What these celeb moms learned from their ‘Jurassic’ upbringing
“Were any of you spanked as a kid?”
We have barely finished asking the question, but Camille Prats and Katrina Halili had already started to chorus: “Oo naman!”
“Habulan!” Prats said.
“Walis tingting! Because apparently, the belt didn’t work on me—‘di raw ako nasasaktan,” Halili added.
Like most elder millennials, the two actresses, both 39, were raised with a parenting style that could be described as authoritarian or, as some people jokingly put it, “Jurassic”—strict, one-sided, fear-based, and that often led to physical punishment as a final resort.
“I think our generation and the previous generations really grew up with that kind of parenting,” Prats told Lifestyle in a recent chat with the cast of GMA 7’s new afternoon series, “Mommy Dearest.”
Well, a “dragon” isn’t quite a dinosaur, but that was how Halili saw her mother, Malou, growing up. And if her costar Prats was Princess Sarah, Malou was a real-life Miss Minchin, Halili said, laughing.
“Dragona! We always fought when I was a kid. She was strict, super maldita. I was always angry at her. I didn’t like her because she was always frowning,” Halili said. “She wasn’t the type who would explain why she scolded you. Oh no, she would really cuss you out. Bahala ka na dyan! I felt like in her eyes, I couldn’t do anything right.”
But now that they have children of their own, Prats and Halili finally understand where their parents were coming from, or why they experienced that kind of upbringing—at least to a certain degree.
“Now I realize why my mom didn’t want me going out and all. Because that’s exactly how I am with my child now,” said Halili, who has a daughter, Katie, 12, with her ex-partner, singer Kris Lawrence. “I thought she was being strict or masungit just because. Now I get her.”
“I appreciate them for being that way. I’m grateful they were strict with me,” Prats said of her parents, Alma and Dondie. “Because if not, I might have turned out differently because of wrong and immature decisions.”
Discipline
Prats has three children: Nathan, 17, is her son with her late first husband, Anthony Linsangan; daughter Nala, 8, and son, Nolan, 5, are with her current husband, VJ Yambao. She also coparents Ice, Yambao’s teenage son from his previous relationship.
But while they learned a great deal from their parents, Prats and Halili also sought to address some things that they thought could have been handled better, or were lacking when they were young. The actresses believe in empathy, respect, communication, and all the good methods espoused by gentle parenting—but not so much that the children end up controlling them.
Discipline is definitely still enforced. Only this time, it’s regarded as a teaching tool, not a form of punishment. And gentle parenting, Prats stressed, isn’t the same as permissive parenting.
“I believe in gentle parenting, but not to the extent that you would just let your kids do whatever they want. You still have to be strict because there has to be a structure in place. We’re the parents, so we have to draw a boundary and fulfill responsibilities,” Prats pointed out.
And that’s where communication and relationship-building come in. “Back then, I followed my parents because I was scared of being scolded, being grounded, or punished. But now, I see to it that my kids understand where I’m coming from. I let them think for themselves. I ask them why they think they’re not allowed to do a certain thing.
“It shouldn’t be a one-sided affair, wherein I give the orders and expect them to just accept whatever I say. I make sure to include them in the decision-making, so they really understand that what I’m doing is out of love,” Prats said.
Looking back, that’s exactly what Halili wished she had more of. “To be honest, I’m also a little bit of a dragon myself. But the difference now with my kid is that discipline always comes with explanation. Because that’s something I didn’t experience back then. I just knew that mom was mad and I didn’t really know why,” she said.
Spanking today
But do they still think that spanking has a place in parenting these days?
Prats said she keeps a discipline stick, which she uses on her kids only until a certain age, and only after repeated, unheeded warnings.
“I talk to them, of course, ‘di ‘yung palo agad. And I don’t use other things like slippers. So, the moment they see the stick, they associate it with discipline, with a wrongdoing. I also make sure that I’m not emotional when I do it, because how it was back then, you could really feel the rage and anger of your parents when they did it,” Prats said.
“I only do it until the kids are 7, because it’s no longer effective beyond that. When they grow older it’s really more about building a relationship with them,” she added.
There was an instance, Halili said, when she couldn’t help but snap at Katie during a heated moment. But she quickly recognized her mistake. She knew that it wasn’t the way to go, especially because her daughter has mild autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
“If she gets physically hurt, the situation can end up escalating, and she can be quite unruly. And she’s strong! So since she has ASD, I think of other ways to discipline her. You have to be patient; ‘di mo siya pwede patulan. For example, I take away her gadgets and don’t let her watch TV for a while. And I find that it works with her,” Halili said.
A mother’s love
“Mommy Dearest,” which airs weekdays at 3:20 p.m., follows the overprotective mother Olive (Prats), whose love for her ill child, Mookie (Shayne Sava), becomes so suffocating that the latter can no longer feel any semblance of joy in life—a prisoner in their own home. But then comes Emma (Halili). Spurred by the loss of her biological child, she vows to love Mookie like her own.
The series also sheds light on FDIA, or factitious disorder imposed on another (formerly called Munchausen syndrome by proxy), which, according to WebMD, is a mental health condition where in a caregiver seeks attention “by making up or exaggerating the illness” of the person under their care by way of—among others schemes—falsifying test results or diagnoses.
If there’s anything Halili and Prats have learned from doing the show, it’s that mothers express their love in different ways, which may, at times, even go unnoticed.
“There was a point when I thought that my mother and I would never see eye to eye. But now I realize that she just wasn’t showy of her emotions. Her way of apologizing to me was through acts of service. ‘Kain ka na,’ she would tell me the day after we fought. But as a kid, I didn’t get that. But now, she can say ‘I love you’ to me. She’s still a bit awkward about it and she won’t wait for your reaction… but still!
“Now that she’s a grandmother, I can see that she has mellowed. She spoils Katie. And I’m like, ‘Now, why didn’t experience that when I was young?’” Halili added, laughing.
Meanwhile, Prats and her mother have grown to become “best friends” over the years. “We chat every morning, she sends food to the house, she asks me if I’m already done with taping. She asks me to text her once I arrive home,” Prats related.
But every so often, the actress does something that brings out the “Jurassic” mother of old. “I recently got tattoos—just small ones. But when my mom saw them, she took off a slipper and chased me with it around the dining table. There I was, running in fear like a kid. And I was like, ‘Ma, parang awa mo na, magku-kuwarenta na ako. Tigilan na natin ‘to!’” she related.
Now they can just laugh about it. “I think it’s just her way of showing me that, no matter how old I get, or how many kids I give birth to, she will always be my mother,” Prats said.
