A Conversation About Childhood, Safety and the Adults We Become

Photo courtesy of Tempo

Today is the World Day for the Prevention of and Healing from Child Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Violence

We often forget something incredibly simple: every adult we know, including the ones we admire, fear, love, avoid or struggle with, was once a child. A small, helpless, curious, emotional child. Some lived in safety. Some lived in chaos. Most grew up somewhere in between with moments of warmth and moments of fear woven tightly together.

Childhood doesn’t disappear. It settles into the background of our adult lives like a quiet script running underneath everything shaping how we love, how we argue, how we trust, how we cope and how we respond to the children we meet today. For some, that script is soft. For others, it is jagged. But for all of us, it is powerful.

This is why child abuse prevention day matters. Not only because it asks us to protect children now but because it invites us to understand the stories adults carry from their own childhoods. Pain doesn’t vanish; it transforms. It shapes our reactions, our fears, our relationships, our limitations and sometimes even our harshness toward the most innocent among us.

I know this because of what I lived. I grew up in a home filled with contradictions – love and fear, tenderness and unpredictability, warmth and volatility. Between the ages of three and eight, I was sexually abused. Not by a family member, not by a stranger lurking in the shadows but by an adult my parents and grandparents trusted completely. That’s the devastating truth about child sexual abuse: it usually comes from people who appear safe.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Emotional and physical abuse continued into my early teens, not because my mother was cruel but because she was overwhelmed and carrying wounds she had never been taught to understand. She disciplined the way she had been disciplined. She parented the way she had survived. She used the tools she was given and none of those tools included emotional regulation or safety. Children adapt in ways they can’t articulate. At home, I fought. At school, I froze. Survival wrote itself into my personality long before I knew what survival meant.

When I was sixteen, everything shifted. My mother raised her hand to hit my younger sister and without thinking I stepped between them. I took the blows. Something in me decided, “This ends here.” Later that night, my mother came into my room with oil in her hand. She didn’t apologize – most mothers of that era didn’t – but she sat beside me and massaged my bruised legs in silence. That silence said everything.

It wasn’t redemption. It wasn’t a complete transformation. But it was the beginning of one. From that day, she never hit us again. And that moment stays with me because it taught me a truth I now see in so many families: Parents hurt children when they are hurting and they stop when they finally understand what their actions mean. My childhood wasn’t only shaped by pain; it was also shaped by people who quietly held the light for me.

My father wasn’t expressive or emotionally articulate but he was endlessly curious. At a time when there was no internet, he surrounded us with encyclopedias, records, gadgets and books on everything imaginable. He didn’t teach curiosity through lectures. He taught it by living it. If my mother taught me survival, my father taught me curiosity, the instinct that later became one of my greatest strengths.

And then there were teachers. Inside school there was Miss Lorraine, my English Literature teacher, the first adult in an institution who made me feel emotionally safe. She asked what we thought. She listened without judgment. In her classroom, my nervous system exhaled. Outside school, my Maths tuition teacher made mistakes feel interesting rather than dangerous. I don’t remember his name, not because he wasn’t important but because what stayed with me was his presence, not his identity. His gentle curiosity awakened mine. Between these three adults – my father, Miss Lorraine and my tuition teacher – I learned curiosity, safety and humanity. A trio powerful enough to save any child.

To understand why these adults mattered so much, you need to understand what happens inside a child’s mind under threat. A child cannot explain their fear. They don’t have words for trauma but their nervous system reacts instantly. Children don’t misbehave under threat, they survive. Fight looks like anger, tantrums, defiance but inside it is terror. Flight looks like avoidance but inside it is panic. Freeze looks like obedience or quietness but inside it is paralysis. Fawn looks like politeness or people-pleasing but inside it is desperation.

