Read this, Our children are not monsters- argues mom of ISIS fighter

The BBC talked with one young British woman
who was recently contacted by ISIS recruiters.
She preferred not to use her name, but she
did talk about what first got her interested in
groups others might view as radical.
It was the news about three teenage girls,
gifted students in east London who slipped
away in February to join ISIS.

"Why are they going?" she asked herself.
"I guess that sparked a sort of curiosity."
She started tweeting stories about the three
girls. She thinks that ISIS recruiters found her
Snapchat account in her Twitter bio.

"It wasn't really as cliché as people think
it was. It wasn't a sort of 'Hey, come join
us!'" she notes. "It was more of a, "Hey
sister, how are you doin'?' ... It's like a
conversation with a friend. It's like a
normal thing."
When the recruitment became more intense,
she worried most about what joining a radical
group would mean for her commitment to
soccer.

"If I have three kids and a husband, am I
really going to be able to continue living
my passion?" she asked herself. "The
thing about this [soccer] team is
everyone's a family, everyone's together.
You have somewhere where you are
accepted, where everyone does love you.
Once you have a place to go like this
this, you won't even be brought to think
about that kind of thing."
She now works with The Unity of Faiths
Foundation, a group that fights radicalization
through soccer.
In Canada, Christianne Boudreau co-founded
another kind of group that works to counter
extremism. It's called Mothers for Life, and
it's a network for parents like her who have
lost their sons and daughters to radical
groups.
Boudreau's son Damian died fighting with
ISIS in Syria last year. She's moving to
France, and expects to find a stronger
network of parents there looking to counter
jihad.

"There are a lot more parents that have
come open to one another, working
together, supporting each other," she
says. "Whereas in North America, very
much there's still a stigma, everybody's
holding back. They're afraid to speak
out, they're afraid to reach out for help."
Boudreau says far too often parents miss the
signs of radicalization, in part because
popular portrayals of extremists lack nuance.

"They unfortunately look at our children
as monsters, and they're not. They're
normal, everyday kids that get caught up
in something, make mistakes and don't
realize the choices they're making," she
says. "They're not all evil like what we
see in the media. They're kids having
emotional struggles."
When parents suspect their children are
drifting toward radicalization, they should turn
to others in their community for help,
according to Boudreau.

"Parents shouldn't try to do this on their
own," she says. "They're too emotionally
connected to their children. And they can
end up pushing their youth further
away."