How mothers explain war to our children
The mothers of The Counteroffensive are raising children of different ages during the war. This Mother’s Day, they share their wartime dilemmas when their kids start to ask, “Mom, what was that?”
Editor’s Note: This story is dedicated to Mother’s Day.
We know many of our readers are mothers, navigating the quiet, everyday challenges of raising children, trying to keep them safe, understood, and loved in an unpredictable world.
Motherhood in Ukraine today has its challanges. It is shaped by air raid sirens, by shelter routes memorized like lullabies, by small backpacks packed just in case.
To all the mothers reading us – in the U.S., Canada, Ukraine, and beyond – you’re doing a great job, we’re thinking of you. Happy Mother’s Day.
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KYIV, Ukraine — Four homes. A baby boy kicks his little legs for the first time, standing with support. A girl builds yet another tower from her blocks. Elsewhere, a six-year-old girl creates a LEGO cat — only for the real cat, Kompot, to later see it as a rival. In the last one, a girl quietly draws another picture.
This is how children of mothers working for The Counteroffensive spend their days, like any other child , they are endlessly curious about the world around them. They ask why the sky is blue, why people need to work, why the sun disappears at night and why people argue.
Yet nothing prepares you as a mother to explain a war to your child.
Mother’s Day, celebrated on May 10, is an international holiday, usually filled with bouquets of flowers, warm sunlight, children’s handmade cards, and cheerful local events. It is a day meant to highlight care, gratitude, and the quiet strength of mothers everywhere.
Motherhood itself has always come with challenges and social judgments. Mothers are often told how to behave, as if there is only one correct way to be a ‘good mother.’ But in Ukraine, these long-standing pressures are intensified by the realities of war. The ongoing violence adds new layers of fear and responsibility, testing Ukrainian mothers every single day in ways that go far beyond ordinary expectations.
Nastia, mom of a 2-year-old daughter
The first hard question I faced during the war was when my two-year-old daughter started asking about the winter blackouts: “Mom, where is the light?”
I was puzzled and could only come up with a clumsy explanation. “It was taken by a man… but it will come back soon. Don’t worry, we will turn on our flashlights.”
“Why did they take the light?”
After the paywall:
Why Myroslava chose not to sleep apart from her baby
How Nastia explained the first explosion her daughter heard
How Oleksandra preserves a space for her daughter’s joy amid war
Why Kateryna and her daughter had to live separately for some period during the wartime?
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