The Children of 9/11

09/16/2008

Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.
Mary Lou Cook

Timesonline carried a story last week about the continuing impact on the 3,000 children who lost parents in the 9/11 terrorist attack. Excerpts from this story:

"The average age of the “9/11 kids” when the twin towers fell was 9, but some were babies (or in their mothers' wombs). In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy many organisations clamoured to offer assistance to the grieving children, offering everything from counselling to music lessons, summer camps, mentoring, art therapy and scholarships. But, seven years on, it seems that '9/11 fatigue' has set in: funding for many of these support projects has dried up along with sympathy from friends and family.

"According to the charity Tuesday's Children, which has provided support to 5,000 family members since its inception in 2001, some children are only just beginning to open up about losing their parents. 'This year, some kids were able to express things for the first time,' says Terry Grace Sears, who is involved in running summer camps and mentoring programmes for the 9/11 kids. 'Particularly the young boys were grieving.'

"Sears says that some children were too young at the time of their loss to comprehend it, while others felt they needed to stay strong for the surviving parent and repressed their grief. They need support now as much as ever - as the years go by there are new challenges for the 9/11 kids to face as surviving parents move on, remarry and form stepfamilies. In some cases grief has driven families apart, and rifts with the deceased parents' relatives have left some 9/11 kids estranged from their grandparents....

"...as the years pass, families of US victims say that support from relatives has waned or even stopped completely, the implication being that they should simply 'get on with their lives.' A survey of 110 families by the World Trade Center Family Centre found that nearly a quarter were now receiving little or no support from family and friends."

Exchange Resource on Dealing with Grieving Children

The Exchange resource, The Complete Parenting Exchange Library, contains 180 short articles for parents providing practical, appropriate advice on everyday parenting challenges. You can print these articles to share with a parent seeking advice, send them home with children, incorporate them into your center's newsletter, or share them with your teachers to assist them in working with parents. The articles are written by Karen Stephens, an expert in the early childhood field. Included in the library are a series of articles on "Fears; Anxiety Related to Death, Tragedy, or War."

For more information about Exchange's magazine, books, and other products pertaining to ECE, go to www.ccie.com.