These responses aren’t “bad behaviour.” They are biological instincts designed to keep a child alive. And here is what most people never realise: If these responses become normal in childhood, they become personality traits in adulthood. Fight becomes defensiveness. Flight becomes avoidance. Freeze becomes indecision. Fawn becomes a lack of boundaries. They aren’t character flaws. They are unprocessed survival patterns. But survival can evolve. With support, understanding, safety and emotional awareness, survival responses can transform into strengths. Processed fight becomes assertiveness. Processed flight becomes discernment. Processed freeze becomes thoughtful reflection. Processed fawn becomes deep empathy with boundaries. This is what emotional processing looks like. This is what healing looks like. This is what safety makes possible.

And then there is courage, the quiet factor that changes everything. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage appears when a child senses even the smallest drop of safety. Courage is the quiet child raising their hand. The crying child saying, “I’m scared.” The fawning child whispering, “I don’t like this.” The freezing child reaching out for help. The fighting child trying to explain their anger. Courage grows in safety. Safety awakens curiosity. Curiosity awakens confidence. Confidence creates more courage. It is a cycle – the opposite of survival.

Adults often struggle with children not because children are difficult but because children activate memories adults have not examined. A loud child triggers someone who was shamed for speaking. A crying child triggers someone who was silenced. A curious child triggers someone who was punished for asking questions. A boundary-setting child triggers someone who never had boundaries.

Adults say, “Children are hard to handle.” But often adults simply haven’t healed the children they once were. This is not a Sri Lankan problem. This is a human problem. Childhood wounds exist in every culture, just expressed differently. Parents, especially, carry an unfair amount of blame for things they never had the tools to handle. Most parents love their children fiercely. Most are overwhelmed. They carry generational pain quietly. They were never taught emotional intelligence and they parent while trying to heal.

This is why I always speak about the importance of partnership – not competition – between parents and teachers. Both hold different parts of a child’s identity. Neither sees the whole picture alone.

And this brings me to something many societies overlook: schools. Children spend more waking hours in school than at home so schools are not academic factories; they are emotional worlds. They shape confidence, curiosity, identity, courage, self-worth and emotional habits. A school that humiliates children creates adults who hide their voices. A school that prioritizes obedience over thinking creates adults who fear initiative. But a school that treats children as human beings – not assets – produces emotionally intelligent adults who contribute meaningfully to society. Schools matter. Teachers matter. Safety matters. Children need to be seen as people, not future achievements.

Across cultures, childhood pain looks different but the effects are the same. Sri Lanka struggles with silence and shame. Western countries struggle with loneliness and pressure. But the root is shared: emotional intelligence was never prioritised.

And when emotional intelligence is neglected, cycles repeat. Many abusers were abused. My abuser was born out of rape and had been raped as a child. This doesn’t excuse his actions but it explains the cycle. Trauma doesn’t fade with time. It transfers. It repeats. It mutates until someone decides, “It stops with me.” Breaking the cycle requires safety, awareness, compassion, boundaries, accountability and support. Punishment alone cannot rewrite trauma.

My healing began with Maya, the inner warrior I created to face the world when I couldn’t. Maya was everything I wasn’t yet: strong, clear, fearless, decisive. Through her, I processed pain I didn’t yet have the strength to face. And slowly, I became her. This is the power of imagination and why the creative arts are so important for children and adults. My imaginary avatar kick-started my healing.

Healing didn’t erase my story; it reorganised it. It allowed me to raise my son from a place of emotional safety instead of survival. It allowed me to choose who I would become and that is what I want for every child.

Whether you are a parent, a teacher, a school administrator, a neighbour, an aunt, an uncle or simply an adult who once survived childhood, you are part of this conversation. You influence the emotional landscape of the children around you. Children don’t need perfect adults. They need adults who are aware. Adults who reflect. Adults who regulate. Adults who remember what it felt like to be small. Adults who choose not to pass their pain forward.

A safer world for children begins with emotionally healthier adults and emotionally healthier adults begin with understanding the child they once were. Child abuse prevention day is not just about children who are hurting today. It is also about adults who were hurt yesterday and the responsibility we share to ensure the next generation does not inherit the same wounds.

A childhood should not be something you have to recover from. And the world we build now determines whether that becomes true for future generations.