Page 174 - Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience

Collaboration in Working With Children Affected by Disaster 143

of feeling. They also felt the developmentally normal wish not to stand out
in front of their peers as someone who couldn’t handle intense feeling.
Among the teenagers, some of the boys felt that they were now the man
of the house, and others had become rebellious and difficult. Many of the
girls had become more affectionate with their mothers. All the sibling sys-
tems seemed closer than before. There was a particular difficulty for boys
who had lost their fathers and for girls who had lost their mothers.
Children were ambivalent about their single parent getting back into
life (working, dating, socializing, enjoying recreational activities). They
wanted this kind of transition to a new level of normalcy, yet they also
did not want their parent to get back into life (the child feeling jealous
and resentful of this), feeling that this would betray the dead parent in
some way.

Work With the Parents

In workshops with parents, we spoke about how to handle children’s fears
concerning bad things happening again and how to reassure when safety
cannot be guaranteed. We introduced the concept of probable safety and
of danger that was possible though unlikely as a way to speak with reas-
surance and honesty with their children. Parents realized the mixed mes-
sages they were giving their children about safety, such as saying, “You’re
not allowed to go to school on your bike” (communicating their fear of
another loss) but also saying, “God wouldn’t do that to me twice.”
Parents asked about getting help for their children and whether they
should do it now or wait until the children expressed problems. Several
had already brought their children and other family members for therapy.
Parents were often unsure whether to interpret their children’s problematic
behaviors and attitudes and feelings as reactions to losing their father or
mother on 9/11 or as reactions to other matters that would have happened
even without the trauma (such as siblings fighting or a parent going away
overnight). Parents also had to deal with their children’s resentment of their
dating or with their children’s longing for a new parent to replace the lost
one (“I want a new daddy”) when the parent was not yet ready. We were able
to encourage parents who were avoiding reference to the dead parent to find
ways to refer to him or her. We explained that they could let their children
identify with the dead parent and value him or her, telling the child that
they were like the parent and valuing stories about that parent.