For the Love of Facts
For the Love of Facts is a podcast where two therapists, Dr. Zamzam Dini and Dr. Kadija Mussa, unpack the truths behind love, relationships, and healing. In a world full of noise and myths, we bring culturally grounded, evidence-based conversations that center faith, connection, and care. No fluff—just facts.
For the Love of Facts
Hidden Scars, Visible Parenting
What if the strict rules, “stop crying,” and constant worry weren’t coldness, but survival strategies forged in danger? We unpack how trauma operates as a body‑level response and trace its path through immigrant families across three stages: before migration, during the journey, and after resettlement. Along the way we explore why decontextualized pain can look like personality, culture, or “family traits,” and how hypervigilance, control, and emotional distance often protect against threats that once felt life‑or‑death.
We dig into pre‑migration stressors like war, persecution, famine, and poverty, and connect them to PTSD and depression that dampen warmth and increase conflict at home. Then we move through the migration journey—dangerous crossings, refugee camps, family separations, humiliation at checkpoints—and show how uncertainty keeps the nervous system locked in fight or flight. Finally, we tackle post‑migration realities: racism and discrimination, downward mobility and deskilling, legal limbo, unequal household labor, and the loss of extended family networks. Ethnic enclaves emerge not as refusal to integrate, but as resilience and resource sharing under pressure.
Through research and lived experience, we connect the dots between survival mode and daily parenting: why parents may minimize feelings, why kids’ stress can be misread as defiance or ADHD, and how both generations experience identity strain when acculturation speeds differ. We offer a practical reframe—context before criticism—and share starting points for healing: naming what patterns protect, practicing micro‑repairs, building co‑regulation rituals, and seeking culturally responsive support. Trauma may explain how we got here, but it doesn’t have to decide where we go.
If this conversation resonates, follow the show, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a review telling us the one insight you’re taking forward. Your story could be the bridge another family needs.
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Hello everyone and welcome to our discussion today. Last time we talked about family separation and how transnational families kind of experience their different dynamics. Today we'll continue our discussion around immigrant families, but we want to focus on something that's really important that I feel like is very prevalent. We want to talk about how trauma shapes parenting in immigrant families today. Khadija, tell me about trauma. What is it?
SPEAKER_00:Trauma, I think many times people think of it like a traumatic event. I think that's like the misconception. It's like, oh, something big happened to you at one point. But it can be more complicated than that, right? It can be multiple events that have happened that cause stress response, like fear make a person feel unsafe. And also sometimes it can be experienced through, you know, there's direct experience, it happens to you, or it can happen to someone you know, and then you hear get hear about it. Secondhand. Like we think about secondhand smoke, there's secondhand trauma. We call that vicarious trauma. Vicarious trauma, right? And it doesn't have to be like a specific event, right? People can have, I guess, traumatic response symptoms without being able to name like one specific event. And sometimes things just look normal, especially in immigrant families, right? Like it's normal to go through, like you went through war and it happened to the whole community. Collective trauma. Collective trauma. So you don't think of it as like, oh, something specifically happened to me, but then it threatened your sense of safety. Um you could be having those responses and not really acknowledge it. And also when you are traveling through, you know, host countries, the things can happen there too.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. It does, I wanted to highlight something you've said that I think is easily missed, right? You keep referring to stress response. And so trauma, right, is a response to the event, not the actual event, like you said. So two people can, you know, be in a car crash or a car accident. One person could develop some kind of trauma response or PTSD, and the other person could be completely fine and be on the road the next day. And so it's not about the actual event, what happened, it's more about how did you respond to what happened to you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I think when we talk about it in this topic of immigrant families, we'll discuss it in three phases, right? We'll talk about the pre-migration trauma, what happened before the family or the individual left, um, the migration journey trauma, what happened on the way, and then post-migration trauma or stress of acclimating and adapting to a host country. And I think I would like to, I don't know if our listeners will have access, but you have an article on this, don't you, Sam?