Beating your children does not validate your role as a father.

Being slapped on the face was a very normal part of me growing up. A lot of times it was being slapped so hard or so many times that my ears would ring for hours thereafter.

If my mother was upset with me over something, she would say to me, wait until your father comes home from work. This essentially meant that she would tell him what I did and let him beat me.

On one instance he hit me with a badminton racket repeatedly until it broke. None of this affected him because he was just being a man. There was absolutely no remorse. However, my right knee still remembers it.

In the culture I grew up in, it was a part of a father’s job description to beat his kids to get them to “behave”. Sadly, this is very common in households of many cultural backgrounds.

Being authoritarian is not part of being a father. This is just an image that society has put upon men and unfortunately, most follow it blindly.

The abuse creates tremendous wounding for the young child growing up, which they carry throughout their entire lifetime. This manifests in mental and physical diseases, which are rarely ever related back to childhood trauma experienced.

Fathers behave this way because they have their own wounds. They do not know any better, and often end up inflicting the same wounding they experienced during their childhood.

I learnt about the roles and responsibilities of a father after doing the Father Wound program by my teacher @lianashanti. I learnt that part of a father’s role is divine unconditional love, which makes you feel protected and strong.

Your father coming home from work should NOT make you fearful or scared.

Until and unless men seek true healing of their wounds, they can’t “raise” (for lack of a better word) a child with unconditional love and fully fulfill the role of a father.