Spirituality and Resilience in Children of War in Sri Lanka

Abstract

This mixed-method study examined adaptive and maladaptive development in 62 children of war in Sri Lanka and 15 caregivers. Participants included war orphans and nonwar orphans from Buddhist and Christian orphanages, and a comparison group of children from intact families. Children's measures included; risk and resilience indices, sand tray analysis (constructions and narrative), Stages of Faith Interview (adapted from Fowler, 1981) and a sentence completion task. Adult measures included the adapted Stages of Faith Interview and a sentence completion task. Scoring was completed by three raters, with interrater reliability over 90%. Findings from ANOVA and qualitative analyses found similar indicators of general risk and resilience as in previous research. However, contrary to previous studies, most orphans demonstrated inner peace and resilience after exposure to war. Resilient orphans identified Buddhist and Christian practices used to promote their faith, personal well-being, and sense of belonging. Overall, the children in both Buddhist and Christian orphanages were taught to value peace and compassion, even though they had been exposed to war. Nevertheless, lack of contact with biological parents posed a unique idiom of risk for some orphans.

Keywords:

• war
• spirituality
• resilience
• children
• orphans
• caregivers

Notes

1. Monks embody the values of the society. In addition to practicing morality, they follow additional practices formally assuming one of two responsibilities or “burdens”: the “book burden” or the “insight burden.”

2. Contrary to Western culture, children in Sri Lanka are considered orphans regardless of the status of their biological parents. Some orphans remain in contact with their parents, even if they are unable to care for them and have placed them in the care of the orphanage.

3. Of particular concern for the LTTE were issues of land, discriminatory policies with jobs, resettlement education and impositions of quotas at schools that skewed higher education in favor of the Singhalese majority.

4. Acute danger is a traumatic event occurring in a regularly safe environment, whereas chronic danger occurs when traumatic events occur serially over extended periods of time (Elbedour et al., 1993).

5. Past research often focuses on resilience in terms of social competence, ignoring possible internalizing difficulties. Internalizing issues were of concern for a subset of children within the war orphanage who were not well integrated into biological families or within the orphanage, community, and religious communities. Although, these children could integrate into the stable orphanage context, their inconsistent contact with biological parents, coupled with concern and longing to reunite with them, perhaps prevented them from integrating fully into their family, community or religious communities. The inability to integrate into these frameworks prevented the children from reaping the healing benefits of belonging to a supportive family, community and religious community. Despite these internalizing difficulties, these students were doing well in school and were reported to be sociallycompetent.

6. Nonwar orphans in the second city sample had only a group interview and so could not be included in these analyses.