What Silence Teaches Our Children

I’ve been sitting with this for a while, trying to find the right words. And the irony isn’t lost on me writing about voice, while feeling like I’ve misplaced my own.

What I keep coming back to is this: sometimes the behaviours we notice in our children

aren’t beliefs they carry they’re beliefs we do.

Raevyn has always been quiet. Most people describe her as shy. She describes herself that way too. She often says, “Mum, I’m shy.”

We’ve always known her world has been different. This generation already spends more time indoors, less time in organic social connection. Add to that the fact that we don’t have extended family close by, and her primary companions have been her older siblings all of whom, to varying degrees, are autistic and experience social and communication challenges.

So it’s never been simple to understand where Raevyn stands in all of this. And that’s really why I’m sharing our journey because it’s never just one thing.

In my previous blog I spoke about the question of root cause, what came first, the chicken or the egg. And the more I sit with this work,

the more I feel we often hyper‑focus on finding the thing. The one reason, The one explaination,

But healing rarely works like that.

It’s not usually one thing.

It’s the internal belief we carry often quietly, often unconsciously, that then communicates signals throughout the body. Those signals influence cells, organs, neural pathways, processing, behavioural patterns… and the ripple continues.

No wonder parents feel overwhelmed when they sense something isn’t quite right, yet have no idea who to see or where to turn. Before I learned to trust my intuition more deeply, I made many choices from a reactive place emotionally, behaviourally, from survival.

We don’t always make the “right” choices.

But giving ourselves space to pause, to make mistakes, to grow and change not only helps us navigate parenting with more compassion, it gives our children permission to do the same.

They learn adaptability. Emotional resilience. Self‑trust.

If we ourselves remain in constant fight or flight, without learning to listen inwardly, we may miss the very cues that are trying to guide us toward the support we need.

Sometimes that means thinking outside the box. Enduring criticism. Sitting in isolation or discomfort for a season, trusting that something different can emerge on the other side.

“I can’t find my voice.”

This is a sentence Raevyn has said repeatedly when she wants to speak but can’t.

Beliefs we form about ourselves can become so ingrained they feel like identity. Until I began doing the work I do now, I didn’t fully grasp how much impact allowing this belief to settle could have, not only on how she communicates externally, but on how she experiences herself internally.

And the deeper question became unavoidable:

Where did this belief come from?

Is it hers to carry… or is it mine?

Most people who know me would describe me as direct. Part of that comes from aphantasia, but part of it comes from having to be my own protector, my own shield, my own voice for most of my life.

Yet underneath that strength lived a quieter belief:

“I am unable to speak my truth.”

I didn’t realise how deeply that belief shaped me, or how it could be passed on.

Not just psychologically, but biologically. Through tissue. Through nervous system patterning.

When I became pregnant with Raevyn, I was living through a time where my voice was forcibly silenced within a community. I was blackmailed into silence. Warned that if I spoke, my children would suffer consequences.

At the same time, one of my daughters was experiencing severe trauma due to abuse by a teacher. She developed PTSD and experienced a nervous breakdown. We were in the process of pursuing investigation through the Department of Education, not just to protect her, but to prevent other children from enduring what she had.

And then I found out I was pregnant. At 44.

I made a decision I believed was necessary: I stopped fighting. I let it pass, for the sake of my unborn child. What I didn’t anticipate was how that cost would surface later.

Research now shows that maternal psychological stress and trauma can influence fetal brain development. Not as conscious belief but as implicit, body‑based patterning.

It becomes something like:

It isn’t safe to express. My voice creates danger. Freezing keeps me safe.

These are autonomic responses, not thoughts.

In the womb, Raevyn didn’t absorb a story, she absorbed patterns of arousal. Patterns where signalling for help wasn’t available. Where expression shut down to ensure safety.

Later, this can look like selective mutism. Or an inability to access speech during activation.

That doesn’t mean she’s living in fight or flight all the time now. But it does mean her nervous system was wired under those conditions.

This is why it’s so important to look beyond labels like “shy.” To look beyond neurodevelopment as the only explanation. There is always more to the picture.

This is also why I feel such a deep call to support women , mothers‑to‑be and mothers alike to process their experiences, to become aware of what their bodies are holding.

Not from a place of blame.

But from a place of empowerment.

Because what we avoid, suppress, or run from doesn’t disappear. It finds expression, sometimes not in us, but in the next generation. Or the one after that.

Healing is not just personal. It’s generational.

And perhaps finding my voice now slowly, imperfectly is part of helping my daughter find hers too.

What we carry can shape generations and what we choose to heal can change them. Book a discovery call to explore Root Cause Therapy and begin creating a new path.