Episode 7: Intergenerational Trauma: How trauma experienced by one generation affects the ones after it

Not all of your reactions or responses to your child are you. Sometimes they stem from deeper rooted trauma or stress passed down from your parents or grandparents. Sometimes they pop up from a past experience you had. This episode focuses on what intergenerational trauma is, how it affects your parenting and your child, and what to do to buffer some of these effects. This included:

Reviewing research on:

• What intergenerational trauma is and how it affects people across generations
• Defining adverse childhood experiences and how they affect children and parents
• How attachment is transmitted across generations and the role it plays in your child’s development

Providing examples on:

• Historical examples of collective experiences of intergenerational trauma
• How past experiences influenced my emotional reaction to my toddler at nap time and what I did to fix this

Describing strategies to use in your own parenting:

• Reflect/journal/process how you need to about your own experiences with trauma/ACEs/parenting and how it has impacted you
• Focus on improving one aspect of your parenting at a time - don’t put too much pressure on yourself
• Educate yourself on ways trauma can impact yourself and your family and on strategies to help with this!
• Teach your child empathy!
• Teach your child about how hard things can happen and what to do in times of need (go to a trusted adult, find comfort from a caregiver, help others)
• Learn how to repair and model that for your child - normalize taking a few minutes to regulate your nervous system/emotions and then reconnect and repair with your child/partner/pet

Suggesting books:

• “We are Water Protectors” by Carole Lindstrom
• “A Terrible Thing Happened” by Margaret Holmes
• “Big Bear was Not the Same” by Joanna Rowland
• “Parenting from the Inside Out” by Dan Siegel and Mary Hartzell
• “It Didn’t Start with You” by Mark Wolynn
• “The Deepest Well” by Nadine Burke Harris
• “How to Raise an Antiracist” by Ibram X Kendi

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