Parentification – when your childhood robs you of being a child

“Our children are born with all of the wonder they will need. Our job is not to take it away.” Ainsley Airment

Parental Boundaries – they are there for a reason.

Although there are persistent representations in our society of an idealised childhood with nurturing parents and doting grandparents on hand to help, in reality, there’s no such thing as a ‘perfect home’ to grow up in.

Typically, though, we expect that children will grow up in a household where their parents will provide emotional and psychological support as well as creating the necessary familial structures and boundaries between an adult’s responsibilities and a child’s daily life and developmental experiences.

Establishing boundaries between a child and parent and then actively observing them, keeping them in balance creates a space in which the child knows they are safe, it provides them with security but also, crucially, the freedom to be children, to thrive and to develop emotionally at their own rate.

This parental boundary setting is critical to the healthy mental development of the child.

It affects not just how they perceive their relationships and role within the family home while they are still developing but also how they engage with people in their adult life too, including how they experience the external world around them.

Parentification – when a child is the only adult left in the room.

We know for a fact that not all children do grow up in a home where they can simply be kids and let their parents get on with sorting life out for them, providing all the necessary emotional and physical support they need to grow up into healthy, well adjusted, functioning adults.

And at my practice, I have regularly treated clients that have been raised in home environments where a parent fails to create the necessary boundaries between an adult and a child. This isn’t simply on a practical or physical level but also includes the absence or complete failure in their responsibilities for guiding and nurturing their family’s emotional relationships too.  In other words, it is parents failing to do the parenting.

Unfortunately, in many of these cases, it will result in a child taking on adult-like responsibilities in their home environment, taking on responsibilities and a role they are not yet equipped to deal with. It could be looking after a disabled parent, a parent with drug addiction, depression, or an inability to cope with relationships.  Whatever the role and responsibilities a child will adopt in this type of home environment depends very much upon the complexities of the environment they are living in.

But this is what we call the ‘parentified’ child.

The Process of Parentification – saying goodbye to a childhood.

Inevitably, a child will work out or recognise what it is they need to do or provide for their failing parent.  Effectively, the child adopts the parenting role in the home and becomes responsible for managing the emotional, psychological, or physical needs of either a parent, both parents and/or siblings. In some cases, it can be an elderly relative living within the home too.

Parentification and Role Reversal 

Typically, parentification is split into two forms of behaviour, although in practice, it can a mixture of both.

Instrumental Parentification

This is typically when a child will take on more practical responsibility for other siblings in the household.  It may range from direct caregiving, like parenting an infant (feeding, nappies, potty training etc) to getting older siblings ready for primary school or organising family meals for the week and doing the shopping.

Emotional Parentification 

This is when a child takes on the primary responsibility of managing and regulating a parent’s emotional and psychological state. More simply put, being a parent to their parent.

Often this means keeping a parent, or parents, emotionally stable and nourishing them in whatever way the relationship needs to keep things in balance and to avoid any conflict or negative behaviour occurring from the parent towards the parentified child.

Overwhelmingly, in these cases, the individual needs and normal emotional development of the child are neglected.  Most likelyleading to ongoing emotional and psychological issues for that child into adult life.

Role Playing at Home – which one are you?

It’s true to an extent that we all adopt some roles within a family even in a healthy home environment. In counselling there are well identified categories that we use in general for helping identify the role a person may have played within a family.  We will explore some of these roles specifically and in more detail in part two.

The role-playing categories are generally grouped under these major headings:

• Rescuer roles – this is typically someone that will take responsibility for the problems of others and carry the weight or burden of making decisions for them.  So, they are always ‘collecting’ people’s problems and tend to encourage people to become dependent upon them in their relationships.

• Control roles – typically, when a person will use excessive emotional behaviour, like sulking, getting angry or weeping in response to (normal) emotional engagements and, subsequently, causes disengagement or concessions from people to get their own way.

• Helpless roles – often a person that will stay silent or try and remain ‘invisible’ to family dynamics and relationships, so avoids interaction and intervention.  May behave passively or act fragile and helpless, sometimes complaining nothing will ‘go right for them’. Other modes of behaviour can be to act as a scapegoat when things are going wrong or mark themselves out as never fitting in.

• Performer roles – this is often someone who will play the ‘entertainer’, comedian or hero in a family.  These roles show or display strength, confidence, or positivity to help make other people feel safe.

For a parentified child, one of these roles or more will dominate their life, to the point that acting ‘this way’ becomes normalised and part of a child’s identity. One that in adult life can be hard for a person to recognise in themselves and will continue to suppress the real self in them without the help and guidance of a professional counsellor.

At Omega Counselling, I have had great success in these cases working with what are called, ‘role reversal cards’. Simply put, role reversal cards make it easy to see what type of roles people may play in families.  

I have found them very helpful for exploring my client’s long-term issues with parentification.  They are particularly effective at helping identify one or more of the roles a client may have performed in their own dysfunctional home environment when growing up.  It can be a great starting point for a client to begin their counselling process and work towards some form of clarity and healing.

Personally, I use Pact Resource cards and if you pop over to their home page, here, you will see the extent of the roles we can adopt in the home environment – If you are interested in seeing what roles you may have taken up in your childhood, then I really recommend watching their brief but highly informative video explaining familial roles. 

When Parentified Children Grow Up – The Effects on You.

Many of the clients I treat suffer from a mix of different psychological and mental health problems in later life. The effects on adult relationships are complex and so often they are interconnected, which is what makes them so damaging to one’s overall mental well-being.

Clients I help with parentified childhoods are typically dealing with issues like

• Lost identity – feeling lost, not understanding who they really are and want to be.

• Anger and Intimacy Issues – find it hard to express themselves to loved ones.

• Drug Addiction and Alcoholism – stuck in a cycle of addictive behaviour.

• Depression – often without understanding the reasons why.

• Anxiety and Lack of Confidence – affected by specific roles a parentified child has played.

• Self Harm – can be driven by a sense of failing either parents or family members

This list isn’t exhaustive, of course, and in Part 2 we will be looking at some specific examples and scenarios of parentification and how it affected both the child and adult in their later life.

Help is at Hand – Talking Therapies and Parentified Children

I’ve outlined in this blog how being a parentified child is harmful to a child’s mental well-being, to their psychological and emotional state. How the long-term effects are also known to be damaging to a person’s mental well-being into adult life. 

But counselling can help.

The talking therapy approach we use at Omega Counselling provides a safe and nurturing environment to work through your issues of parentification.  We go at a pace you are comfortable with and you choose when it is time to stop.

Our aim is to help you lead a happier and more fulfilling life.

So, let us help you begin the process of recovering your own identity and to find a more positive way forward in your life. 

If you have been affected by reading this blog and need help with any related mental health issues, please reach out to us.  We have practices in Manchester, Bolton and Wigan.