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I'm trying not to geek out today, but like, you know, this is my research and what I've been working on the past, you know, five years. And so it's something that's very important to me because oftentimes, you know, we talk about how, like, oh, immigrant parents don't understand their kids, they're don't they don't get with the program. But people really can't tell what is trauma, right, and what is not. And you know, trauma shows up in different ways and it manifests in different kinds of behaviors. And so what we think is a personality is a trauma response. And this is, I don't know if you all are familiar with Dr. Rezma Menekem, who is the author of My Grandmother's Hands. He is actually a St. Paul native, and he's here in Minnesota, and he's a racial trauma expert, and he talks about kind of you know, bodies of culture and how they experience trauma and what that looks like. And there's this quote that I use all the time in like all my discussions is this notion that like trauma decontextualized over time in a person can look like personality, right? If you take away the context, if you take away the history, if you take away their narrative, their story, and all you are all you see is these symptoms you think, oh well, this is just how this person is. He continues to say trauma decontextualized over time in a people can look like culture, yes, and then there's a oh, and then trauma decontextualized over time in a family can look like family traits. Yeah, and so I my life's mission is to contextualize trauma, right? And bring it to the forefront so that we really do kind of you know acknowledge the pain that people experience and find a way to help kind of support them instead of blame them.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I I think you touched on everything, right? Uh the migration process leaves marks on the nervous systems of the individual experiencing it and shows up in everything they do, including how they parent, right? Yeah, absolutely. And I think we touched on this a little bit. I would like to just say that there is, you know, when you experience the traumatic experience, it could be long term, right? And it's not just one event, especially it makes it harder to access your emotion, right? Because you have to outthink everything you depended on your logical brain the whole time. Um that's really what might make well might feel like immigrant parents are inaccessible or that they don't understand what their children are going through, right? And always feel like dismissive. I cannot believe how many times I've been told, like, what have you got to be sad about? You live in America. Right. So things like like that. I brought you here. Like, yo, clearly things are not as bad as they were for you. So that that type of thing shows up, and it's really not to be dismissive, it's just they had to disconnect from that in their emotional processing to be able to get through what was happening, to just survive and make it to here. And also, of course, they can be over-vigilant, right? And learning to just constantly scan for danger. Um, so safety comes first, so not really being in tune or attuned to emotional needs of their children. So, yeah, I think we can start talking about the three different phases we talked about.
SPEAKER_03:Yep, so phase one or stage one is kind of that pre-migration trauma, and right, and so this is where what like has caused people to migrate, to move, right? Like, and so we think about kind of war, political persecution, famine, poverty, kind of you know, uh, gender-based violence, all of those things that kind of push a family to say, hey, I can't survive here safely, or I can't ensure the safety of my family. So we have to move elsewhere to do that. And so imagine you're already kind of in a state of, I need to fight for my life. That's just the baseline that that's where we're starting at. And so when you have that kind of long-standing insecurity, it really shapes how you know parents have been parenting before, you know, they even have kids or while they have kids. So parents are already, you know, have that high trauma response, they are hypervigilant, they, you know, they've seen people get hurt, and so they know what happens to parents who are not in control of their children, right? It's kind of you know wired into their brain. And we know that in research, uh, pre-migration trauma is linked to PTSD, depression, right? And so when you have parents who are who have PTSD, they have trauma, they have that depression, it it makes it hard for that parent to be a very present parent, emotionally comforting, emotionally safe. And that predicts more family conflict, right? Parents are less uh engaging, less warm, or they're more strict or have, you know, they default to harsher parenting. And, you know, when those types of uh parenting patterns come kind of emerge, it really makes it difficult to have emotional safety in the family system, right? People, either the children or other family members learn that you know, my parents are not emotionally available. There's that shutdown. You know, parents learn that showing fear or sadness was dangerous or useless. So they don't want you know the children to kind of us, you know, you know, think that's a good thing. So they're like, stop crying. What are you crying for? Right? Work harder, like you know, like and it's like these things that we think, wow, like you're so insensitive, but really like it's kind of how they survived, how they got through through the trauma.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I mean, I love that you talked about all of this in comprehensively, but I'm thinking about what comprehensively, I'm thinking about like one thing that is worldwide not recognized is poverty is seriously traumatic.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, absolutely, right?
