‘I Feel Bad Because There Is WAR’ : Frightened by war in the Persian Gulf, children may easily confuse rumors with truth. Like their parents, they feel anxious and helpless. Conversation is the surprisingly simple way to deal with almost all of their fears, experts say.

A 3-year-old child was riding his bicycle last week when an airplane flew overhead. Terrified, the boy ran inside his house.

“He had no (direct) connection with the war,” said Dennis Embry, a child psychologist who has created workbooks for children with relatives serving in Operation Desert Storm. “But he was scared to death.”

Experts say that kind of fear is widespread among children who are watching their country at war. They worry about their own proximity to danger, destruction of their homes, invasion by foreigners.

“They are wondering, ‘Will the Iraqi bombs come to my neighborhood?,’ ” said James Garbarino, a Chicago psychologist who is president of the Erikson Institute for Advanced Study in Child Development there.

In their fearful state, children may confuse rumors about the war with truth. “I was meeting with a group of junior-high and high-school kids at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base here,” said Embry, who is based in Tuscon, Ariz. “They told me they had heard a rumor that 5,000 Iraqis were going to invade their base.”

Often, the anxiety and helplessness that children feel in wartime is only a mirror of the emotions their parents are experiencing. The level of wartime worry can paralyze a family as adults try to sort out the issues for themselves, and as they wonder: What do we tell the children?

Just how much, parents ask themselves, do children comprehend about armed conflict that is half a world away? Can young minds embrace the notion of strangers killing one another in the name of war? Can they distinguish between what is happening in the Persian Gulf, and what happens on their Nintendo screen? If they are upset by what they see and hear, what can be done about their trauma?

Talk is the answer to almost all of those questions, the professionals say. Talk to your children to find out what they know and what they feel. Equally important, let them talk to you. The answers may be surprising.

“Children understand a lot about war,” said Dr. Lee Salk of the Cornell University Medical School in Manhattan. “But they don’t understand everything.”

“They understand the danger,” Embry said. “They don’t understand the politics.”

Neither do many parents. Before the United States rushed to its defense, many Americans were not even certain where Kuwait is. The face of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein may have become familiar on television and in newspapers, but the topographic and human makeup of his country were vague at best.

“Parents are . . . so confused,” said Pat Kirk, the administrator of an outreach program for parents and teachers concerned about the war at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica.

Such bafflement only complicates any effort to comfort children in a time of war.

“If you’re anxious, you’re not going to be able to help anyone else,” said Wayne Sandler, a psychiatrist in Los Angeles who is conducting workshops about the war at Century City Hospital. “The key is to be able to listen to yourself--and to listen to the children.”

Experts divide children--and their concerns about the war--into groups based on their age and degree of involvement. Children who have some personal connection to the war--a parent or other relative deployed in the Persian Gulf--will have “special anxiety,” said Garbarino, co-author of “No Place to Be a Child: Growing Up in a War Zone,” to be published this spring by Lexington Books.

“This is where the feelings will be most intense, in part because the adults are likely to be more worried,” he added.

Said Salk, “This is where we have to realize that not only do people we know, friends and relatives, serve to fight in the war, but there’s a chance that they may be injured or even killed.” Above all, Salk said, children who have a parent serving in the Persian Gulf should be encouraged to talk about how they are feeling. They should be listened to, and their feelings should be honored.

Integrity is essential to these children, said Embry. Even when the truth is painful, it should not be withheld. “We can never say, ‘Mommy or Daddy will never die,’ ” he said. “(Death) is one of the realities of life, and children need to understand it. But we can temper honesty with optimism. We can say, ‘Let’s hope for the best.’ ”

“Creative parents” must use their own resources, Salk said, perhaps by praying with the family or by saying something like, “While Daddy may be in danger, let’s hope he’s not.”

Embry suggests that children with parents in the Gulf should be encouraged to write to that parent. Better yet, he said, let the child make a tape recording to send to the parent.

In any high-stress situation, children often internalize their concerns, or refuse to address them directly. “You’re seeing a lot of kids who are trying to act out,” said Tom Geceivicz, who runs a Red Cross support group in Canton, Me., for families with concerns about the war.

In San Diego, Barrie Leonards has had just that experience with her 6-year-old son Kenny. Her husband, Arrington, was deployed in September, and Leonards said Kenny is testing her, refusing to do his regular chores and hiding the laundry in the closet and under the bed.

