How can war and conflicts affect a child's mindset?
By Isabella and Sofía, Step 10 Blue
War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, aggression, destruction, and mortality, using regular or irregular military forces. Now that we understand what a war is; How can war and conflicts affect a child’s mindset? How it will affect their lives?
Children who suffer from war experience extreme anxiety, fears, loss of self-esteem; some develop rage and hostile behavior patterns.
A study carried out with Syrian refugee minors in Jordan reveals that 26.3% felt "so desperate that they did not want to continue living".
Indirectly in a war: Actually, there are many conflicts in our world. Children, as usual, likes to use social media for many reasons, one of them is to know what’s going on in the world. The
Directly in a war: Since children and adolescents are still in development, both physical and psychological, their health is seriously endangered in war. Some of them are killed or tortured brutally, while others suffer from serious injuries, sometimes leaving them disabled. Armed conflicts also lead to the destruction of infrastructure and basic services (such as hospitals and schools), which prevents children from having access to education, health and other care.
Two million minors have died in the last decade due to war, six million have been injured and 30 scenarios continue to host armed conflicts in which the physical and mental health of these children is endangered at every step. What will the children who see how they die every day think? Is that correct? Children grow up believing that the only way to survive is war and killing each other. Countries care about their economy, territories, etc, but not about their citizens. Not for the little children who will grow up traumatized by this.
Finally, we can come to the conclusion that all conflict affects us both physically and mentally. Especially the children. They grow up in an environment of war, they are filled with insecurities where they believe that they will not be safe anywhere and may even think that a war is the only solution to things.
Bibliography
https://warchildhood.org/impact-of-war-on-children/
https://www.humanium.org/es/enfoques-tematicos/violencia/ninos-guerra/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War
https://www.eldiario.es/desalambre/consecuencias-psicologicas-ninos-victimas-guerras_1_2344083.html
https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience/kids-war
https://www.elmundo.es/elmundosalud/2007/07/31/neurociencia/1185883077.html
https://www.unicef.org/parenting/how-talk-your-children-about-conflict-and-war
