Kids on War, Peace and Terrorism

June 7, 2006 -- -- How do you know what children really think about war and peace and terrorism?

In an effort to find out, a group of researchers followed a path less traveled. It listened to the children themselves.

Guess what? Even though some parents may go to great lengths to protect their children from knowing much about the evils out there, kids don't stay in the dark -- at least not for long. In this age of live communications from around the world, war and terrorism is as close as the TV dial, no matter where it occurs.

That struck home for Kathleen Walker a few days after fanatics brought terrorism to the heart of America on Sept. 11, 2001. Walker, then an art therapist, went to the fifth-grade class of a friend's son to talk to the children about what had happened.

Like most adults who found themselves in a similar situation, she soon learned that she didn't have all the answers. Walker recalled one child asking, "Would it be better to jump out of the building or stay?"

"I said I really couldn't answer that," she said. "You don't always know what you would do in different situations."

The right answer, if there is a right answer, would not have been nearly as important as just listening to the question, she adds.

"When adults talk about war and terrorism, they talk about it in terms of adult perspectives," she said. "My real interest is giving voice to children and adolescents."

Walker, now a professor of human development and family studies at Kent State University, joined with psychologist Maureen Blankemeyer, also of Kent State, and researchers at other institutions, including Purdue and Kansas State, to listen to the children. That took some of the researchers to Ireland, the former Yugoslavia, Israel, and across the United States.

Their findings may not be particularly surprising, or even dramatic, but they are powerful when presented by the children themselves.

Here are the words of a 4-year-old boy:

"The terrorists were killing every body. They killed the pilots and crashed. They killed the pilots. The terrorists killed the pilots and crashed the planes. And it was a big tower. Lots of people died, everybody in the plane, not just the towers."