“Sometimes the success is when the child started talking again”: psychologists on working with children during the war

A cohort of psychologists with 9 years of experience working with war trauma has been formed in Ukraine. Then, in 2014, many of them quickly burned out – because of their own empathy. But this experience helped to meet a new wave of trials after February 24.

Currently, psychologists have a lot of work – in particular, how to return to a normal state of children who hear air alarms or explosions in every rustle.

We asked psychologists working with the Children’s Voices charitable foundation to tell us how the war affects children, how parents should act, and how the full-scale invasion changed the lives and work of psychologists themselves.

Olga Fedorets, psychologist, psychotherapist, expert of NaUKMA

My first experience working with children during the war was at a volunteer station in 2014. Every week, about 200 children from Sloviansk and Kramatorsk “transited” through the children’s room, which we made together with other psychologists.

The children were “off wheels”, they came to rest while their parents decided their future path. Then I saw how much despair adults have, and how little knowledge they have of what to do. And I also felt that every child still relies more on their adult than on me – no matter how cool I am.

Therefore, after 2014, I tried not to start work with the child immediately after meeting him in my office. She asked the parents or those to whom the child is attached to come first. And do all actions through these adults. This gave better results than if I had to build a new relationship with the child. And so you can support more children.

Already in November 2014, we started working with school psychologists. They were desperate. The child in a safe place did not want to enter the classroom because the windows are too large and not covered with anything. Or she instantly hid under the desk from loud sounds. Or she didn’t want to go to school, because it seemed unreliable. These were normal manifestations of children’s adaptation to places where war continues, but unacceptable where there is no war.

We talked with the teachers about how to support the child and build trust. How to be an adult, how to behave properly if a child is scared in the classroom. What to do when sad or grieving.

What surprises me about children who have experienced war? Willingness to recover. Quickly, like ivy, to seek support. This power is fantastic.

Ruslana Moroz, methodologist-expert on psychological programs at Children’s Voices BF

During the war, I met many children whose childhood was taken away. They learned too early about the terrible: death, rape, bloody bodies. If they were witnesses or participants of such events – it is for life. But children learn to live with it and can continue to be happy.

Since 2014, I have worked a lot not only with children, but also with families of immigrants, because the child depends on the psychological state of the parents. Mom provides support and a sense of security, hope and faith in oneself and the future. This is the basis for the child to survive stress with the least traumatic consequences. If the mother is stable, understands her condition and knows what to do with it, it is easier for the child to cope with the traumatic experience.

I remember how my mother brought me a girl with tics. The face was moving, the child could not control it, but the mother forced her to take control of herself.

We worked with the girl using different methods and at the same time talked with the mother so that she accepted this symptom and did not notice it. But one session became key during our work. It turned out that everyone in the girl’s family had different political views. Some of the relatives went to the west of Ukraine, some to the Crimea, and some went to the side of the occupiers.

The girl had a serious internal conflict, which she was not aware of. After she accepted that this is her family after all and she cannot help but love her relatives, the symptoms decreased.

Now I often have to work not even with the consequences of the children being in the occupation or in the war zone, but with the fact that she does not have understanding and support in her family and feels alone. And it’s as if the family cares, loves, but as it can: through hypercontrol, hypercare or excessive discipline.

Adults do not understand that during the war a child cannot learn and remember as before, cannot be the same as before the war, and perform all tasks as quickly and productively. She has a different state and thoughts. Children now learn through power. The brain works differently under stress. In addition, psychologists are working to ensure that children can develop even during the war, because it is not known how long it will last.

Photo: lacheev/Depositphotos

Olena Ivanova, psychologist, certified trauma therapist

In January, for the first time, we went to de-occupied Snigurivka (Mykolaiv region, editor’s note). When they entered the school, they felt the cold. And not only because there was no heating. People seemed “frozen”.

I work in stabilization groups with children aged 5-8 years. Our task is to restore the child’s sense of security, the ability to joke, laugh, and play. When we arrive, the children tell us how they hid, how their cow was killed, and they saved the calf and fed it. And as if these are stories about life, but there is so much pain behind them!

Our classes include conversations, drawing, and breathing techniques. We give children the opportunity to cry, shout, stomp their feet. The child says “it shook me”, and I say: “show me how. What does it look like? A dog that just bathed? A bird flapping its wings?”. Then laughter appears and we start to feel warmer: children become more lively, play, have fun.

What are these children different? They have mature thoughts and views. During the occupation, they helped their parents and took care of the younger ones in the shelters. But on the other hand, they have regressive behavioral traits: nine-year-olds can play with their favorite toys like five-year-olds.

