The unprecedented numbers of shaken children are testing the nation's network for emergency psychological help, according to caregivers and experts.
Beside overwhelmed parents, some children rested on cots with their heads covered, stared into nothingness, or cowered at a simple rain shower, reports The Associated Press.
"When we gonna leave?" Israel Reed keeps asking his mother at a shelter in Jackson, Miss., where he marked his 8th birthday with just a bowl of Rice Krispies.
At a shelter in Boynton Beach, Fla., a girl about 8 years old drew crayon pictures of her flooded New Orleans house with floating bodies of people and animals. Then her face turned somber.
"She ... wanted me to really understand," says psychologist Phil Heller, a volunteer counselor. "This was very scary."
The storm victimized hundreds of thousands of children, wrenching apart their families, washing away their homes, and separating them from everything else that was familiar, from friends to pets to stuffed animals.
"They're trying to process what happened to them. So much has changed in their little lives," says counselor Keith Gordon in Jackson. "Their concerns are as real as ours."
Most children who lived through Katrina will show at least some signs of psychological stress, ranging from simple denial or anger to full-blown traumatic grief or post-traumatic stress disorder, according to mental health specialists.
Some young children believe their bad behavior is somehow behind their family's
suffering; some have regressed to behaviors of an earlier age, like bed-wetting.
At a Houston shelter, three young children clung to a woman, refusing to let go. "They were not her children, she had no idea who they were, but they had
attached to her, and she had become attached to them," says counselor Bianca Walker.
Judging from past disasters, at least a third of affected children will need professional treatment in coming months, authorities estimate. Counselors were especially worried about children who can't find their parents. But they were also focusing on children with parents too overwhelmed to tend them normally.
Crisis counselors are trying to guide children through the early days of recovery by reassuring, seeking out lost relatives, and rebuilding a sense of normalcy.
Many children have been sent to class already at nearby schools; others have been offered a safe place to play at a shelter.