SPEAKER_00:You can watch your child die of hunger, and that is the worst thing in the world because it's not like even something that happens, that's something you have to live with for months or days as people just race away. Yeah, I think that's that's a really traumatic experience, like also famine and of course the community level violence. Like, you don't even have time. If a civil war breaks out, you don't have time to process the grief and loss. You have to get up and go. And in that time, you can't access your emotions, right? Because you don't have the time to sit and process your loss, your grief, your anger, your sadness. And then I think it gets to a point where you keep numbing, you keep numbing, that if you access that, and also anybody that triggers that in you, right? You see your kids the wailing and throwing themselves, and in a way, you're like, Oh, I wish I could do that. But then if you did that, everything will break loose.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00:Like, yeah, what everything you're holding in would fall apart, will fall apart, and you you that's scary, right? I've had people who told me, like, if I start crying, I don't think I can stop, right? Yeah, so I'd rather not stop or start crying. So I'm just gonna keep suppressing my emotions because they are too overwhelming, yeah. Um, and so seeing that in someone is almost like a weakness, like you also hold it together. Like I'm holding so much. Yeah, why are you falling apart for something so little? And also trivializing and thinking, like, oh, what a luxury to be able to fall apart.
SPEAKER_03:That's so true. Imagine, you know, your parents have been holding this pain and trauma, right? Of like seeing one of their children starve to death, and then their adolescent child is crying about a difficult class that they're taking. Yeah. And it's really hard to kind of comprehend or empathize with this with this child because they just have so much that they have within them that it just they're missing each other.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So they there is a lot that they did not process. And also, I think we ignore, or there's like not necessarily ignoring, that's the wrong word, the not understanding of what happened to them, just not even knowing, right? Like this is normal, it happened to everybody, it happened to the whole community. Yeah, and then people just recognize that, but then they don't really deal with it, they don't process it. Yeah, so then it continues, it's an unresolved absolutely and it shows up. I mean, I have seen so many elders who can't, I mean, even young people who cannot sleep, right?
SPEAKER_01:It shows up your symptoms are going to show up. Yeah, trauma manifests in so many different ways. You process it, you don't process it, it's going to come out. Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00:Really hyper-vigilant, walking around, checking all the doors, right? Almost like OCD symptoms. Um, they would have that, and also just being when we say like hyper controlling and being strict with kids, always wanting to know where they are, what they're doing, or because you don't know if people are coming back. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:So really all of yeah, like not letting them do any after-school activities, right? Like you can't join any like school clubs, no sports, you can't go to a friend's house to do home, like all of those things that we in this culture take for granted that we just like it's part of in our our experience is an affront to an immigrant parent. Like, how dare you try to bring up something that is outside of school hours, right? It's just like I need I need to know where you are, like you know, and I actually interviewed second generation refugees about this, and just like trying to like experience, you know, have them share their stories. I would actually love to read some of their quotes, maybe our next episode or something. But you know, they talked about how like this fear-based parenting really pushed them to be anxious themselves, right? Where you know, there was this Hmong participant who said, My grandmother would just always tell us, watch out, be careful of other people, they're always out to get you. And and so this, you know, participant really held on to that belief, right? This is my elder telling me something, I need to hold on to it. And she was anxious about everything almost to the point where she had developed her own anxiety disorder. And when you ask her, what are you anxious about? She just she doesn't know, right? She can't point to it. And I think that's where kind of the trauma seeps into the parenting, where you know, on the outside, this is a parent just like you know, disciplining the child, but on the inside, it's really this individual who has a trauma that has been unresolved that is kind of pushing their own worries onto kind of the next generation.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I I sometimes think it's not even like resolving the trauma, just processing it, digest.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, acknowledging, right? Avoidance is the main symptom of PTSD. So just talking about it would help. Right.
