It’s not worth hiddding it. Our children live in the real world, they don’t grow up in domes.

Denying the situation as a defense mechanism, it produces a loss of consciousness of humanity. It’s important to explain to them what’s going on.

To show it, selecting the images and sounds (according to the age and sensibility of the child).

At age five, children can already distinguish between reality and fiction when they see someone harming others.

Avoid dramatic images, to not increase fears and afflictions. Always contextualize the situation. Reveal the values and intentions of both parties.

War to the eyes of children, is always different from ours. Here, and because we are living a war from close, the one in Venezuela (the country where father and youngest daughter were born, where we have lived and where the father still works), I show them images of hope, between tear gas bombs thrown from the ground and from helicopters.

I show them there’s always space to defend our values, even while running from bullets. Space to claim for freedom, dignity, peace and justice. To claim for equal rights to all human beings.

War to the eyes of children should show the possibility of creating a better world and for that, there are difficult choices, with hard consequences.

But the choice that always set us free is to march, surrounded by faith, the same faith that takes the place of fear and creates space for peace, even beside bloodshed. It, will never be in vain.

War to the eyes of children sees soldiers surrendering to human rights and to the noblest ideals that connotes us as a race.

Sees police officers helping protesters, sees grandparents held by grandchildren, shouting that freedom will win!

Sees doctors leaving a clinic that had just been attacked (the same where my daughters have been observed), with a newborn in the arms, jumping into a truck and leaving at high speed to save him in another clinic nearby.

Sees women armed with shouts that unleash love words.

War to the eyes of children sees love and hope reborning in the middle of chaos and destruction.

Sees the building of peace and also sees that it’s always worthed to fight for what we believe and it’s good for humanity. Nothing has meaning but the one each gives it. Let us all learn with them.

O conteúdo War to the eyes of children aparece primeiro em Rita Aleluia.