A Radio Zamaneh podcast conversation explains how arrests and death sentences affect children—and why truth, routine, and emotional safety can limit long-term harm.
This text is a summary of an oral conversation recorded by journalist Nasim Roshanai with child-rights activist Hamed Farmand, originally published as a podcast on Radio Zamaneh.
In the wake of the Dey 1404/ January 2026 uprising, public attention has largely centered on arrests, summonses, and the expanding reach of security prosecutions. Compiled figures published by human rights organizations suggest that by day 47 of the uprising, more than 53,000 arrests and 11,000 summonses had been recorded. At the same time, families have been bracing for heavy “security” charges—such as “enmity against God” and “corruption on earth”—that can carry the death penalty.
In the podcast, Farmand urges listeners to look beyond legal categories and toward the quieter terrain of family life: the children whose parents are detained, sentenced, or placed under threat of execution. For him, this is where the crisis becomes most invisible—and most enduring.
Trauma starts before anything is carried out
Farmand’s starting point is direct: a death sentence is not only a judicial outcome, it is a psychological rupture. Even the possibility of execution can reshape a household around dread and uncertainty, and children—who rely on stability more than adults—often absorb that instability without having the language to name it. He emphasizes that families may underestimate the harm because mental health is still taboo, because speaking openly can feel dangerous, or because survival demands that everyone “keep going.”
Why children disappear from view
A recurring theme in Roshanai and Farmand’s conversation is how easily children’s distress gets missed. Farmand describes a social and familial pressure to appear resilient: the expectation to be “strong,” not break down, not show fear. But in practice, he says, this expectation can erase the child’s vulnerability. Children learn to silence themselves so they don’t add to the adults’ burdens, while adults—overwhelmed by legal uncertainty and constant stress—may misread emotional signals as “misbehavior” or moodiness.
Farmand notes that what looks like stubbornness may be grief, what looks like aggression may be fear, and what looks like detachment may be a child’s attempt to cope with confusion.
When hero-making becomes another trap
Farmand is particularly cautious about transforming the imprisoned parent into an “unreachable hero.” He understands why families do it: to protect dignity, to guard against stigma, to offer the child something to hold onto. But he warns that hero-making can close off the child’s emotional range. If the parent is framed only as heroic, the child may feel forbidden from expressing anger, resentment, disappointment, or even ordinary frustration—emotions that are common when a parent suddenly disappears or becomes inaccessible.
In Farmand’s view, children can love a parent deeply and still feel abandoned. They can be proud and furious at the same time. A narrative that allows only admiration can turn normal feelings into guilt—and guilt, he says, often deepens trauma.
Truth, in a form a child can carry
One of the hardest questions threaded through their podcast conversation is what families should tell children about arrest, sentencing, or the risk of execution. Farmand argues that the child’s right to know matters, but the manner of telling matters just as much. He distinguishes between blunt disclosure and age-appropriate truth: simple explanations, steady reassurance, and ongoing space for questions rather than a single overwhelming “reveal.”
He warns that silence is rarely neutral. Children sense the crisis—whispered phone calls, sudden absences, tense adults, disrupted routines. When no one explains what is happening, children often fill the gaps with imaginings that are worse than reality, or they conclude that the world is unsafe and adults are not reliable. For Farmand, the goal is not to load children with adult details, but to protect trust: “This is what is happening, you are not responsible, and you are not alone.”
Do not turn children into instruments of rescue
As the conversation turns to public pressure, campaigns, and media exposure, Farmand raises a firm boundary: children should not be turned into tools for saving an imprisoned parent. He cautions against using a child’s face, voice, or presence to intensify a campaign when the child’s emotional capacity is unknown—or when the child is implicitly made to feel responsible for the outcome.
Even when advocacy succeeds, he says, the psychological cost can be lasting if the child internalizes a dangerous idea: my performance determines whether my parent lives. In Farmand’s framing, a child must be protected from that burden—regardless of how urgent the political context is.
Routine as the most practical protection
Farmand repeatedly returns to an apparently ordinary recommendation that, for him, is essential: routine. Sleep, school, play, meals, and familiar boundaries act as a stabilizing scaffold when everything else feels uncertain. He notes that caregivers sometimes relax all rules out of compassion, hoping to reduce stress. But he believes that removing structure often increases insecurity, because it signals that life has become uncontained and unpredictable.
Keeping routines, he emphasizes, is not denial. It is a form of emotional shelter: a child can feel fear inside a world that still has rhythm and limits.
A safe space for anger, longing, and contradiction
Farmand also stresses the need for a non-judgmental emotional space—especially because children may feel anger toward the detained parent. He insists this anger is not betrayal; it is a normal response to loss, fear, and disruption. What harms children is not the feeling, but being told the feeling is unacceptable.
He argues that children should be allowed to express longing, rage, confusion, and grief without being corrected into pride or silence. In this sense, the “hero” narrative can do double harm: it can block honest feelings and add pressure to perform the “right” emotion.
Visits, phone calls, and the hardest possibilities
Finally, Roshanai and Farmand discuss decisions that can become urgent in families facing severe sentences: visits, phone calls, the possibility of execution, and even questions around mourning and burial. Farmand emphasizes that there is no universal rule. These choices should be made with specialized guidance and careful attention to the child’s psychology.
Still, he insists on one principle: children need preparation rather than sudden exposure. Gradual, age-appropriate conversations about death—introduced calmly, honestly, and over time—can reduce shock and disorientation if the worst occurs.
What Farmand wants families to hold onto
Across the podcast conversation, Farmand’s message is consistent: political violence does not stop at prisons and courts; it reaches children’s bodies and minds. Protection begins when adults take children’s inner worlds seriously—through truthful communication that matches a child’s capacity, routines that restore stability, a refusal to instrumentalize children for public goals, and a home environment where every feeling can be spoken without shame.
