By Rita McInerney

It’s important for parents to comprehend how overwhelming the Persian Gulf war is to young children, according to Dr. Lonnie Scarborough, medical director at Charterbook Hospital.

Young children, he said, are not capable of processing such information. He suggests parents ask them if they have any questions, how they feel about all that they’re hearing, instead of sitting down with them and trying to explain the whole situation. Letting them ask the questions tunes in on children’s fears at their own level, he said.

They lack a global view and naturally fear direct missile attacks and other perils of war they see and hear about constantly on television. Parents have to try and balance the details they offer their youngsters. Dr. Scarborough suggests reassuring them that the war is contained on the other side of the world and the people handling it are experts.

Tell them “It’s over there,” he emphasizes.

Don’t provide any more information than the youngsters can handle. Don’t mention terrorism unless the time comes when they need to know about drills and other security measures.

Barbara Cascio, ESOL teacher with Rockdale County Public Schools, teaches English to an international group of students. Japanese children make up her largest group. They are the children of people who came here to work in Japanese corporations in the county, and who will later return to Japan.

Her other students are a mix, mainly refugees from the Ukraine, Cambodia, Vietnam, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Korea, Hungary, who cannot return to their countries.

A few days before the U.S. attacked Iraq, she had one sixth grader, a Japanese girl, express her fright. She told her teacher that “If shooting starts, I want to go home.”

Mrs. Cascio said she responded to the child’s fears using a map and the globe. The children were amazed when they saw the little spot that is Kuwait and the distance it is from where they are.

When they asked about missiles and atomic weapons, she tried to allay their fears by telling them of the satellites providing constant surveillance, of the thousands of miles of continent and ocean separating the U.S. from the Persian Gulf.

She asked another student, an eighth grade boy whose family fled the Ukraine, if he understood what was going on in the Persian Gulf. “Yes, we’re fighting for oil,” he answered. This gave her the opportunity, she said, to explain the difference between Kuwait, a tiny country whose citizens cannot speak about the atrocities inflicted on them by Iraqi soldiers, and the freedoms enjoyed in the U.S.

One colleague related another incident to her. A high school girl from Japan related in class that she is telling her friends that “It is not our fault (Japan’s) we have no soldiers fighting.” The young girl went on to explain to her classmates that “after world War II, when the U.S. wrote our constitution, our military forces can only defend our nation, we cannot attack.”

Mrs. Cascio said she was “very careful not to mention terrorism” in any discussions she had with the students.