ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the need to reconsider children's experiences in work on the Northern Ireland Troubles. It raises the question of how the authors might differently approach the subject of youth conflict experience and makes the case for oral history research as one particularly useful means of exploring the highly nuanced and personal dimensions of growing up in the region. Indeed, from the early years of armed struggle, a small but dedicated body of psychological researchers began to turn their attention to the endangering impacts of conflict for Northern Ireland's children. This was in part because, by the turn of the decade, it became clear that in many cases 'ordinary civilian life' was continuing in the region, and because of a growing fatigue with the most negative political projections being made about Northern Ireland's future.
