Sir, - When I lived in North Belfast 26 years ago there was much concern about how the "children of the Troubles" would cope with the violence around them. We are now seeing the profoundly depressing answer to this question in the behaviour of the children of those days, now parents, who are prepared to deliberately traumatise their children.
The essence of good parenting is the capacity to protect children and to be responsive to their emotional needs. The witnessing of a generation of emotionally blunted parents who are unable to do this demonstrates more than any scientific study the multi-generational impact of living with sectarian hatred and conflict.
Walking to school without intimidation is indeed a basic civil right which has been removed from the children attending Holy Cross School by the violence of the so-called loyalists. To respond to the absence of this civil right by depriving children of their fundamental right to feel safe and secure and to be protected by the adults in their lives is a greater wrong.
If these parents are unable to understand this, what hope is there for the next generation of "children of the Troubles"? - Yours, etc.,
Olive Travers, Senior Clinical Psychologist, Ballyshannon, Co Donegal.