Syrian Abdullah Al-Mohammad lives in Sarmada, a province of the city of Idlib with a friend, daughter Salwa and his wife after they left their home.
He and his family were forced to leave their own home, in the neighboring Saraqib area of Idlib, because of the Syrian civil war.
In a post shared on Twitter, the 32-year-old father is teaching his three-year-old daughter to laugh when she hears a bomb fall. He just wants to protect his daughter from the ‘psychological crisis’ caused by near-constant explosions so he decided to use the trick to make her laugh whenever a bomb drops.
The video shows Mr. Al-Mohammad is seen sitting down with his daughter rested alongside him. He asks her: ‘Is this a jet or a bomb?’
She then replies: ‘A bomb, when it comes we will laugh.’
The video then shows the sound of a bomb falling, advising the little girl to burst into fits of laughter.
Mr. Al-Mohammad adds: ‘Does it make you laugh?’
‘Yes, it is funny,’ Salwa replies.
He told Sky News that he said he devised the game to stop his daughter’s ‘psychological state from collapsing’.
Mr. Al-Mohammad said: ‘She is a child who does not understand war. I decided to teach Salwa this game to prevent her psychological state from collapsing. So as to not be affected by diseases relating to fear.’
He said that he wanted to turn the sound of the bombs into a ‘source of happiness’.
Mr. Al-Mohammad said told Al Jazeera that children in the neighbourhood used to play with bang snaps which made a loud noise when delivered on the ground. Salwa used to get scared with the sound when they were used during the Muslim festival of Eid, he showed her that it was ‘just a toy.’
He said that he used the same ‘pretext’ to convince his daughter that the bombing was ‘just a game.’
‘I needed to remove the fear from her heart,’ the father added. I wanted her to associate these loud, frightening sounds to something that is light and amusing. I want the world to know: We’re not terrorists as the regime paints us out to be,’ he said.
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