Six-year-old Mohammed walks clinging to his mother, and refuses to sit on a separate chair next to her at the waiting room, but insists on standing in front of her to convince her to hold him in her arms.

At the therapy room, the mother's words poured with a mixture of feelings – anxiety, fear, sometimes anger, and pain, while Mohammed's fearful eyes tracking his mother's gestures; as if he is afraid, someone would kidnap her.

"It's been two months now and our life is in a crisis. Our life became confusing, especially since the beginning of the shelling and the sonic booms and sound bombs the Israeli warplanes drop over Gaza. We felt as if they were bombing right on top of us, rocking the entire house. From that time, my son Mohammed has changed. With every raid, he goes into a state of severe horror, screaming and running everywhere, not knowing where to hide. His body trembles until it gets spasms, and at night, he cannot sleep quietly. He does not sleep unless he is clinging to his father or mother. He wakes up in horror whenever he hears a sound, even after the raids stop. Now, he fears the sounds of firecrackers or shooting at weddings, funerals, clashes or demonstrations…

"Mohammed's extreme fear and constant clinging to me has prevented me from performing my daily chores, and made his younger siblings imitate him in his fears, which made life in the house unbearable," the mother said.

She continued, "Every morning Mohammed whines and says he does not want to go to school, to which he used to walk to alone, and insists that his father or mother take him right up to the door of his classroom, and pick him up from there at the end of every school day."

"During the past two months, Mohammed's academic achievements have significantly decreased, and when I asked him why his grades dropped, he said his mind always strays away from class. He does not understand what the teacher says, or listen to her teaching, because of always waiting for the next bombing."

One day Mohammed asked the mother; "Mummy, do my grandfather and grandmother hear the bombing in their graves?! Oh, Mummy, I wish I could die and sleep next to them, so I would not hear these sounds, because I fear them a lot, and maybe if I would die I'd be relieved of them." The mother replied that dead people do not hear anything.

The mother spoke to her son about the sonic booms and sound bombs in simple sentences, but Mohammed's fears are much more than these attempts. The parents became tired of Mohammed's weeping and clinging to them, and sometimes they call him a coward or become very nervous and push him hard to face his fears, beat them, but the more their nervousness, and anger increase, the more fearful their son becomes and the more he clings to them.

The child's feeling of insecurity, anxiety and fear reflects negatively on all levels – the emotional, behavioral, thinking and physical levels.

Children have a vivid imagination, and they tend to inflame the dangers of these booms, because their knowledge is very still limited. Children cannot differentiate between sonic booms and real raids. As sonic raids occur often, the child's expectation and alertness to the booms increases. The child's thoughts at the moment of explosions are magnified, fearing that he will loose a family member, which makes him cling more and more.

The most important thing a child needs in these difficult times is a warm embrace that supplies him with love, care and patience. This could be the magical solution and cure for his feelings of fear and insecurity, and would therefore give him more stability and security.