Chained by blood

STORY BY KRISTINA CZARINA

AS time changes, we advance, we move forward, we’re different. But generational trauma remains stagnant.

Generational trauma, also called transgenerational trauma, are traumatic incidents that have an impact on multiple generations. It relates to traumatic incidents that influence multiple generations. It can cause people to change the way they view the world.

In the Philippines, there are countless cases of physical abuse towards children, and it’s being normalized— regarding it instead as a form of discipline.

A parent can also be verbally abusive but even so, words also leave bruises and scars, and this is very evident in Filipino households. About 3 out of five Filipino children are reported to have experienced emotional abuse from their parents.

Discipline is one basic foundation of parenting, it can be in different forms. Physical, Punishments, Verbal. There is an extent to where discipline should be applied as we all know that there are numerous examples of its result if having none, although discipline is necessary, each child is different from one another.

There are children that are quite mature for their age where verbal communication is the only support they need to continuously improve themselves, and there are others where physical discipline is needed as some can be problematic with their values.

As much as this has proven a balanced view on discipline, this was considered as generational trauma or at least the causes of it. This was because of the fact that the line of abuse, discipline, and self-insert trauma dumping is quite hazy.

Parents, nowadays, are either blinded by the words ‘discipline’ and ‘for the betterment of my child,’ or are blinded by their own problems and use their children to lash it out.

And parents still ask why the relationship with their child is slowly crumbling into pieces.

Half of the adults that went through these forms of traumas as children are revealed to pass it down to their kids, projecting their insecurities from the past, based on statistics.

Communication should be the second most important foundation in parenting, right by the side of discipline. It should also be focused that the parents, as well, should be disciplined themselves— from their obligations as parents and their responsibility to their child.

Prior to this issue being normalized, it's unjust. Kids will not learn morals after being beaten or scolded with vulgarity, they will learn fear. This kind of treatment can scar for life, and they’ll carry the burden throughout.

We, filipinos, grew up in an environment where our parents never own up to their mistakes despite knowing that they’re in the wrong.

They called it basic decency, they’re older, so they know what’s best. That phrase is simply embedded in our minds since childbirth.

A simple apology from them is hard to get out.

There was always a door yet to be opened; the truth to be revealed.

We should not let issues like these be undiscussed and unaddressed, it’s the 21st century. We beg for justice, so we should serve it.

The next generation of parents should be able to identify, view and uphold that line.

Pain moves through families over generations until someone is ready to feel it and heal it. We must break the cycle.