Dysfunctional discernment

The weekend that came was a bit gory. News of a 15-year-old boy killing his own mother with a hammer and then dropping her body inside an abandoned septic tank in Bohol is more than unusual. Based on the authorities’ investigation, the mother and child had a disagreement after the former reprimanded the latter for cutting classes. This does not seem to corroborate with other details, as the child is known to be a good student and an athlete. The municipal social welfare officer of Panglao then made an assessment, saying that the child had experienced living in a dysfunctional family.

This situation is not unique to the incident. Many children these days are born into co-parenting arrangements, or the experience of going back and forth between both parents. I am also someone who had to live my teenage years without a mother. I had to dodge my way through the different partners my dad had, adjusting to different women, their styles, and their love languages. It was pretty exhausting. The anger a child feels because of the situation is real, but resorting to a crime is overboard. Still, I believe there are different measures to handle extreme emotions. A child should be able to express anger without being made to feel guilty for having it, and adults must be willing to listen before the frustration grows into something harder to manage.

The responsibility still comes from the upbringing. A child is only as vulnerable as he or she can be. Without proper guidance and a means to help him or her understand the situation, emotions can get in the way of clear thinking. Had it not been for a support system, I might have found myself somewhere other than where I am today. Indeed, conventional parenting has changed and evolved, sometimes at the expense of a child's mental health. The school always teaches us about the family as the basic unit of society, and even that is a concept that is contestable today. When the home no longer provides the stability that children are expected to find there, it becomes a difficult scenario. I even had to ask myself who fills in the role of my parents when they are both too occupied with their own conflicts to notice what I am going through.

It is sad to note that our values when it comes to family ties are slowly eroding, and that a child is sometimes left to the care of others. It is important that we bring this responsibility back to the home and correct whatever a dysfunctional set-up has imposed. This does not mean that every family must look the same, or that children should be made to fit into a conventional picture of what a family ought to be. Rather, it means that adults must recognize the consequences of their choices and make sure that children are not left to navigate those consequences alone. The challenge is to maintain that care and guidance until the child grows up. That work requires patience, consistency, and a better understanding of children's needs.