Childhood and War (part 1): The Natives of a New World
In her column this week, Nataliia Bushkovska writes about having to wake up your kids early one morning to tell them: “The war has started!" - and then watching them getting used to living with war.
Illustration: Viktoriia Chernyakhivska - “Everything is ok, just go to sleep”.
BY NATALIIA BUSHKOVSKA
Ukrainian parents of my age - I am 37 - grew up on the memories of our grandparents regarding World War II. Many of them were of age at the time and had plenty to tell. My grandmother was eight years old when she and her Jewish mother fled Kyiv under falling bombs.
By a twist of fate, my eldest son was also eight when we were forced to leave our native Kyiv due to Russian bombardments. Beyond the memories, one core message ran like a red thread through everything: “There is nothing more terrifying than war. You can survive anything but that.”
When the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, I felt a terrible sense of failure as a mother, alongside the fear and confusion. I hadn’t been able to protect my children from the absolute worst.
Just yesterday, I lived in a world where I felt I had significant control. Not long ago, I was worried about vaccines, limiting screen time, getting enough fiber, and positive discipline. Now, I couldn’t even provide my children with basic safety.
When I woke them at 5:00 AM, and they asked what happened, it took every ounce of strength I had to say: “The war has started.”
To one degree or another, a sense of guilt haunts every parent I know - both those forced to leave the country and those who stayed in Ukrainian cities. Our children are children of war, and it feels to us adults as though no joy can change that.
But that isn’t true.
If we surface for a moment from the abyss of our disappointment, suffering, and guilt, we can see how differently a child’s brain perceives reality. I was struck by this thought after a post by my Facebook friend, anthropologist and folklorist Darka Antsybor.
Her young son, Tymur, isn’t even two yet. And he is absolutely fascinated by... generators. Just as other children are obsessed with cars, trains, or dinosaurs. He knows no life without the hum of generators that provide electricity to Ukraine’s rear cities following Russia’s destructive attacks on urban infrastructure. While we adults are in despair that our children must live with scheduled blackouts, little Tymur gets upset when the lights are on, because he loves it when the generators go “dr-dr-dr.”
Darka laughs, saying she’s starting to worry that there are no fairy tales about generators or generator toys - her son would be thrilled!
My children are older, but I notice interesting things too. For instance, what happens at home - my psychological state and how I react to events - affects them far more than what happens outside the window. Even if bombs are literally exploding outside that window.
I would be lying if I said the children aren’t scared. Of course they are, but it has become a ‘commonplace’ fear, much like a large dog barking at them on the street. They evaluate safety and danger in an entirely different way. In 2022, we went to Cyprus to visit friends. Back then, there was still hope that the war wouldn’t last for years, and we could wait it out in safety.
My eldest son, who already knew the basic rules – stay away from windows during shelling, and if you can’t reach a shelter, hide between two walls – anxiously scanned our temporary home and said:
“Mom, there are windows even in the bathroom here. Where will we hide if the war starts here?”
At the time, those thoughts of his drove me to despair. Kids shouldn’t think about such things! Now, reading about attacks on Cyprus (and the Middle East), I realize that Ukrainian children were simply prepared for this new world a little earlier.
Thanks to the resilience of Ukrainians, the work of the Armed Forces, and the support of our partners, my children have a fairly normal childhood. They go to school, celebrate birthdays with friends, cake, and balloons, and learn to live in the reality fate has handed them.
They are natives in this new world, where 100% safety has proven to be an illusion.
One of my tasks as a mother is not to project my sense of failure onto them. Because they feel like the winners and survivors of one of the bravest countries in the world.
Nataliia Bushkovska is writing a column for us - @bombsandbreakfast. Nataliia is a Kyiv-based journalist, mother of two, and she will be writing about motherhood, food, healthcare, everyday life, and resistance in a country at war. Small human stories from the capital living between air alarms, homework, and hope. Nataliia’s work can also be found here.
I soooo understand this. “Лишь бы не было войны» - “as long as there is no war” was my grandmother’s go to phrase in any life situation that seemed tough. She also grew up during world war 2. To me, a kid growing up in the Soviet Union in the 80’s, her fears seemed like quaint, hopelessly outdated fairy tales. What war could we possibly be fearing now, in the modern world? It had been half a century since WW2 and to a kid, that seemed like ancient history that would surely never return. War was far, far away, alive only in the distant memory of a paranoid old woman. Grandma is no longer here (my god, she would have been absolutely terrified), but it turned out that war was not far away at all, after all. It was simply hiding behind an old shower curtain. One quick jerk of the hand and you and your own children are now staring it in the face too. That’s all it took. What a rude wake up call to the nature of the reality we live in.
Being a parent today requires a lot of faith, in yourself especially. But every time period has its own dangers for your children. My parents worried about all the diseases that could harm us before all the vaccines were created. You are doing a great job teaching your son to thrive in his time.