What happens to a child when the frightening becomes normal?
When being woken by an air-raid siren is no longer unusual. When Dad has gone away and nobody will quite explain when he is coming home. When the house at the end of the street disappears overnight, or a familiar face is suddenly missing from the classroom.
Over the last few days, we have looked at evacuation, separation and the children who became casualties of the Second World War. Today I want to look at something slightly different.
How did the children who survived these experiences actually cope with them?
The answer is not as simple as we might expect.
Some children appear to have adapted remarkably well. They played, laughed, went to school when they could and sometimes turned the strange new world around them into an adventure. Bomb sites became forbidden playgrounds, pieces of shrapnel became treasures and children recreated what they saw around them in their games, pretending to be wardens, soldiers or nurses.
It did not necessarily mean they were unaffected. Play was one of the ways children made sense of things they could not control.
Other children struggled far more.
Some evacuees cried themselves to sleep because they desperately missed home. Younger children could become withdrawn or cling to adults, while others became angry or difficult. Bed-wetting, prolonged crying and changes in behaviour were observed among some children separated from their families.
Perhaps surprisingly, wartime observations made by Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlingham at the Hampstead War Nurseries suggested that, for many young children, separation from the people they loved could be more upsetting than the bombing itself. Their nurseries cared for children whose homes had been destroyed or whose family circumstances had been disrupted, and particular importance was placed on maintaining contact with mothers and keeping brothers and sisters together where possible.
Parents themselves often tried desperately to create a sense of normality.
Children did not always know how frightened the adults around them really were.
A mother might smile while taking her children into the shelter and save her tears until they were asleep. Fathers built bunks and seats inside Anderson shelters. Families played cards, sang songs, told stories or brought something to eat. One wartime recollection describes a mother teaching her daughter to knit by candlelight while they sat together in the cellar waiting for the next explosion.
It was not going to stop the bombs.
But it gave the child something ordinary to concentrate on.
Even some of the equipment designed to protect children was made less frightening. Gas masks intended for small children were brightly coloured and became known as “Mickey Mouse” masks. Behind that cheerful appearance was an extremely serious purpose, but adults understood that a frightening-looking mask was something a small child might resist wearing.
Sometimes parents simply did not tell children everything.
News of casualties might be discussed after bedtime. Worries about a father serving abroad, a missing relative or a badly damaged home could be softened until adults knew more. Of course children still overheard conversations, noticed the whispered voices and recognised when Mum had been crying. Protecting them completely was impossible.
And parents were not doing it alone.
Neighbours looked after one another’s children. Teachers continued lessons in shelters and unfamiliar classrooms. Churches and public buildings became places of safety. Foster families opened their homes to evacuees, although experiences varied enormously.
Volunteers provided food and practical help after raids, while organisations such as the Women’s Voluntary Service supported people whose homes had been damaged or destroyed.
For a frightened child, something as simple as a familiar teacher, a kind neighbour or another child to play with could provide a little stability when almost everything else had changed.
But we should be careful about the familiar image of the cheerful wartime child who simply “got on with it”.
Many did.
Some even remembered parts of their wartime childhood with affection: the friendships, communal singing, countryside adventures and extraordinary freedom.
Others carried very different memories into adulthood.
The same air raid that one child slept through could leave another terrified. The same evacuation that gave one child a loving second family could leave another feeling abandoned and unwanted.
Perhaps that is the most important thing to remember.
There was no single wartime childhood.
Behind every photograph of smiling children carrying gas-mask boxes was an individual child trying, in their own way, to understand a world that had suddenly become frighteningly uncertain.
Do you have a parent, grandparent or other relative who ever spoke about how they coped with being a child during the Second World War?
No comments:
Post a Comment