SPEAKER_00:And that's when you recognize, oh, I do some of those things because of that, right? You can make it in those connections, and then you can decide to make a difference, make a different choice, like, okay, I'm responding this way because of out of what I've experienced. Let me intentionally try to do something else. I think one thing that people can take away is that our parents were weren't starting fresh when they had us, right? Um they were already carrying years, sometimes decades of fear in their bodies. I mean, I think that can create a little bit of empathy and understanding of like the parents and also don't forget the children, right? Uh when we were going through our migration process myself, I was a young person doing that. People also get traumatized. Yes, yes. So it's not just like older parents that are already going through that, but it's uh any all people going through that, even children. Right, Gavar Mate talks about how when his mom gave him away at the age of was it five months, even though she got not too long after that, he still feels like he carries that in his body. Yeah. Right. Um, so it happens across the lifespan when people are experiencing, you know, loss and dispossession, just loss of property, loss of autonomy, you know, and when you come to a new country, loss of professional, we will get into that identity. There are just many things that happen. Let's talk about the second stage, Sam.
SPEAKER_03:So the second stage kind of our you know journey is the migration journey. So you've decided I can't stay in this country, it's not safe for my family. Now we have to move, we have to migrate. And so the performing the act of migration, that's like leaving from point A to point B, that itself can be very, very traumatic, right? That whether it's you know dangerous crossings of moving from you know one place to another, whether it's putting your life in the hands of smugglers or being, you know, the risk of being exploited, or it could be, you know, like moving to a refugee camp. And so like having kind of your entire life put on pause and you being stuck in this phase of ambiguity of like, I have to stay in this refugee camp and I don't know when you know my documents are gonna be approved, but I have to stay here in the meantime, right? There's a lot of uncertainty in this phase. Will we be allowed in? Will we be sent back? Right, and this is where you know families have to make very difficult decisions, right? Sometimes not everybody can come at once. Maybe one parent goes first and then the kids are left behind, or maybe half the kids go with one parent. And so this is where that family separation that we talked about the last episode, you know, plays a role. Or it could be, you know, depending on age, right? Only kids that are younger than a certain age can come with you. And so this is where you know families really have get like that emotional toll. And so, how do you think this all affects the parent, Kabija?
SPEAKER_00:I mean, the parent, I think we taught touched on it a little bit, really. Yeah being hyper-vigilant, right? Thinking the world is unsafe and they have to control everything. Um and also, I mean, the re the literature says that they do report, parents report uh trauma symptoms, right? Years after if they have separated from their children and having intrusive memories, nightmares, and intense guilt. You know, that choice. And of course, we talked about explosive reactions to small things, right? Just I think that's just triggering, right? Things are triggering them, uh being triggered easily and difficulty soothing, right? Again, we talking about when they get triggered even by little things like their children crying or talking back because it reminds them of you know chaos and danger. But I think one thing I'd like to touch on is that also lack of transparency. Yes, yeah, and what they're experiencing, right? Even as they are experiencing it with their children, right? So some some kids get to witness everything that's happening to their parent, and sometimes humiliation in the process of Migration, right? Like your parent being treated like a child, told to sit down or take off their clothes in front of you, being searched, whatever. Because you know, depending on where you're going to, there are checkpoints and stuff like that. And this really big person in front of you is getting really humiliated, and you don't really know how to process that as a child, right? Um, so you keep you also keep all of that in your body and in your memories, and those things are traumatic. And then say you get to the what is it called, intermediary country, right? For you go from point A to B, but then your destination is point C. Yeah. In that time, a lot of insecurity can happen, right? Where do you get food, basic needs, your closing? It's not like your parents can work because they're not documented. Yeah, they have handout, and handout is inconsistent. Um, so there's just you know, so then the parents for children growing in that situation are not present to do the emotional, the you know, soothing, yeah, presence, the attentiveness, the tune. Because they're thinking about where are you, what are you gonna eat? Yeah, yeah, right. If you come and talk to them, even the like being harsh, go sit down, don't talk to me, or like, you know, just disappear. I don't want to see you because I have to think. I am out here trying to figure out life with nothing. In a country, I don't speak the language. If I go out, I might