The Metamorphosis of a Modern Child Marlon Rey Anacleto, RN, MAN (Major in Psychiatry) It is easy to blame a child for

not doing well in school but have we really wondered WHY? We blamed the new generation, the tv influence, internet addiction, peer pressure and many more theoretical assumptions but the TRUTH is too far away from what YOU believe. There are at least 27 percent of filipinos kids with absentee parents. Most of these parents are abroad and mostly are women. These kids experience separation at early age as months old. With the frequencies of meetings as rare as comets, these kids suffer traumatic experiences unbeknownst to us. So traumatic that it created an impact in every personality of a child, which determines her/his everyday decision. The theory of Freud on the basis of stages of sexuality accentuates the importance of trust and independence. In concomitant application with Eriksonian theory, we can, in detail, understand the dynamics of personality formation. Along the process, when a child approaches adolescence it looks for a role model on where it could mold its pattern according to the experential influence. The absence of it, leaves a void and a dilemma how to compensate for it. Our mind is an adaptable organism that cohabits with the body and is capable of psychological modifications just to satisfy the id and thus adjustments are purely compensation in behavior. The absence of role models creates a vicious cycle sociologically. This is a cycle incremental in nature on the perspective of relationship disaster. This is the ultimate family wrecker! The absence also deprives the person from proceeding with the next developmental task, creating a stunted emotional growth progress. The earliest the separation, the greater the stunting of the emotional progress. That void inadvertently created a need, a need to be indentified as another identity. Nonetheless, that need progressed disastrously to levels where a person could no longer find some coherence in their identity or a decrementing loss in self-confidence. That depreciating confidence attains orgasmic proportions, which influences the ego and decides to terminate the organism within. The outcome culminates where one could no longer identify a stress or a problem. It becomes numb! It refuses to identify reality and seeks an alternative option only on acceptable limits. He now becomes stress-free, happy and insane! The percentage of children, whose maladaptive familial environment is growing everyday because man wants to be mobile, away from their own children if not treat their kids like things subject to their own domain as if they are not parents. We have a scenario of social disaster in waiting. Its a time bomb without a boom but it will left mankind gasping and grasping; trying to look for some plausible solutions that might perhaps alleviate this social disaster. People will be totally confused with their own identity, parents will be treated as mere variables applied in theoretical proposals. Retroactive circumspection might be beneficial for now! It might perhaps aggravate our sensitivities and unalienable desire to be resolute in modifying the present-day social environment and avert future crises! Awareness is our first prerogative to address the

nuances of the inevitable change. Accepting it will open the avenue for a therapeutic rehabilitation, as long we are committed to change. Are you willing to understand your child?