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CNN Saturday Morning News

Helping Children Cope With Crisis

Aired October 13, 2001 - 10:27   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: In New York, teachers and child psychiatrists are helping school children cope with the images of death and destruction that they saw either in person or on television during the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

As CNN's Kathy Slobogin reports, it's often the quiet children who need the most help.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KATHY SLOBOGIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On the day of the attack, at PS 154 in East Harlem...

DAWN BROOKS DECOSTA, TEACHER, PS 154: Block.

UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: Block.

DECOSTA: Dance.

UNIDENTIFIED CHILDREN: Dance.

SLOBOGIN: Teacher Dawn Brooks Decosta was at a loss...

DECOSTA: Foolish.

SLOBOGIN: ... how to calm her students when she herself was afraid.

DECOSTA: I had my own feelings as I was -- saw the parents rushing in that I really wanted to rush home and get my own children.

SLOBOGIN: In the next few days, the public was drenched in images of destruction. By the time the children returned to school two days later, Brooks Decosta realized they were frightened and confused.

DECOSTA: They kept seeing the instant replay on the news, that they didn't know if this was something was still going on downtown. How many times is this happening? I just felt like they needed to express whatever it was that they had had on their minds.

SLOBOGIN: Brooks Decosta, an art and reading teacher, asked the children to draw, to help them unlock their emotions. their drawings are of death, destruction and helplessness, but also of hope. DECOSTA: A lot of them weren't able to verbalize what they were feeling. They just didn't have their vocabulary to say that they were horrified. Looking back at the pictures, the one's that didn't say as much, those were the pictures that were most visually moving.

SLOBOGIN: One child who didn't speak much drew the two towers crying, holding onto each other.

DECOSTA: He sort of personified the twin towers, you know, as brothers. That was the most moving for me because I just hadn't thought of that at all.

SLOBOGIN: Dr. Paramjit Joshi, a child psychiatrist, told us the drawings were probably the best thing the teacher could have done.

DR. PARAMJIT JOSHI, CHILD PSYCHIATRIST: It's both -- not just the sheer sadness and horror but also some hope and some help on the way.

SLOBOGIN: Where many might see children's scribbles, Dr. Joshi sees feelings that are out of control.

JOSHI: Here, the child is really quite anxious and quite in anguish because you can see all of the scribbles all over the page.

SLOBOGIN: One child wrote, "A piece of the world has gone away. But God has them in a special place where nothing can wrong any day."

(on-camera): Have you observed that this a reaction of children to sort of reach for something beyond this world?

JOSHI: Yes and only because this is one way they can comfort themselves, by knowing that perhaps these people are heaven or God is taking care of them. And so it's somewhat of a solace to them that they have just not disappeared but they are in a safe place.

SLOBOGIN: Some of the children tried to make a safe place themselves for the twin towers -- this one in a heart. Their teacher says the children's images comforted her.

DECOSTA: A lot of it was reassuring for me and it really kind of changed my whole perspective of just the fear and the danger that I was feeling. In some kind of way, they were trying to pull something positive out of what had happened.

SLOBOGIN: Kathy Slobogin, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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