“Did my toys hurt?”. How to talk to a child who has lost his home – advice from a psychologist

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Millions of Ukrainians lost their homes as a result of Russia’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine. Someone was left with a fire instead of a house (only approximate calculationshomes of about 1.8 million families have been destroyed), and some have left their native places and do not know if they will have a place to return to.

Children who have been forced to leave home ask adults questions that are not always easy to answer.

Olena Ivanova, a psychologist at the “Voices of Children” foundation and a certified trauma therapist, tells how to choose the right words and how to help a child survive the loss of a home.

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Losing a home is a traumatic experience, but everyone experiences it differently. Usually, families do not come to me with such a request.

Appeals are more often related to fears: nightmares, regressive behavior, when, for example, children who have already slept separately return to sleep with their parents. But during our conversations, it turns out that actually the reason is that the children miss home and their room.

Photo: motortion/Depositphotos

If a child asks: “Why did we go?”

Because of the war, the sense of security, which is very important for children, is violated. Therefore, you need to do everything to get it back: explain that you have left for a safe place, and here, unlike the place where you lived before, it is calm.

Small children should emphasize that now their home is here: there are toys, a bed, and other important things, too.

Older children somehow understand everything by themselves: they know that there is a war, that our soldiers protect us. The children who have the experience of being under shelling know this all the more: they heard the explosions, went down to the bomb shelter, understand that because of this, changes took place in their lives.

If the house is destroyed

If the child has no questions about the loss of home, has moved to a safe place, goes to kindergarten or school, has his own social circle, then trying to initiate a conversation on this topic may not be appropriate. But if a child draws a picture of his house, says that he is sad, this is a reason to talk.

The most common mistake adults make is to hide the truth to protect themselves. But it should be understood that the child will still read information from the environment and will adapt reality. And fantasies are usually more frightening than the truth.

If there is definite information that the home has been destroyed, parents should choose a time when they feel stable enough to talk about it. You should not delay, because the child will definitely have a question as to why the important news was hidden from him, and as a result, distrust may appear between the parents and the child.

If you are sad and hurt by this loss, be honest and say so. So you will allow the child to feel complex emotions and live them together. You will need to go through the stage of grieving and letting go of the past. But when there is certainty, there is also the certainty that one must build life further. You can discuss what you are going to do: build a new house, stay in a new place or return to your hometown/village when the opportunity arises – show that you have a future that you will create together.

This will give the child a sense of security and stability.

If you live in obscurity

It happens that the family has left, but does not know if it will have a place to return to. Such a loss of home is difficult to accept precisely because of the uncertainty. Then you can honestly admit: “I don’t know if we will return. I know that it is dangerous there now, but it is not known when it will change.”

It is very important for children to feel that adults are in control of the process. Therefore, it is worth saying that the Armed Forces are doing everything that depends on them so that we can return home as soon as possible. But unfortunately, we don’t know when it will be.

If the child wants to go home, and you understand that it will not happen

If the child really wants to return, and you understand that this is impossible, it is worth explaining that you are now building a new life in a new place. It is important to say that when the child grows up, he will have his own family and his own home, he will be able to choose where to live: in the city/village where he left or in any country in the world. It is worth talking about the possibility of choosing, and not about the fact that the desire to return will never come true.

Also, if the child is talking about returning not so much to home, but to friends, it is worth looking for an opportunity to establish at least an online connection with them.

If a child asks if their toys hurt

If a small child asks, so as not to scare her, it is worth saying that the toys are left, they do not have a big house now, they are hidden in a box, but we cannot go and check what is with them.

We can admit that we don’t know how it all happened, because we didn’t see it and we can’t promise that the toys stayed where they were.

You can ask if the child wants to buy the same toy that was left at home. For 5-7 year olds, this can be important, but it can also bring up painful memories, so you should always ask if the child really wants it.

Photo: romrodinka/Depositphotos

Whether to keep the rituals that were at home

Rituals and family traditions in a new home can and should be returned, because home is not about walls, but about family and life. If we do this, we show that nothing can break us, that life goes on, and that which unites us is always with us. It can be our anchor point: our home is within us, our safe place is within us. You can destroy walls, but you can’t destroy life.

If you are frightened by the behavior of children

Parents may be frightened that children draw destroyed houses or bury toys in the sand (simulating a funeral), but this is how the child tries to understand and accept the situation.

We pay attention to other things: how the child sleeps, whether he sleeps alone, whether he wakes up from nightmares, whether he eats well, whether he has not lost weight, whether he does not gain excess weight, whether he plays with the children. If everything in her life is more or less stable, then we can say that she tolerates the loss of her home normally. Sadness itself is not something bad and indicates the normal course of the stress reaction.

But if you are sure that something is wrong, the child has too much grief, too complex emotions – you should contact specialists.

How to help a child survive the loss of a home

Parents often say to children during difficult conversations: “Closed the topic, as long as possible?”. This is a defense mechanism: I will neither think nor talk about it. As a rule, this happens not because the parents want to do worse, but because it is difficult for them to cope with the loss.

But if we forbid the child to speak, we forbid him to feel emotions. The child begins to think that he is bad because he injures his parents, and as a result he forbids himself to be sad and grieve. But these emotions still have to find a way out, it’s just that it will happen in a more dangerous version: through tantrums, psychosis, fears, nightmares, self-harm or risky behavior in teenagers.

Therefore, it is very important to allow children to talk about the loss, to share their emotions with them, and for adults to endure it.

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