Second of three parts
DO we still know our children?
This is where the family becomes indispensable.
When tragedies happen, it is easy to say that parents should “monitor” their children more closely. But I think the challenge is much deeper than monitoring.
A parent may know a child’s password and still not know his pain. We may know our children’s grades but not their fears. We may know where they are physically while having very little idea where they are emotionally. We can provide tuition, food, gadgets, vacations and every material opportunity, and still fail to notice that something inside our child is slowly collapsing.
So perhaps the question parents should ask is not merely, “Am I monitoring my child?”
The more difficult question is: “Do I still know my child?”
Do I know who humiliates him? Do I know what she is afraid to tell me? Do I know who my child’s friends are and what kind of conversations are shaping them? When my child fails, is home still the safest place to return to? If my child were thinking of hurting himself or somebody else, would he be more afraid of telling me than of carrying the burden alone?
These are uncomfortable questions, but this is precisely why strengthening families cannot remain a sentimental slogan.
Deuteronomy 6:6-7 gives us a beautiful picture of formation within the family. Parents are told to teach their children while sitting at home, walking along the road, lying down and getting up. The biblical picture of parenting is not occasional instruction delivered during a crisis, but it is truth transmitted through everyday presence, relationship and example.
Formation requires proximity
The family must return to the center of public policy.
This is also why I believe the proposed Filipino Family Mainstreaming Law, which the National Coalition for the Family and the Constitution has been advocating, deserves to become a priority of the president and the Congress.
The principle behind family mainstreaming is not complicated. If our Constitution recognizes the family as the foundation of the nation, then the government should stop treating the family merely as one sector among many or as an afterthought once policies have already been designed.
We should begin asking a basic question whenever the government develops policies affecting education, children, mental health, poverty, employment, migration, technology or public safety: What will this do to the Filipino family, and will it strengthen or weaken the family’s capacity to perform its responsibilities?
A Family Impact Assessment, as envisioned in the proposal, can institutionalize precisely this kind of thinking. When the government develops a mental-health program for children, for example, it should ask how parents will be involved and equipped. When we address bullying, we should ask what role families play both in identifying victims and in forming children who refuse to become bullies. When policies affect work, migration or economic life, we should consider whether their consequences leave parents with the time and capacity to actually raise the children they work so hard to provide for.
Family mainstreaming does not mean blaming families for every social problem. Many families themselves are under enormous pressure from poverty, separation, overseas employment, domestic conflict, addiction, technology and economic demands. Precisely because families carry so much of society’s burden, public policy should deliberately help them carry it.
But Congress cannot legislate a moral culture into existence.
There is an important qualification, especially coming from someone advocating legislation.
The problem of children killing children will never ultimately be solved by another law.
We need laws. We need responsible firearm regulation and much stronger attention to safe storage, especially because the firearms involved in the recent fatal incidents came from the adult world. We need the Anti-Bullying Act to work in actual classrooms rather than merely exist on paper. We need the Basic Education Mental Health and Well-Being Promotion Act fully implemented. We need trained counselors, credible reporting systems, better threat assessment and appropriate school security.
Government has a duty to protect.
But the government can restrain violence; it cannot manufacture virtue.
Congress cannot legislate an emotionally present father into existence. An implementing rule cannot make a mother listen to the fears of her daughter. Government cannot manufacture friendship, empathy, forgiveness, self-control, belonging or love through administrative order.
Those things require a deeper transformation of our values, culture and mindset, and every institution in Philippine society must wrestle with it: families, schools, churches, media, technology platforms, communities and government itself.
Perhaps this is the uncomfortable lesson these tragedies are forcing upon us. We may have become very good at educating children’s minds, connecting their devices and entertaining their attention, while becoming less deliberate about forming their conscience.
To be concluded on Sept. 10, 2026
