Children’s responses will vary hugely

CHILDREN are not as dumb as adults sometimes think they are. During the siege, and the subsequent massacre, the children were perfectly capable of understanding the degree and nature of the threat to them and to their teachers and parents.

The children were likely to have taken their initial emotional responses from the responsible adults around them. If the teachers and parents in the siege were calm and able to hold it together, then the children were significantly more likely to have remained calm and collected. In a situation where there were perceived threats from the ‘bad men’, the children would simply categorise those fighters as ‘bad men’, and be appropriately frightened of them.

Children become aware of death at an early age, and try from as young as four to understand and place it in context. They are often accepting of the concept of an afterlife, and do not tend to question this until their teens.