or not, those experiences get into their minds and return to haunt them — sometimes immediately. Nights become unbearable. Being left alone in a room is temporary death. If they do not become clingy, they will be emotionally upset, become aggressive and some will even regress in their development — begin to do things they did at younger stages.
It is the duty of parents and caregivers to shield children from all these effects. We do not know how much longer we are bound to live with wanton death all around us, so we need to devise ways of helping our children cope, else we lose them even while we still have them.
The writer is a parenting counsellor and teacher
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