I didn't have school from 7th to 12th grade due to war. AMA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are you in the DMV?

Yes, I'm in DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for your perspective. My mother was a child living in Europe during WWII and survived Nazi occupation, hunger and near-starvation, death of both parents due to no medical care, and many other horrors but still managed to get a good education. I think there was some psychological damage but she and her classmates survived and went on to have good lives.

We will be okay. Our kids will be okay.

Exactly! History tells us that we will be.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for this. Amazing perspective.

Question: Do you restrict your child’s screen access to entice your child to read more?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I come from a family of war refugees who also didn't get schooling but who eventually landed in the US and eventually did well. But what I always heard when they talked about it was that they were the unusual and lucky ones, and that most kids in that situation struggled terribly and definitely never made up the lost educational time. They remained interested in issues of access to education their whole lives. One of them became a professor and spent years in the summer working on international education access projects.

OP: Have you ever done anything like that? Do you volunteer or have a passion for education access?

10000% I believe that education is a way out of poverty, bigotry, racism, and many other things. Education is one thing that no one can take away from you once you have it.

I volunteer at a non-profit that teaches immigrants English. I know better than anyone that the first step to success in this country is to learn to speak English. I do my best to help others succeed.

PP here. Thanks OP. Yes, that was how my relatives thought as well. I don't think the professor relative would have thought that kids would all be okay, though. I can just hear him now -- for sure he would be worrying about the kids left behind who won't be okay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for this. Amazing perspective.

Question: Do you restrict your child’s screen access to entice your child to read more?

For sure. It's harder to enforce when I have to work all day though.

[Anonymous]

The difference is OP read a lot and was allowed to gather with friends. Today's kids are on screens all day, just passively consuming nonsense. It's killing their minds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The difference is OP read a lot and was allowed to gather with friends. Today's kids are on screens all day, just passively consuming nonsense. It's killing their minds.

You don’t think my mind was being killed by having to leave everything I knew behind (clothes, memories, friends) and then live for 4 years with no electricity, water, very little food? All while being constantly bombarded and shot at?

What’s stopping your kids from reading?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The difference is OP read a lot and was allowed to gather with friends. Today's kids are on screens all day, just passively consuming nonsense. It's killing their minds.

This is not an inevitability.

my kids are read every day, and play in the backyard with friends regularly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The difference is OP read a lot and was allowed to gather with friends. Today's kids are on screens all day, just passively consuming nonsense. It's killing their minds.

Are you really trying to argue that kids today have it harder than living through the siege of Sarajevo? Just turn off the tv/iPad/phone and push them outside with a book. They won’t even have to dodge snipers or bombs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is such an inspirational and calming post. Thank you so much, OP.

Thank you. That's exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to provide some comfort and assurance that things will be ok in the end.

OP, my late father worked in Sarajevo in the late '90s and early 2000s. He met so many wonderful, resilient people and spoke of them often. Because you said reading was so important to you, I want to share that I was so moved by the story of how the staff at Bosnia's National Library risked their lives to remove and rescue boxes of books and archival materials during the war.

I am so glad you are safe and experiencing happiness and success. Thank you for sharing your story.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The war started when I was in 7th grade. We had no distance learning since there was no internet in my country in the early 90s. We tried for a while to meet with teachers occasionally in pods in people's homes, but that stopped because it became too dangerous for us to move around. There was also no electricity or running water in the city almost the entire time.

Fast forward to today, I have a degree from an American University (3.9 GPA), have a stable job, a family.

I'm posting this not to lecture anyone or shame anyone, but to hopefully comfort some of you who are panicking about kids not going back to school in person this fall.

Feel free to ask me whatever you want.

Thank you for posting this OP not only because it provides some context in which we can view our own children situation, for instance yes the pandemic is difficult but it is certainly not like being in the middle of a war. Our children will survive. The more we as parents provide a sense of normalcy by learning how to handle our own anxieties they were fair with higher outcomes.

[Anonymous]

Do you think that getting a base education from K-6th grade was key to your being able to pick it back up when the war was over? I’m curious how elementary kids (say a first grader when the war broke out) fared? What are your thoughts on DL this year? And thanks for this. I listened to a podcast a few years ago from another kid that lived in war torn Bosnia. He is now an Ivey league professor. I can’t remember the podcast though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Amazing story, OP. Good for you for getting through it so well.

I imagine kids in Europe during WWII had similar experiences. I saw pictures of kids in London going to school in the tunnels of the Tube during air raids. I imagine they were, in reality, barely learning anything.

I definitely have PTSD and major anxiety that I deal with every day, but from the outside a live a normal life.

Even if they held school, I don't think we would have learned much honestly. It's hard to think about anything but survival when they are bombing you 24/7.

At least our kids now do not have that.

Yes, we can be thankful for that. What an inspiring post - thank you for offering your perspective and I am so happy that you were able to build a life for yourself here!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for the levity. As a person who has also experienced great tragedy in my life, it is hard to read the endless sadness from people who think the world is ending. No, it's not great but life could be SO MUCH WORSE.

+1 million

And thanks to the OP for providing perspective.

I’m first generation from another country and I understand exactly how much worse things could be.

Yes, some things are crappy right now, but overall it could be so much worse. And i agree that it is so hard to read/hear the endless sense of despair and sadness from some people.

Good wishes to all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is such an inspirational and calming post. Thank you so much, OP.

Thank you. That's exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to provide some comfort and assurance that things will be ok in the end.

OP, my late father worked in Sarajevo in the late '90s and early 2000s. He met so many wonderful, resilient people and spoke of them often. Because you said reading was so important to you, I want to share that I was so moved by the story of how the staff at Bosnia's National Library risked their lives to remove and rescue boxes of books and archival materials during the war.

I am so glad you are safe and experiencing happiness and success. Thank you for sharing your story.

What did you father do in Sarajevo? I worked for OSCE and OHR for a fee years before I left.