A PARENTIFIED CHILD
The obvious role of a parent is to meet your child’s needs and guide their development. When there is a breakdown in this role, the child is put in an adult-like role of meeting the parent’s needs.
Children have to develop boundaries, so their shells are permeable, allowing things to flow in and out. It doesn’t harden until the adolescent to early adult years. So if as a parent, your boundaries dissolve and you had no shell, you’re able to transfer your thoughts and feelings onto your child, without a filter.
Here are six ways that boundary dissolution can affect the parent-child dyad.
1. Role reversal parentification
This is where the parent relies on the child for nurturance and support and the child takes on the parental role.
2. Role reversal adultification
This is where you, as a parent, relate with your child as a peer or a friend and turn to your child for support and companionship.
3. Seductive spousification
This is treating your child like an intimate partner. This doesn't have to involve physical intimacy though. This can be more of an emotional connection of making your child your soulmate.
4. Hostile spousification
This is where you treat your child like a spouse but in a critical way. The son or daughter takes on the role of the good-for-nothing husband or wife.
5. Psychological control
This is where the parent becomes domineering and controlling.
6. Emensment
This is where there’s no distinction whatsoever between the parent and child. It’s a case of one mind, two bodies.
There are many reasons a parent can fall into this parenting styles. Most times, it’s if you were parented this way or you had a parent who was ill, unavailable, or depressed. Blaming your child for being stuck in a bad relationship, like an icy Storm, can create a lot of shame and guilt. Shame makes you feel flawed and guilt makes you feel responsible for someone’s wrongdoings.
On a broader scale, this roles reversal disrupts identity development, so if you have an arrested or impaired development because of a parental role reversal, your boundaries, emotional and self-identity can easily be affected.
The best solution is to talk to a therapist who can help you identify in what ways did things go sideways for you and your upbringing and how it affected you. Your inner child is not a separate person, it’s the part of you that thinks and responds to your life as you did as a child. If you lacked good parenting then it means, you either don’t have a filter or the holes in your filter are too big because you didn’t have someone to help you set the filter currently.
You are a work in progress so do the work to fill up the gaps. It is never too late, but it is however going to be a gradual process of self-reflection and self-parenting. Turn away from anger and forgive your parents for their lack of parenting, show yourself some love. Priorities your self-care and make healthy decisions. Remember that every yes to someone else is a no to yourself and that’s not how life works.
Until next time on A THIN LINE WITH VIVIAN
https://www.upwork.com/workwith/vivianakpan
Article contribution:. Dr. Tracy Marks