To “normalize” this difficult situation, Kenny should not be let off from his chores, Embry said. “You still have to deal with laundry or the trash,” he said. “You have rules so stick to them. Be loving, but be firm.”

Other children “who are directly involved with deployment” may find it harder to talk about their worries, Embry said. “To get them to say, ‘I’m scared to death,’ is really difficult. They’re afraid to talk about their fear because they’re afraid they’ll be put down by their classmates, and maybe even by their teachers. Kids are expected to keep the same stiff upper lip as their parents.

“We have a culture that thinks fear is a four-letter word,” Embry said. “We are less likely to use that four-letter word than the other four-letter word that begins with ‘F.’ ”

Soon after the deployment of troops to the Persian Gulf, Embry began working on a 32-page workbook for children, “Someone in My Family Went Off to the Middle East.” With funding from Century Health Care of Tulsa, Okla., the book now has 550,000 copies in print and is distributed free. Century maintains a toll-free telephone number (1-800-735-KIDS) for information about the book.

Embry, who has created other booklets to deal with different childhood problems, said, “Someone in My Family” aims “to reduce the probability of anxiety disorder and childhood depression.” One edition of the book is geared to children ages 3 to 8. A separate edition addresses children 9 and older.

“You’re writing for a much higher level of thought process when you are writing for older children,” Embry said. “It’s like you’re talking to an almost-adult.”

Younger kids ask easier questions, Embry said, and often accept less complex answers. “The fears of the older child will be more complex. The older child will be more keenly aware of how changes in his family life might alter everything in his life,” Embry said.

Fear, and especially fear of separation from loved ones, affects children of all ages in wartime, the experts say. But children may approach their fear in different ways at different ages. “The kids 7, 8, 9, 10 are a very mixed picture,” Garbarino said. “There’s a fair number who want to ignore what’s going on. The kids older than that are likely to have a political perspective on what’s going on. But they still have a root anxiety about what the war is going to mean to them on a day-to-day basis.”

As an example, Garbarino pointed to his own family. “My daughter, who is 8, is studiously attempting to ignore the war. She doesn’t want to get engaged. She wants this kind of reassurance that things are going to go on.

“(But) my 14-year-old son has been out on the marches,” Garbarino said.

Regardless of the ages of their children, parents are advised by Garbarino to “show kids that it is important that they can do something to express their views.” Embry echoes this advice, suggesting that parents urge children to draw pictures if they are unwilling to discuss their thoughts on the war.

Pat Kirk reminds parents that nonstop television coverage of the action in the Persian Gulf “is like watching a documentary every day.” Garbarino and Embry suggest parents ration news coverage.

With its relentless pictures of the war, television “jerks you around, and makes you feel helpless,” Embry said. “When you feel helpless, that’s a great setup for anxiety disorder.”

Normalcy, said Garbarino, can be a healthy deterrent to the sometimes addictive lure of live coverage and the trauma that comes with it.

“You make even greater efforts to show your child that you are going about your normal life,” he said. “You have your regular mealtimes, you go to movies, you play your basketball games.”

For children, Garbarino said, it is important that “it is not just words, but actions that show that life goes on.”

Garbarino warned that in some ways, the “bombing war has already become normalized for kids.” But “big ground action could be another crisis point,” he cautioned.

Scheduling “activities that bring calmness” can help families regain “a sense of control and tranquillity, which gives you the emotional energy to make decisions,” Embry said.

“I would begin making a list of when I feel anxious, mad or calm, then do the things that make me feel calm.”

To “people who say, ‘that’s putting your head in the sand,’ ” Embry rejoins: “No, that’s learning about serenity. There’s nothing you can do about the Scud missiles.”

As Sandler said, for parents and children alike, “All anyone wants to know is that they’re going to be safe.”

As if by instinct, 6-year-old Kenny Leonards seems to be taking much of the experts’ advice to heart. Kenny does get sad when he watches television pictures of servicemen in the Middle East, because he wishes he could see his father. He has written to his dad, just as the experts would tell him to do. In 6-year-old capital letters, Kenny closes his letters to his father with these words: “BE BRAVE.”

Also contributing to this story was Times Staff Writer Nora Zamichow in San Diego and Leo Banks in Arizona.