My paper seeks to reconstruct the various wartime experiences of ancient Israelite and Judahite children. In order to do so, I examine a wide range of evidence from ancient Western Asia. First, I show how children function as symbols in descriptions of war. In many texts, the epitome of a society at peace is children playing in the streets, whereas the treacheries of war are often expressed in terms of mothers forcing their daughters to fend for themselves or similar tropes. Examining iconographic themes, I discuss the NK Egyptian images of children being handed over by their mothers in images of besieged Levantine cities in Egyptian scene and the prevalence of children in NA scenes of war refugees. Second, I examine evidence from documents, letters and material culture in order to address less prominent facets of childhood wartime experiences, such as children slave trade, orphans, starvation, adoption, children serving as soldiers, children assuming adult responsibilities in wartime, children in refugee communities, psychological effects of children in wartime, childhood war memories, etc. I will briefly reveal the results of my research on these topics that I completed for my forthcoming book, War and Society in Ancient Israel (Oxford UP).