Adults can see the horror in Gaza, but how best to talk to children about it?

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Across Britain, families are calling for an end to the violence. But what should be shared and discussed with younger members, asks Guardian columnist Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

Across Britain, families are calling for an end to the violence. But what should be shared and discussed with younger members?hits Naila Khan. “You know the images of those Palestinian parents, where they’re rocking their dead child?” she asks me, from Manchester. “Every evening when I’m rocking my child, all I can imagine is those mothers holding their children and I think to myself: my child is breathing, is alive, is healthy, safe, has got shelter. We’re not being bombed.

It is important to bear witness, but some parents, like Khan, are going beyond that. It is difficult enough for adults to compute the war in Gaza and the slaughter of 7 October. How do you begin to explain it to children? Islamophobia and antisemitism are on the rise in the UK, and incidents in schools will mean some difficult and painful conversations taking place in British homes.

The delicate balance between honesty and shielding your child from the scale of the massacre is a tough one to tread. Omar, a father of one and a Syrian refugee who works for a refugee charity, became involved with the group Parents for Palestine after he saw their “teddy blockade” outside the Foreign Office in October.

Like many parents, Zaina has found the group a “healing space”; being with others who feel similarly helps. This need for community in the face of such tragedy is one of the reasons the online group Mothers Against Genocide was formed. “We came together, first of all, to support each other, because we were finding we were scrolling on our phones at night and not sleeping and crying,” says cofounder and mother of two Nuala Ní Scolláin.

 

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