A silent child is suffering just as much as a screaming one.
In the ruins of Gaza, silence has become a language of its own — spoken by children whose minds, overwhelmed by unrelenting violence, have retreated from a world that offers only loss. Child psychotherapist Katrin Glatz Brubakk has spent two missions documenting this withdrawal, finding that extreme trauma physically reshapes developing brains, stealing speech, trust, and the capacity to imagine a future. More than one million children carry these invisible wounds, and the damage deepens with every day that peace remains absent.
- Children across Gaza have stopped speaking entirely — not from choice, but because their nervous systems have shut down language as a defense against unbearable suffering.
- The neurological toll is measurable and lasting: trauma enlarges the brain's fear center while stunting the regions responsible for thought, emotion, and connection, threatening an entire generation's cognitive future.
- Over 20,000 children have been killed and 41,000 wounded since October 2023, and even those physically unharmed have witnessed death, displacement, and destruction on a scale that leaves no child untouched.
- Therapists like Brubakk are using soap bubbles, play, and patient presence to coax children back toward language and trust — small but meaningful interventions that can ease the brain's alarm state.
- Since January 2025, international aid workers have been barred from Gaza, leaving 1,600 local staff to carry the work forward while the violence, and the silence, continues to grow.
Adam was five years old and loved to talk — until the war took his father beside him in a hospital corridor and left him with one leg and no words. His silence, Brubakk found, was not an exception. Across Gaza, the Norwegian psychotherapist working for Médicos Sin Fronteras encountered dozens of children who had withdrawn from language entirely, their minds enacting a neurological retreat from a world made only of danger. She estimates more than one million children in Gaza have suffered severe trauma, and local physicians say cases of selective mutism are multiplying.
The mechanism is biological. Months of bombardment, displacement, and loss cause the amygdala — the brain's alarm center — to enlarge and dominate, while the prefrontal cortex, responsible for planning, emotion, and social connection, fails to develop properly. Language becomes a casualty. The child does not choose silence; the brain imposes it as protection.
Brubakk's approach with Adam began with daily visits and patience. When he finally whispered to his mother that he wanted the strange woman gone, she recognized it as progress — a reaction, a re-engagement with the world. Eye contact followed, then curiosity, then words. With Mona, a six-year-old burned across her entire body when a bomb destroyed her family's apartment and killed two of her siblings, the tool was soap bubbles. Their colors, their calm, and the slow breath required to sustain them gently quieted the nervous system. Through play, Mona eventually built a cardboard princess house — and only then found the words to describe what she had survived.
These interventions matter, but they cannot substitute for what is truly needed. Brubakk, who has worked in conflict zones for twelve years and calls Gaza incomparable in its total destruction, insists that therapy alone cannot heal what ongoing war keeps reopening. Barred from entering since January 2025, she continues directing 1,600 local staff from a distance. What these children require, she says, is not only care — it is peace, homes, schools, and the restoration of safety itself. Without it, the cognitive injuries of war will travel with an entire generation into the rest of their lives.
Adam was five years old and loved to talk. He would chatter about the things he saw, the games he wanted to play, the world around him. Then the war came to Gaza, and his family fled their home for a tent. One day in 2024, he and his father decided to visit his grandparents, who lived in what they thought was a safe area. A projectile struck without warning. His father died beside him on the hospital floor. Adam survived but lost one leg and was gravely wounded in the other. After that day, he stopped speaking.
Adam's silence is not unique. Across Gaza, child psychotherapist Katrin Glatz Brubakk has encountered dozens of children who have withdrawn from language entirely—a neurological response so severe that doctors in the territory are calling it a growing phenomenon. Brubakk, a Norwegian clinician who works for Médicos Sin Fronteras, spent two missions in Gaza during 2024 and 2025 documenting what happens to children's minds when violence becomes the only constant. She estimates that more than one million children in Gaza have experienced severe trauma. Not all have stopped speaking, but many have. The exact number remains unknown, though local physicians told international media outlets the cases are multiplying.
What Brubakk observed is not a choice children make. When a young mind endures months or years of bombardment, displacement, loss, and the constant threat of death, the nervous system responds by shutting down. The amygdala—the brain's alarm center—becomes hyperactive and enlarged. The prefrontal cortex, which governs planning, problem-solving, social interaction, and emotional regulation, fails to develop properly. It becomes thinner, with fewer neural connections. Language is one casualty of this cascade. A child stops speaking not because they cannot, but because their brain has decided that interaction with a world that brings only suffering is too dangerous to attempt. Brubakk calls this a "neurological response to extreme stress and trauma," not a conscious choice. It is the mind's way of protecting itself by withdrawing entirely.
The scale of what these children have endured defies easy comprehension. Since October 2023, when Palestinian militants attacked Israeli territory and Israel launched its military response, more than 72,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the territory's health ministry. Among them are over 20,000 children. Another 41,000 children have been wounded. Every child in Gaza has fled their home, lost someone they knew, witnessed death, or both. Many have seen mutilated bodies or collected human remains from streets. Some have watched siblings burn. All have lost the basic sense of safety that childhood requires. Brubakk emphasizes this point with clarity: there is no child in Gaza who is not traumatized. The violence has not stopped. More than six months after a ceasefire was announced, Israeli military operations have continued, killing at least 846 more people, many of them women and children, according to Gaza's health ministry.
