I’ve spent more than a decade working in the public schools and communities of Baltimore, walking alongside kids and families who have been caught in cycles of crime, broken relationships, and trauma. I’ve sat with children who have lost friends to violence, who have watched their parents disappear into addiction, and who have learned too early that the world is not always a kind place. People talk about these problems as if they’re too complex to solve...as if we need endless resources, policies, and programs to make any real change. But the truth is, at its core, this issue is much simpler than we make it.

Generational trauma doesn’t just disappear. It passes from parent to child, from child to community, shaping the way people think, react, and connect with the world. A parent who was never shown love struggles to show it to their child. A kid who has only ever known rejection and judgment seeks comfort in the only place they feel understood; others who are hurting just as deeply. Trauma isolates, breaks trust, and creates a constant search for belonging, even if that belonging is found in the wrong places.

"It all comes down to unhealed trauma."

And after all these years, one thing has stood out to me more than anything else: kids and families don’t need someone to fix them. They need someone to listen.

I can’t count how many times a kid has told me their story. How they felt abandoned and how they felt invisible, only for their own parent or guardian to say, “That never happened,” or “You’re remembering it wrong.” But here’s the thing: healing doesn’t come from correcting their experience. It comes from acknowledging it. It’s not about whether it happened exactly the way we think it did. It’s about how they experienced it. How can we expect kids to move forward when they aren’t even allowed to talk about what’s weighing them down?

To parents, I want to say this: this doesn’t make you a bad parent. You did the best you knew how to do with what you understood at the time. But healing starts when we stop dismissing the pain and become willing to sit in it with our kids. That does not mean excusing bad decisions, harmful behavior, or poor choices. Kids still have responsibility for what they do, and there is still a need for consequences.

But understanding where a behavior is coming from should change the way we approach it. It requires some realness from us too. We have to be willing to hear how they experienced something, even when their version is uncomfortable, incomplete, or different from ours. We have to understand what they are feeling, what they believe happened, and what they may be trying to protect themselves from before we can really understand why they keep responding the way they do.

That understanding is not the end of the work. It is what helps us figure out what the work actually is. If we can understand how the past shaped the way a kid sees themselves, other people, and the world around them, we have a much better chance of helping them to stop living from that past and start growing into something different.

The good news is that none of us make it through life completely untouched. We all get hurt along the way, and people can heal. We can learn different ways of responding to the world, let go of stories we have carried for years, and stop passing pain forward to younger people who do not even realize they are picking it up.

We do not need a perfect system to start changing something. We do not need unlimited resources to build stronger families or communities. Sometimes it starts much smaller than that. It starts with showing up, listening, staying calm enough to understand what is actually happening, and choosing not to repeat the same response just because it is the one we know. After all, it should seem weird that you may be asking someone else to change while intending on doing the same thing yourself.

That does not cost millions of dollars. It does not require rebuilding an entire system. Sometimes it requires a moment, some honesty, and a conscious choice to respond differently.

So the next time you interact with a kid, whether it is your own or one you cross paths with in the community, surprise them. Stay calm when they expect anger and judgement. Listen when they expect a lecture. Hold the line when it needs to be held, but do it without making them feel like they are the problem.

We all have the ability to show kids what it looks like to handle hard things with honesty, accountability, strength, and care. Change does not have to start big. It just has to start somewhere.

And it can start with you, right now.