How can war and conflicts affect a child's mindset?
According to National Geographic, a war is a violent conflict between states or nations. Sociologists usually apply the term to such conflicts only if they are initiated and conducted in accordance with socially recognized forms.
War affects children in all the ways it affects adults, but also in different ways. First, children are dependent on the care, empathy, and attention of adults who love them. Their attachments are frequently disrupted in times of war, due to the loss of parents, extreme preoccupation of parents in protecting and finding subsistence for the family, and emotional unavailability of depressed or distracted parents (J. Santa Barbara).
Eighteen million children have grown up in war zones, where two million have died, six million have been permanently disabled and one million have become orphans, according to organizations like UNICEF.
“The physical, sexual and emotional violence to which these children are exposed shatters their world. War undermines the very foundations of children’s lives, destroying their homes, splintering their communities and breaking down their trust in adults” said Graca Machel. For children, losing their homes is something so rare that it is traumatic.
Psychologist Michael Wessells says, “One of the greatest effects I see on a day to day basis is a loss of hope. Once young people feel hopeless, they really do give up. They don’t take steps that might build a constructive future”. The children believe that there is no way out. They can only fight wars to get something, they think it's the only way to obtain something.
Finally, we realize how all the actions that governments take (actions that end in conflicts or wars) directly affect children. They are just growing up and they grow up in an environment of violence, coming to believe that it is the only thing they can do, that there is no more hope in this world. We as people and new generations are in charge of stopping this type of life, of helping children to grow up in a healthy and peaceful environment, where they are not in danger of dying.