When Brubakk first met Adam, he would not speak to her. He barely ate. His mother, who holds a doctorate in physics, spoke English and could communicate with Brubakk directly, but the boy remained locked in silence. Brubakk visited his room every day. She spoke with his mother about the husband she had lost, but also about memories and hopes for the future—small gestures meant to plant the idea that suffering was not permanent. One day, Adam whispered to his mother: "Make that woman go away. I don't like her." It was rejection, but Brubakk understood it as a breakthrough. Adam was reacting to the world again. Days later, he looked at her—the first time he had made eye contact. She seized the moment. "Wow, you have enormous brown eyes," she said. "They're beautiful. Mine are completely different—they're blue. Have you ever seen them?" Curiosity flickered in the five-year-old. From there, trust began to build, word by word.
With another child, a six-year-old named Mona, Brubakk used a different tool: soap bubbles. Mona had suffered severe burns across her entire body when a bomb struck her family's apartment, killing two of her siblings and setting a gas canister ablaze. She was wrapped almost entirely in bandages, with only her eyes and nostrils visible. When the bandages began to come off and Brubakk could see her scarred face, she started with bubbles. "I call them bubbles of hope because they literally generate hope in these children," Brubakk explained. The bubbles are calming. They demand attention—impossible to ignore. They contain all the colors of the rainbow. And to make large bubbles, a child must blow slowly and deeply, which naturally slows the nervous system and reduces the brain's alarm response. Through play, Mona eventually found words. She asked for a "princess house"—a dollhouse. Brubakk gathered cardboard, tape, and paint, and together they built one. Mona decorated it carefully. Only then, playing with the house, could she tell Brubakk what had happened and express her fear for her sisters' survival.
These interventions—conversation, play, bubbles, the simple act of being present—cannot undo the damage already done to children's brains. But they can reduce it. By calming the amygdala, the prefrontal cortex gets space to develop. The child's capacity to solve problems, regulate emotion, and connect with others has a chance to grow. Brubakk has worked in conflict zones for twelve years—the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lebanon, Egypt, a rescue boat in the Mediterranean, Turkey after an earthquake. She says Gaza is incomparable. The destruction is total. The health system has been systematically attacked, with hospitals bombed. There is no safe place to go. And the trauma is universal. As of January 2025, international aid workers, including Brubakk, have been barred from entering. She has 1,600 local staff continuing the work, but she cannot be there. "If I could go to Gaza, I would go in a heartbeat," she said. "It's the only place I want to be." What these children need, she insists, is not just therapy. They need peace. They need homes. They need schools. They need the restoration of safety itself. Without it, an entire generation will carry invisible wounds—what she calls "the cognitive injuries of war"—for the rest of their lives.
Citas Notables
There is no child in Gaza who is not traumatized. There are more than one million children who have suffered severe trauma.— Katrin Glatz Brubakk
For these children, stopping speaking is a way of not interacting with a world that continues to make them suffer and inflict pain on them. It is not a conscious choice, but a neurological response to extreme stress and trauma.— Katrin Glatz Brubakk
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why do some children stop speaking while others become hyperactive or aggressive? Why does trauma manifest so differently?
The nervous system has different ways of protecting itself. Some children's systems go into overdrive—they're agitated, they can't sleep, they're irritable. That's visible suffering, easy to spot. Others shut down completely. It's like their system says, "I can't take anymore." Withdrawal, including loss of language, becomes their shield. It's not a choice. It's neurology.
You mention the amygdala enlarges and the prefrontal cortex underdevelops. Can that damage be reversed if a child reaches safety?
It depends on how long the stress persists and how early intervention begins. I have my own brother—adopted from Vietnam in 1974. He grew up in constant bombardment, like Gaza's children now. Even after reaching safety in Norway, with food and security, it took years before he stopped hiding food behind books on shelves. He didn't feel safe. That's what we call cognitive injury from war. It can follow them for life.
But you've seen some recovery with Adam and Mona. What made the difference there?
Consistency. Presence. The knowledge that there are small safe spaces, and people in those spaces who won't abandon them. With Adam, it was just showing up every day, talking to his mother about hope, until he was curious enough to look at me. With Mona, it was play—building something together, creating something beautiful in the middle of destruction. Play is how children process what words cannot hold.
You call soap bubbles "bubbles of hope." That sounds almost too simple for what these children have endured.
It is simple. But simplicity is the point. When you're trapped in trauma, your brain is locked in alarm mode. The bubbles calm the alarm. They're beautiful, they demand attention, they require slow breathing. That slow breathing—it physically changes the nervous system. It gives the thinking part of the brain room to develop. It's not a cure. But it's a beginning.
What happens to the children you can't reach—the ones in "resignation syndrome" who don't speak, don't eat, barely respond?
They remain trapped. If they don't receive help, they can stay in that state for years. It's easy to overlook them because they're not crying or demanding attention. But a silent child is suffering just as much as a screaming one. They need help too. They need someone to see them.