late night

Yesterday afternoon we sent my children to a social worker to see how they were dealing with being refugees. She said that they all seemed mostly ok but she was very concerned about my son. They were talking about what happened and he told her a bunch of exciting stories which included a bomb hitting our house and destroying everything in his room. He was able to graphically desc ribe specific objects that were not in the drawer and they got blown up.

Part of that was because we had a number of loud house rattling blasts and we didn't let them upstairs for 4 days, while they slept in our room on the main floor. Part of it is because I encourage the children to have an active imagination and do not stop them when they make up stories about events. After every tiyul we go on to a historic site, my son goes back to his nursery and tells the whole class how he was part of the historic battle at the site we went and visited and that it happened that day and not in history. My son is fully emersed in the alternate reality that I posted about before the bombing started.

Last night they had a session for adults to talk about the situation. There were only 4 other people who showed up, all from the Jerusalem region. They had concerns about what to tell their children and how to deal with histyerical people from out of the country telling them the entire country is being attacked.
She asked how I deal with the stress, and I told her I normally didn't get stressed out until this happened. She asked how I dealt with this stress and I told her that I spent the morning with a big headache and throwing up, but now I am fine. She didn't seem to think that was a good way of relieving stress.

She did recommend that we don't get addicted to the news, which is a cute thought.

Today the family went to the Israel museum, which is free for children of the north and adults get a 50% discount.