Bracha Vaknin is counting her blessings. And not just her seven children but the fact that during the Hamas terror attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, some 20 security guards in Netivot gathered at the entrance to town and shot the terrorists who had every intention of making its inhabitants their next victims.
This is no small matter since the 50,000 men, women and children who call Netivot home live a mere nine kilometers from the Gaza border.
But as grateful as they are, that day and the year since have not left the Vaknin family untouched.
“After so many rounds of rockets and having to run into the shelter, you learn to see the underlying symptoms in each child,” says Vaknin, who moved to Israel from the Boston area in 2009. “The ones who can’t sleep at night or are afraid of the dark or start wetting the bed again or jump at the sound of a book dropping.”
And even when some time elapses and the kids begin to relax, says their mom, “when the sirens are back after a few days of quiet, it means the trauma never gets a chance to fully heal.”
Not to mention the trauma thousands of Israel’s children are experiencing: the loss of a parent or one who’s injured or serving as a reservist in the Israel Defense Forces on a yo-yo schedule of home to military duty to home to military duty.
“Everyone needs tools they can put into practice to help them parent their unsettled families,” says Eydl Reznik, a trauma recovery coach and director of Torah Parent Coach organization, which provides counseling and courses to parents. With her partner, psychologist Ilana Trachtman, Reznik is finding these services in great demand, especially in her home city of Safed, which has been under increasing attack since the war heated up in the north.
Parents in the Upper Galilee city are facing security threats along with such other war-related problems as job losses (hotels, restaurants, the city’s famed art quarter and even food stores have been hit hard).
“These things, plus the siren when you least expect it, break a family’s routine, and everyone gets less sleep,” says Reznik. “Kids can read their parents well so: If they stay calm and reassure their children that those are our soldiers protecting us in those planes, the boom is the Iron Dome protecting us, God is protecting us and the siren is telling us we need to be in a safe place now, the kids are more likely to feel safe. We’re seeing that a loving family and community are powerful antidotes to PTSD.”
In fact, the saferoom or bomb shelter can be a place of fun—from art to music to Legos to bubble blowing and even the occasional pillow fight, suggests Reznik.
An easy, cost-free technique is also proving helpful to many of Israel’s kids. “Leading your child through a simple tapping [aka Emotional Freedom Techniques] routine begins by acknowledging the feelings that could otherwise become trapped and then helping them release their fears,” says Emily Barr, an Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) practitioner in Pardes Hanna, halfway between Tel Aviv and Haifa.
When kids wake up to a loud siren and have to jump out of bed or, even harder, are missing their fathers who are away or are evacuees living in a hotel, these stresses, unless they’re expressed and released, can build up in the body, adds Barr. “So, the sooner you help them deal with their feelings, the better. What’s amazing is that a simple thing like tapping can help do that.”
‘Shift the conversation’
One thing Barr has noticed is that children in more religious families “tend to be more comforted by reassurances that even though the soldiers are protecting us, the bigger truth is that it’s God who’s protecting us.”
Another approach that’s been shown to work in times of stress is the art of the counterbalance, says Julian Ford, a clinical psychologist, professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut’s medical school and coauthor of Hijacked by Your Brain: How to Free Yourself When Stress Takes Over.
Finding themselves in a panic-inducing situation, after doing whatever is required to make sure everyone is safe, parents often discover lectures and pep talks just don’t work, he says. “That’s when it’s a good idea to gently shift the conversation to help the child focus on something they love to do, be it music or soccer, a favorite book, playing with their dog or even a video game.”
That shift provides a counterbalance to the stressor,” says Ford. “You’re not pretending everything is fine, but by asking how they learned to make that move in their last soccer game or what the book is about, it helps normalize things by patiently and slowly adding a reminder of the other, happier parts of their life.”
Tough-acting teens
Ford has seen this tactic work well even with tough-acting teens. “Over time, by zeroing in on what they love in their lives, the parent can open their child’s eyes to be able to see beyond this scary situation.”
That can nurture the development of an important lifelong skill: resiliency.
The first time Ford witnessed Israeli resiliency at close range was during a visit two decades ago.
“It was the Second Intifada and the young IDF soldiers we met displayed such a strong sense of duty—they were not going to let anything stop them,” he recalls. “Just the fact that there is this nation is amazing, considering all the adversities the Jewish people and Israelis have gone through and continue to go through.”
Still, despite Israeli resiliency and parents’ best efforts, sometimes more is needed. So how to recognize when a child could benefit from some professional help?
Reznik says parents need to be alert to such signs as prolonged insomnia, a change in eating habits, meltdowns, curling up and staring into space, failure in school, violent outbursts and excessive crying or clinginess. “These tell us that their fight-flight-freeze response is overactivated,” she adds. “And they haven’t developed the ability to recalibrate themselves yet.”
For the Vaknin family, there’s been an unexpected blessing from living so close to Gaza. “We’ve had rockets for years, so we’ve had a chance to build our skills and our resilience,” she says. “I’m calmer and that helps my kids deal with it. But now my heart is with the people in the north. All we want is our kids to live in peace.”
Would she ever consider leaving? “I can’t,” she says with a sigh. “This is my home and these are my people, my elderly neighbors, my community.” Besides, Vaknin has developed a foolproof way of taking the sting out of a visit to the bomb shelter. “I just tell the kids, ‘As soon as we get out, we’re going to bake something yummy.”
When stress hits, either immediate (a siren) or extended (wartime, family losses), Reznik suggests some easy ways to calm a child’s nerves:
- Hand them a cup of water and keep a pitcher on the table so everyone can drink.
- Create a special song or jingle to sing in the saferoom or bomb shelter.
- Invite your kids to move. Jumping on a mattress in the saferoom or dancing to music lowers adrenaline and cortisol, brain chemicals produced by stress, and raises endorphins, the ones that make everyone smile and calm down.
- Take a deep breath, breathing in for three seconds and exhaling for five-six seconds for at least three breaths, resets executive functioning and calms the startle response.
- Place a massaging hand over the heart for a “vagus nerve” hug to lower heart rate and stress.
