Children in warzones
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Hello, this is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I'm Neil.
And I'm Becca.
Now today we're going to be talking about the very serious topic of war and how it affects children.
Some of the discussions you hear will mention death and trauma. We won't go into detail, but if you think you may feel uncomfortable, you can check the transcript for this episode before listening to it on our website, bbclearningenglish.com.
And remember, you'll find all this episode's vocabulary along with a free worksheet and many other 6 Minute English episodes on our website bbclearningenglish.com.
The most recent figure from 2024 says that 520 million children are living in conflict zones. That's about one in every five children worldwide.
In this episode, we'll hear from Fergal Keane on the BBC World Service programme, The Global Story. Fergal is a BBC reporter, best known for reporting from war zones around the world, and as a result, he developed PTSD, which is a type of stress disorder. We'll be finding out what PTSD stands for at the end of the programme.
Now, in the clips, we'll hear Asma Khalid ask Fergal Keane about his own experience with childhood trauma. Fergal grew up in a home with an alcoholic father. Asma wanted to know how Fergal's own childhood trauma affected his reporting on the experiences of children in war zones.
I was hypervigilant. from the very earliest age, obviously watching out, you know, am I under threat? Is there a danger to me here?
Fergal mentions that he was hypervigilant because he was in dangerous situations as a child. The adjective vigilant means to always be careful to notice things, particularly when there's a possibility of danger.
Yes, and the prefix hyper- expresses that there is a lot of or even too much of something. Though neutral, it is often used in negative or critical contexts.
So hypervigilant means very, very careful, sometimes too careful and thoughtful. Hypervigilance, the noun, is a state of extreme alertness and sensitivity to surroundings, possibly because of extreme anxiety.
Now let's hear from Fergal as he talks about research on the experiences of children in war zones.
I mean, they disagree about a few things, but on this they're absolutely of one mind.
Fergal mentions that they, the researchers, disagree about their findings. But they're absolutely of one mind when considering the recovery from war trauma. If you are of one mind, you are of a group of people that share the same opinion, desire or viewpoint on a matter. Researchers may disagree on whether the experiences of children in war zones is improving... But on the point of recovery, they are of one mind, in that you can't recover from war trauma if you continue living with it.
Fergal goes on to talk about some of the ways in which these children might be helped.
So there's a new field of theory, well, I mean, relatively new field of theory, which encourages children to slowly and carefully try to confront, obviously not death and massacre again, but things like learning to sleep alone. not having to sleep with a parent, because that's what they did during the war, because they were so consistently terrified.
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