be picked up by police and thrown somewhere, right? And if you are in a refugee camp, then everything is literally waiting for handouts, right? You're not in charge of if your kids have shoes or not, if they have clothes, their education is dependent on volunteers, yeah. So they're not getting educated, so you have the guilt. It's just so much happening in that process, you know, depending on how immigrant refugees get to their destination. All of those things impact how they parent and how the child grows up, and then they become an adult and also how they parent. So yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And I think what what we're missing from this discussion is like the the physiological response of trauma, right? Like what happens in the body physically. So when we get into our fight or flight mode, right, there's adrenaline kind of being pushed into our bloodstream, you know, parts of our body functioning is kind of paused because we're ready to fight or flight or run, right? And so that keeps happening over time. Like every time something is scary or something is unsure, right? It keeps triggering our fight or flight response. And every time that kind of button keeps getting pushed on and off and on and off, eventually it's gonna get stuck on, right? And this is where we're unable to get out of that survival mode. But it also leads to a lot of physical problems too. Like a lot of, you know, like when we think about like high blood pressure, like you know, stomach issues, issues with difficulty with concentration, and so a lot of like physical symptoms, right? Migraines, headaches, all of those things are related to trauma, but like we don't associate it with them. So you have, you know, a parent who probably don't eat a lot, or like you said, they don't sleep. And so when you're in an environment that is consistently chaotic, and you have children that are growing in that environment developmentally, right? It impacts their it stunts their brain development, right? They also become hyper-vigilant, right? They're in that kind of the nervous system, is in that kind of chaotic environment. So what we think is ADHD or hyperactive like disorder is a trauma response, right? This kid is has been used to chaotic environments, so that when they're in school now, when it's time to read and sit silently and quietly, their body is not used to that kind of environment. So, yeah, they're gonna move around, they're gonna get all itchy because that's not their like you know, normal baseline functioning.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and also I think um the emotional regulation center of the the brain malfunctions, right, with chronic stress, very especially early in development, right? Then impulsivity, right? That that develops in children if they are the one experiencing the trauma, yeah. Um and uh problem self-soothing issues, what we call emotional self-regulation, because emotional self-regulation happens through relationship with a parent. Yes, isn't available to help you learn that, so you're unable to soothe yourself, unable to regulate your emotion, so you're reactive to minor slights. Everything makes you angry, yeah, yeah. Right, and uh, everything makes you blow up.
SPEAKER_03:And imagine how how can a person learn? Yeah, right? Like how how does their brain retain knowledge in that kind of environment?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so like minor things are just triggering you all the time, and you're not able to regulate yourself and bring calm yourself down. Um, so yeah, children need a lot of help once they go through the migration process, and many times in immigrant families, right? Like we made it to our new home.
SPEAKER_03:We're good. We're good. You know, I actually worked a lot with the newly arrived like Afghan asylum, right? When they when they initially came and they were kind of moved from the military bases into transitional housing, we were kind of in charge of interviewing them just to see like, do you have any mental health needs? Like, what can we do for you? And you know, they would share, like, yeah, we have nightmares sometimes, you know, it's but it's no big deal, like everything is fine. We're we're glad that we're safe, like, and and it was really difficult for them to acknowledge any kind of need because the fact that they were safe physically, right? And it was really, really hard for them, especially when everybody kept saying, I'm worried about my family back home who didn't make it, who are being looked, you know, sourced and they're in hiding. And so I was I was really surprised, but also not at the fact that like the fact that they're here sitting in front of me is enough for them, right? And and and and when you have that mindset, it's really hard to tap into any kind of unresolved trauma because you keep minimizing everything that's happening to you. You minimize your nightmares, your flashbacks, your lack of eating, your lack of sleeping, because it's not greater than your physical safety, like you're you're not being shot at. Like that is more important to me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, and you have all of this going on with the expectation of hyperachievement, right? And but you have a hard time concentrating, so it's just so many things at works, and I think I can touch on like the post-migration stress, right?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, third stage. Yeah, what happens when once they get to the destination?
