Parents must recognise and manage children's fears following the death of Robert Holohan, writes Marie Murray
One cannot imagine. One is even afraid to imagine what the experience has been for the parents of little Robert Holohan since he went missing. It hurts even more to think what an abyss of suffering lies ahead for them now. This is descent into hell, every parent's worst fear.
For 10 days we have lived with, prayed for and wished beyond hope that this child would appear. The worst has happened. Now we feel the intensity of his family's pain and it pains us that good people should have to suffer such bad things. It makes no sense in what often seems to be a senseless world: a world of global trauma and local tragedy, both brought so floridly before us in recent times.
Natural disaster is eventually reconcilable. But unnecessary, callous, calculated disaster: the murder of a child, carries sorrow of unspeakable depth. And it terrifies us. How could this happen in a small, "safe", caring community?
If we as adults are frightened, what emotions must children have as they watch, witness, eavesdrop, overhear and observe the responses of the adult world? Each day has brought more media monitoring of the event. Each night, nature in sympathy, has howled and flung itself in helpless, ceaseless storms. To a young child, wrapped up in bed, thinking about another child out there, lost and alone, all childhood fears of night and dark and monsters merge. The child's core of security can be dented deeply.
Because children do not usually articulate their fears in immediately visible ways, adults may be unaware of the extent to which this tragedy, more than many others, will resonate with children. Remember, if parents' worst dread is murder of their child, it is the centre of childhood's worst imagining. It is every frightening fairytale ever told, every incautious bogeyman story . . . And children do not always say, in the way that adults can hear, that they are afraid. Therefore the first major task for adults now, is how to respond to what has happened and how to talk to their children about it in a sensitive, calm, respectful, protective yet reassuring manner.
Before providing any information we need to understand what a child already knows, the source of that information, the conclusions drawn from it, the interpretation the child may already have made of his or her immediate world based on it and what specific measures, if any, may be required to ensure children's safety during this uncertain time.
The immediate instinct of parents is to gather their children around them, to guard their every moment, restrict their usual activities and to keep them always in their sights. There is also a difficult balance for fearful parents between protecting and frightening children.
We must also recognise and manage children's fears. We know that young children tend to express anxiety either by new or intensified behaviours such as fear of the dark, of night time, of monsters, or by tummy aches and pains or by being more clingy, more demanding and less able to be apart from parents. Indeed, this so-called "separation anxiety" may not just be symptomatic of children's anxiety but can equally be generated by parents at a time such as this. In the eyes of parents and children, normal activities now carry abnormal danger.
Many children will have specific questions about what happened. Who did this? Why? How? Has the person been caught? Is it safe? And most children will have a deep, empathic sadness for Robert himself, the care of children for another child. Their compassion needs to be recognised, respected and allowed.
Locally many children will have known Robert. They may wish to send cards of condolences to his family or the other children in his family, to place flowers in his church, to draw pictures, or write poems, or talk about what they liked most about him. They may wish to go to the funeral. They will remember him forever - this will be one of the most significant tragedies in their young lives. All of our psychological research tells us how important it is that children be appropriately involved in community expressions of grief and mourning.
Children will also be reassured if it is explained to them that this is a terrible tragedy for everyone, all people are sad about this. That it is really unusual, something that hardly ever happens, and that is why everyone is so shocked.
Children need not be afraid, everything is being done to find the people who did this, most people are exceptionally kind but unfortunately there are a few who are seriously sick and sometimes they do terrible things.
And what of ourselves? We may need to consider who else do we know for whom this event may resonate deeply and emotionally and re-evoke the memory of tragedy in their lives? What other parents have in the past suffered the tragic abduction, harm or death of their child? What renewal of memory is there today for the many families from whom a child went missing and was never found.
Because the tragic loss of a child - the abduction, the brutalisation, the murder of a child - when it happens to any family, it happens to all of us. That is why we have watched and waited, why so many people searched through rain and hail and howling winds for this little boy. Robert was important. He is important to many people. His picture is imprinted on our minds. His death diminishes everyone because this should not happen to anyone.
We are not a community of separate individuals. We are interconnected, we feel for his family and our deepest, most sincere condolences are with them at this time.