Mr. Klauk, hundreds of Ukrainian refugee children are now going to German schools.

Among them are some who are traumatized or at least mentally damaged.

How can you help these children?

Anke Schipp

Editor in the "Life" department of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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It is important to keep in mind the extraordinary living conditions of those affected, because they should shape the attitude in dealing with the people affected.

You should treat them with empathy and special sensitivity.

School can make an important contribution here.

The leitmotif of pedagogical action to help the children and young people who are particularly affected can be: school as a safe place.

What does that mean?

It's about offering people who have experienced bad things in the war and also while fleeing a safe external framework in which they can find orientation, structure and maybe a little bit of normality.

Each and every person affected should be looked at individually.

It's not about pity, it's about compassion.

Basically, positive relationships with other people play a central role, in which those affected experience patience and understanding.

In this safe framework, the self-healing powers can be promoted, coping resources activated and the experience gradually processed.

How do you manage that in a normal, well-timed school day?

School is always to be understood as a social space.

All children and young people spend a large part of their time in school, so it is fundamentally very important to consciously shape this environment.

The first step is to give the affected children and young people a feeling of being welcome and to include them in the school community by having permanent reference persons, for example other students as godparents.

In everyday school life, it is then about an optimal balance between structure and orientation on the one hand and a space for individual needs on the other.

Especially at school, experiencing togetherness, connectedness and social support in the class can be very successful,

How can you tell if a child is traumatized?

The range of possible reactions is very wide.

Above all, teachers are often initially unaware of what exactly the children and young people experienced during the war and while fleeing.

What is important is that the behavior shown is in any case a completely "normal" reaction to an "abnormal" event, as it is exceptional.

People who have been confronted with a traumatic event need understanding and sensitivity from those around them.

They act as well as they can within the framework of their experience and their personal possibilities.

There is no wrong experience after bad events.

What reactions do the children show?

A typical post-traumatic stress consequence is that those affected experience recurring, intrusive memories and thoughts of the event.

“The past” keeps intruding on the “here and now”.

So-called intrusions occur, which means that inner images, films or sensory impressions related to what has been experienced suddenly appear in everyday life, or those affected have nightmares and feel haunted by these memories.

This reliving of the situation cannot be controlled by those affected.

They experience anxiety, stress and helplessness.

How can this be seen in the children?