SPEAKER_00:I mean, for some immigrants, obviously, there is the obvious length language barrier, and if they are a minoritized, well, they become minoritized. Yes, thank you for that. Yes, I have to correct myself. They might come from a a country where they are a majority and not even understand, not have the concept of what it means to be a minority, and then not only just a minority, but a racial minority. Yeah, right. They might have had issues, but it didn't have anything to do with their race. Or skin color, yeah. Or skin color. So racism is like a new thing, and immigrant have to get used to, and that's like a slap in the face, in my opinion. You know, experiencing discrimination. And of course, there is the downward mobility, yeah. Right. Then you lose skilling, right? The skills you used to have. They call it e-skilling. You know, you you used to do whatever in your home country, but you can't do those things right now.
SPEAKER_03:You were a doctor or a lawyer, but those degrees don't translate now, and now you have to get a remedial job to put food on the table.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, like even you know, so many engineers driving cabs, right? Yeah, they have to also, again, they're just in survival mode. Yeah, they still are in survival mode. Right. I just need to feed my kids. I legit know a family of a civil engineer here who's been living here now for five years. Yeah, he works at Amazon warehouse.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00:One, he has to figure out the language. You just have don't have the luxury of sitting around. You come, you gotta start working. You have to start being yourself, being your family when you've got children. And of course, let's talk about the gender role changes. You know, I did a little paper on when people move to this new country, divorce is higher. And the literature like tries to say, Oh, it's because of changes in gender role. I think it's also the higher level of stress couples experience, right? When they get kids first, when women didn't used to work outside before, now they work. So you can look at it as like, ooh, empowerment. But then I just think that's just doubling the work, right? You you just you work in the house, you work outside because it's not like your housework disappears now that you're working outside.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it is a misconception that you know, yes, people in American society support egalitarian households, but the research shows that majority of the household chores, almost more than 70% of households still have the wife as the responsible uh individual for homemaking. And and so, like, even if we say we are egalitarian, we still are not acting on those values.
SPEAKER_00:No, and I think there is a paper uh written a few years ago by Dr. Claire Camp Douche. Anybody can look it up. Maybe I may I might have said the last name wrong, but yeah, even two income households where they're both educated, still major when they have their first child, the household you know, labor division, then it it becomes skewed where the woman starts doing more of the work, especially of the child rearing. So yeah, it's just then that just adds more stress, yeah. The relationship, the relationship is strained, and of course, there is that legal insecurity, the waiting to find out your status. And so thankfully, if you waited in the intermediate country, then you come here, you're settled. But then if you're you didn't have that uh that process, but you came directly and you applied for asylum, yeah. Um this limbo.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, your your decision gets made in real time while you're in the country.
SPEAKER_00:While you're in the country, and of course, uh financial stress, right? Because you've been de-skilled if you had one, or if you were not skilled labor, but you came here, chronic financial stress. And of course, you definitely don't live in the best neighborhoods of the country you settle in. So experiencing higher community violence, and then of course, shift work. It's really a lot that happens, and I think the most salient thing that we don't talk about enough is the loss of extended family and community network.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, yeah, you lose social capital. Yeah, you lose social network support, safety nets, right? People, informal, informal supports, all of that. What made a village, what right, what made a society, which is communities, all of that goes away. And you're hyper-individualized.
SPEAKER_00:I think I like to add this people are so hilarious that they say, oh, when immigrants come here, they don't integrate and they form their own neighborhoods. And that's directly in response to the hostility of the host country. When the host country is uh hostile, then immigrants form social enclaves.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So it's not like, oh, they don't want to integrate. Yeah, it's like they're being actively marginalized, actively marginalized, so it's collective being collectively together is more powerful.
