This section addresses the following questions:

• How much can grandparents affect a baby or child’s nervous system?
• Will my kids (teenagers) need to actively do this deep level of NS system work to repair? What can I do now, moving forward, to help them heal?
• How does my regulation impact my teenagers?

Our parents, grandparents, and their parents and grandparents, and so on… all have an influence on our level of trauma. Trauma gets passed down through generations in three primary ways. One — through the genomes, two — through the formation of the ventral vagal nerve, and three — through behaviour.

If someone doesn’t heal their trauma, it will affect their genetic makeup in maladaptive ways, and those maladaptive tendencies will be passed on to their offspring. Also, if our mom never got the proper attunement and care from her mom such that her ventral vagal nerve could form properly, she will almost certainly pass on those limitations to her children, unless she has healed her trauma at the nervous system level. And the behaviours associated with unresolved trauma — anxiety, depression, explosive rage, emotional numbness, etc. — these will also be passed down and reinforce the genetic tendencies.

On the other hand, so much can be repaired with the right education, practice, and support, which you are getting in this program. Parents who have been traumatized can heal, and that will ripple out to their children, even if those children are teenagers or adults. Maybe grandparents who were abusive to their kids have healed and wised up in their old age and can be a positive influence for their grandkids. It even happens that kids who grow up traumatized and then do the nervous system healing work can have a positive impact on their parents. Nervous system healing radiates out in all directions. For more about this, you can read this article.

If you are a parent and you know you have passed down your trauma to your kids, try not to be discouraged. At least you know it now and are taking steps to heal, so you are moving the needle forward. If your kids are still young, under the age of 10 or 11, they might be open to receiving the benefits of good Somatic Practice touch work, the modality developed by Kathy Kain. If your kids are teenagers, unless they are very unusual teenagers, there is probably not much you will be able to do now. I suggest riding it out and putting your savings into a therapy fund for them, so it’s there once they are older and open to working on themselves. Just keep doing your work and know that as you get more regulated, it WILL have a positive impact, even if that is not seen until later.