I have to be persistent so that children can talk to me about any topic. But now is such a time that I myself feel the same as they do. Because I live in the same country, read the same news and am in danger.

We want to believe that our help enables children to cope, gives them new skills and resources. We cannot change what has already happened. But we can teach you to look at the experience gained differently. And to help understand that everything the child feels is normal in this abnormal situation.

Lyudmila Romanenko, analytically oriented psychologist, trainer-consultant of the center of psychosocial rehabilitation of NaUKMA

What are children who have seen war afraid of? What should not cause fear. For example, the family moves to the village, to a safe place, and the child cannot leave the house. Sensitivity to all stimuli increases and there is no resource to cope with even the slightest stress. The injuries caused by the war on people now are the same as in 2014, but more acute.

When the war started in 2014, I was still on maternity leave. We lived in Zoloty (Luhansk region), four kilometers from the demarcation line.

In October, as soon as schools started working, I realized that I could not sit and listen to gunshots, so I went to work as a school psychologist. The students were already beginning to have fears, insomnia, enuresis (involuntary urination), and we did not know what to do.

Teachers asked how to behave when you hide with children on the first floor under the stairs during shelling. There was no basement there. And I didn’t have the necessary knowledge, so I started studying crisis counseling.

In 2014-2015, we had several cases when children became silent, and after a series of sessions with a psychologist, they started talking again. Adults took it as a miracle.

Among other things, I used the “serial drawing” technique. You offer the child paints, sit down next to him. No instructions or themes needed. Somewhere after 5-6 sessions, based on the pictures and reactions, it becomes noticeable how something changes. It is not at all necessary to understand WHAT the child draws, it is important to be a container for his feelings and emotions. And the picture itself fulfills this role.

This and other techniques (for example, working with sand) turn on the adaptation mechanisms inside the child, its resources, so relief comes. But at the same time, of course, I worked with the parents so that they understood the child’s condition and knew how they could help.

I was at home on February 24, 2022. When clients and colleagues told me about the war a month before and that I had to leave, I didn’t believe it. Therefore, we had to gather in two hours. Night overtook us in Poltava. We stayed there for the next three months.

Already on February 27, I started work: I went to the dormitories where the displaced people lived. The first to join were those who had work experience during the war. People turned to us with fears, panic states. There were several very serious cases among children from our region who did not leave immediately and were injured again.

In June, the NaUKMA psychosocial rehabilitation center where I worked in Girsky was moved to Buchi. Colleagues immediately said that Bucha is not easy, but, most likely, we are the ones who will be able to endure it. I moved here to work with the entire district: Vorzel, Irpin, Bucha, Gostomel. I try to work on the most difficult topics in the morning, because it is difficult, and I have a working day until nine o’clock. Children here are more fearful, and after the slightest noise they ask: “Is this an air alarm?”.

Evgeny Gerasimov, Gestalt therapist

Now, many more people turn to psychologists, their requests are different, the cases are more acute. Many children and teenagers come with aggression that needs to be vented somewhere. You can’t tell them, “Come on, don’t do it here”, you have to become the person who helps them vent their aggression.

My work changed radically after February 24, because my life changed radically: now we, like our clients, forcibly resettled people, have also lost our supports and methods of recovery. The greatest support for me in peacetime was my wife and son, we lived near the Dnipro, went fishing. And now the family is abroad, I am in Lviv, Dnipro is not here. Now my support is colleagues, supervisions and individual therapy.

When a new group of children gathers, I usually see glassy eyes: someone is on the phone, someone is silent, someone only answers “yes/no/don’t know”. These children have a lot of fear: “Is our house intact?”, “Will we return home?”, “Will we see our friends?”, “How will we live?”. Everything has changed in their lives: sections, friends, school. Instead of having a hobby, they sit at home on Youtube. Friends? They stayed there: in Kherson/Kharkiv/Lysychansk.

These children are in a stressful situation, waiting for the war to end and for them to return home. They close in on themselves, they don’t want anything. Someone stops sleeping, someone’s lifestyle changes, bad habits and aggression appear. But several meetings pass and these children begin to interact, talk, go somewhere, study better, talk and walk with their parents. And you realize: wow, something has changed.

In each case, the result of my work is different: sometimes the success is when the child started talking again, or when a child with autism became able to interact with me for at least five minutes.

Of course, it is difficult. Sometimes you can conduct classes with two groups and three individual sessions in one day. Sometimes you will work with one child and feel as if you worked for a month without days off.

Did I have a holiday after February 24? No. I calculated that I worked with about 300 children in May (and before the war I had 11 clients a week). It’s inspiring. Now I have days off, but not often. On Sundays I work with my previous clients online or have other work meetings. Rest after victory.

Hope Shvadchak, especially for UP. Life