Emotions & the Bomb

"Gary's daddy says Krewship is going to blow all our houses up."

"You tell Gary that your daddy said nobody is going to blow your house up."

"Then if Krewship's not going to put a bomb on us, why do we have the drills?"

Columnist Charles Allbright of Little Rock's Arkansas Gazette recently recorded this conversation with his six-year-old daughter. But many parents across the U.S. would find Allbright's dilemma familiar. Other backyard echoes of "Bang, bang, the Russians are going to kill you," and "The snow is poisoned" have inspired the National Institute of Mental Health to cooperate with the Child Study Association of America in putting out a guide for parents: Children and the Threat of Nuclear War (available from the Association for 40-c-).

Because children of different age groups suffer different sorts of psychological problems about nuclear warfare, their parents must be prepared to use different methods to allay their fears, argues the pamphlet's author. Psychologist Sibylle Escalona of Albert Einstein College of Medicine. But one problem is common to all parents and all children: nuclear war hazards are particularly difficult to discuss because parents know so little about them. And the one thing that all youngsters want, from kindergarten through adolescence, is certainty.

Comfort & Facts. The preschool child is too young to be comforted by reason. Just as it does no good to insist "There are no ghosts," it is not enough to say, "Don't be foolish--this is a drill, not an air raid." What seems to help most at this age, says Dr. Escalona, is a bedtime story, an extra cookie, a night light, and the knowledge that mother is not far away.

Grade-school children, says Psychologist Escalona, want facts: How big are the bombs? How deep should the shelters be? What is the speed of the missiles? Parents who take the trouble can find the answers to such questions.* But they may still be stumped by "What will we find when we come out of the shelter?" The only thing to do, says the psychologist, is to discuss these unanswerables calmly and reasonably.

Teen-agers are already old enough to be worrying about the kind of world they will inherit. They ask, "Will our children be freaks?" And their doubts and fears can easily degenerate into a sense of defeat, a feeling that the battle of life has already been lost for them by their elders. When that happens, they tend to cut corners; they are lax while studying for exams, careless while driving cars. "Taking chances," says Dr. Escalona, "is what many a teen-age boy and girl would like to do in any case." They seize upon the uncertainties of life as a ready-made excuse for doing what they always wanted to do.

Admit & Define. Adults are far from agreed on many of the answers themselves and disagreements between parents breed doubts, fears and emotional disturbances in children of all ages. Dr. Escalona is convinced that parents should not show their disagreements in the presence of preschool children. For the next-older group, the thing to do, she says, is admit the disagreement and define it, but also to make sure the children understand that their parents are in accord about what they want.

For adolescents, Dr. Escalona recommends school debates and a chance to hear such recognized authorities as scientists or political leaders. Adolescents, she says in a reminder that will be unnecessary for most parents, will listen to outside authority--but not, as a rule, to their parents.

* The bombs' exact dimensions are secret and vary according to power, but range roughly from as small as a football to as large as a big trunk.

To do any real good, a shelter must be covered by at least three feet of earth.

The fastest missiles travel at about 16,000 m.p.h.

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