Save Your Kids from Emotional Parenting Trauma
A toxically parented’s plea
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My first ever memory was clothes being thrown down the staircase along with a woman crying indiscernible from where I was standing, or maybe that’s just how she was crying.
Growing up, I didn’t know what it was or if it was even real. It was just something that was always in my head ever since I can remember and popped up in my head from time to time — I just set it aside as a dream.
Later, I found out through my remaining family that it did indeed happen. The woman crying was my biological mother, and that memory was of her getting booted out of the house for rational reasons.
That was my first emotional trauma as a a child.
When I was maybe about ten, one of my relatives died — this wasn’t the traumatic part, we weren’t that close.
My aunt, who kind of stood as my mother growing up, was talking to her friends after the funeral and I was just standing there waiting for all of that to be over.
Another friend of hers went up to us and told me, for everyone else to hear, that I was growing up very beautifully and that I look like my dad.
My aunt said, “I just wish she was nice too.” She had that sad look on her face while everyone else laughed.
I’m 24 years old now and it makes me feel the same way the first time I heard it.
Can you take a guess which one was more traumatic for me?
Bingo. It’s the second one.
I’m not saying this would be the case if it were to happen to someone else, but I have absolutely no connection to that woman crying on the staircase but there is with the woman who wishes that she’d have a better daughter.
Hold up. This isn’t just a rant of a very damaged kid with access to good WiFi.
This is from an adult who thinks there are too many 10 year old kids who just wants to be loved for who they are.
There are too many of us who were traumatized by words and by looks of our parents without them even knowing how they would impact us, how that could be carried on to the next generation.
There are too many toxic parents who believe they are doing the right thing by hurting their kids’ feelings to “strengthen” them as they grow up.
Too many toxic parents who would make gay jokes in front of their kids, not knowing that one of their kids might be one too.
There are too many kids battling their own demons because they feel like they’re alone.
When my family found out I was suicidal, they asked, “why didn’t you ask for help?”
The answer is: I don’t know how — Nobody taught me how.
The Effect of Childhood Trauma
A study shows that childhood trauma can cause lasting and severe trauma just like physical assault.
According to developmental psychologists, this is because the human brain acquires self-awareness at age three, then remains in hyper-absorbent learning mode for 20 years.
Just imagine a kid looking up to you, literally relying on you, just to be put down — to be told that he/she isn’t enough, to be compared to another sibling, to be called stupid and to do this in a place called home — a place that should be a safe haven.
Imagine that effect on a kid who looks at you like you’re the whole world? Imagine what that effect would be to the home that kid will build on the future?
A Plea to Save the Kids
Our society today might just set aside our traumas and label them as “looking for attention”, “teenage angst”, even “tiny compared to war and sex crimes” — I’ve really heard the latter from someone — but society isn’t going to raise the kids, it’s the individuals.
There’s always going to be something wrong with our society (I’m not saying do nothing about it, but that’s for another day), but if we raise emotionally healthy kids and stop with the “man up” and the “don’t be such a pussy” brigade, the world just might be a little less angrier.
To tell you the truth, I wish I wasn’t writing this. I wish I had a different childhood and I can’t relate to the toxically parented but here I am writing to you a plea.
Save the kids. Dear God, save the kids.
Go check out some of my other work!