SPEAKER_03:It's a form of resilience, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Resource sharing and a form of resilience. So it's really in response to the host country not being so very welcoming.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_03:And then we're kind of like, where does parenting fit into like after resettlement? Right. And so there's this illusion, right? Of like we're in this the host country, we're safe now, we should be able to build our life again, and we're okay. But you still have that unresolved trauma that pushed the migration, you have the unresolved trauma from the act of migration, and then you have all of the acculturative stresses that Khadijah explained coupled together, they're happening simultaneously all at the same time. And so now you have this parent who is trying to rebuild their entire life from scratch, who now has to parent, right? They have to be present with their children, they have to teach them values, they have to protect them. And there is just no capacity left at this point, and and so children kind of want you know needs from their parents, and it's usually emotional needs, right? Because their food and security are being met. And this is the one thing that parents are kind of depleted in based on their experience, and it and it turns into kind of emotional distance, right? Parents are exhausted, they may be working multiple jobs, right? They still have that fear of their immigration status, but they just don't have the capacity to like sit and listen to their child, you know, talk about something that happened at school today. They just don't have that. And and I think this is not unique to immigrants, right? This is a dynamic, yeah, poverty, like you said, like parents who are working class, who are also working multiple jobs, they have this kind of dynamic as well.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. That's just the stress, the stress changes relationships, right? Um, so thinking about that stress, and I think unique to immigrants is that like we didn't come to this country for you to fail, yeah. And also, I know I know this firsthand less play, more per school performance, right? So like uh arts, sports, hobbies, they're just like, what is that? Nobody has time for that, yeah. Right. So you don't you don't get to do those things that like as long as it's it's not related to school, we're not doing it, right? Um and of course, we taught uh touched a little bit on the intergenerational clash, which is really that you know, children do acculturate faster, and then parents feel like they can't control and they don't understand the world in which their kids are moving, navigating, right? So that's scary.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00:Like that's that's panic, and also how much this new culture deviates from their own culture, and also like that feeling scared that you're gonna become someone they don't recognize.
SPEAKER_03:It's really hard for parents to be a parent when they don't have generational knowledge or wisdom of what it's like to grow up in that particular society, right? What makes a parent? Their experience, right? Their wisdom, their knowledge. And if all of that is thrown out the window because you're in a foreign land, like how how do you show up as a parent?
SPEAKER_00:I mean, I think they're like working knowledge of what a successful adult looks like has changed, right? Because that that successful adult look different back home. Now they're here and they're like, How do I gauge my kid is doing well? Yes, right. And so the more you deviate from their own cultural understanding of how you should be, the more they become panicked, right? And then there's that drive of like, oh, I need to send you back home so you can become acculturated in our culture. Yes, yes, yeah, so you can become more like me.
SPEAKER_03:You need to be reprogrammed.
SPEAKER_00:Reprogrammed because you don't look like me and you're scaring me right now. Yeah. You know, because I don't know what you will be doing. So there's that hyper-awareness of the difference in culture, and they respond to that rather than the similarities.
SPEAKER_03:I actually, you know, in my dissertation, kind of talked a little bit about this and realized there's this notion of like, first of all, cultural erasure is traumatic, right? It's it's traumatic for all everybody, whether it's the parent watching their children move away from their identity, and for the child who is also in the limbo of like, what am I? Am I I'm not American enough, I'm not Somali enough, like what am I, right? And this notion of like, I call it like diminished ethnic identity or DEI. I love it. Where it's like, you know, the language skills are not there, maybe, right? The values are not as aligned. And so this child experiences almost a watering down of like who they are and and little guidance to kind of attaining like this is who I am. And so when you have parents kind of saying, No, you need to be more, you know, with the culture, and children are saying, Well, this is not how we do things here, this you know, intergenerational gap, right, is what really gets in the way. And so we want to kind of you know discuss more about like, well, well, what do we do with this, right? Like, how do we how do we get to a point of kind of resolution?
SPEAKER_00:I I think we can maybe park that because I think that will be like a whole different that's gonna take a long time. Yeah, but I think what we did here, and I hope we did this well, is that trauma might explain right what parents or our parents have done and how they parented. But it doesn't have to define like our parenting, right? If I we have young people listening, that they can do some of this work. And I think I am like the queen of saying, be intentional, be mindful, get some help. Now I will add that and figure out figure out your stuff so you can do things differently. But I think the next thing we should talk about, inshallah, next episode is what do we do with this, right? And how can we break our the patterns or the things that we have learned in our families?
SPEAKER_03:Awesome. Beautiful. Thank you so much for a wonderful discussion, and we'll see you on our next episode.
SPEAKER_00:See ya.
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