Individuality and Family Trauma
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Too often I hear parents or siblings complain that a family member is blaming their childhood for their problems, and the next thing out of their mouth is "All the kids in the family had the same childhood but you don't see us acting like that."
Every child is an individual. In families most of the children experience an event from the perspective of differing ages, genders and personality types. Consequently the experience will effect each child in a different way. Each will interpret what happened differently from the rest. And each will carry away differing memories of the event.
For instance during a divorce a parent may lean on one child for emotional support while neglecting or blaming another child. Subsequently each child will come away with a different kind of wound from the same family event. And each will be impacted in life in a different way.
Blaming a child, even an adult child, for having difficulty in life is another way of re-victimizing an already traumatized individual. Expecting that children are not emotionally or psychological damaged by family stress is living in denial. Children have the same emotions adults do, they just don't express them in the same way. And often, their pain goes unnoticed until they are grown and safely away from the family environment which caused them to suppress their suffering.
Compassion, not judgment, will go a log way in mending family strife.