2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
Parentalization is a phenomenon in which children take on the role of a parent in relationships with real parents or those who perform the parental role. In situations where the parent does not play the role of the Parent, it is simply not safe for the child to be a Child. The compensatory mechanism is triggered, and the child tries to “pre-parent” the parent, in the hope (often unconscious) that later it will be possible to relax and be safe with the Child next to the Parent. Unfortunately, this is an illusion. Despite the fact that the parent unconsciously behaves like a Child in contact with a real child, he consciously knows that he is the parent and here the rule “the egg does not teach the hen” is triggered. It turns out a pun: formally, there is a parent who puts forward certain requirements to the child and seems to be like “I'm wiser here,” but on the other hand, between the lines there are expectations to receive from the child what the parent did not receive in his childhood. Most often, we are talking about attention, care, the desire to be careless and not take responsibility. Yes, these parents often have their own childhood traumas. And despite the fact that they can really love their child (and parenting could be their conscious decision), from their traumatized part, they seek to "heal" these wounds at the expense of the child. And the deeper this trauma, the more it phonites and interferes with the establishment of adequate parent-child relationships with the release of communication at the Adult-Adult level with grown-up children. Children for their parents are always a constant trigger that exposes all the pain of their inner Child. This is why the urge to “not behave with my child the way my parents did to me” is so difficult to realize in real life.
Why is the child involved in parentification? At first, he is driven by the desire for at least some kind of security: “if there is no one here who plays the role of a Parent, then I will become him, so that in this situation there is an illusion that the Parent figure is still there in this space”. Further, especially in adult children, the "sense of duty" is included. An adult child tries to repay the debt for the life given to him. Unfortunately (or fortunately), we cannot repay the debt to our parents. We cannot ourselves "re-birth" our parents and give them a different childhood, better than they had. We can give birth (or not give birth) to our children and try to give them adequate parental care and love. Stories about difficult childbirth, about how the life of a parent after the birth of a child has cracked add fuel to the fire. In fact, this is not the child's fault or responsibility. Yes, the birth of children is not always about joy and happiness, and sometimes children are born at the cost of the health and life of the one who gave birth to them. This is how it works in this world. The children did not ask to be given birth. Yes, it happens that future parents themselves hardly understand “how it happened”, but this is the area of their responsibility, not the child's.
What is parentification fraught with? For a parent, this is fraught with the fact that in certain areas of his life he will never learn to take responsibility for himself. For children, this is fraught with violations in partnerships (when the parent is more important than the partner and the children). It can also lead to the fact that grown children do not want to give birth to their own children. On the one hand, this is a story that there is no resource for someone else to be a Parent, and on the other hand, it is about fear and anxiety about “how to give your child something that I really didn’t have”.
How not to confuse parentification with care and love for parents? If we are talking about very elderly parents, parents who have serious health problems (especially mental ones), then this is a story about leaving, a normal process. In the case of parentification, we are talking about excessive concern for a person who is able to discuss himself. This is a story about when literally the whole world of an adult child revolves around a parent. Often such a parent flirts with the roles of "helpless" and "victim". There can be manipulations like “nobody cares about me”, “I put my whole life on you,” etc.
What to do? The first is to accept the fact that you cannot give your parents another childhood, no matter how much you love them. You are not someone who can heal your parent's childhood traumas. In childhood, the game of parentification was a protective mechanism of the psyche, it helped to survive. In adulthood, this mechanism hinders rather than helps. You can sympathize that your parent is feeling lonely, you can feel sad about it. But after that, go and live your life! Can't handle it yourself? Take care of yourself, seek help from a specialist. You can work with this.
Take care of yourself!
Recommended:
When Your Heart Hurts: Beware! Mental Pain
Mental pain is one of the most important, most serious and most subtle mental phenomena. It is as if it is and as if it is not, because physically nothing hurts you! She is unbearable and is associated with a lot of often conflicting feelings.
Beware Of Psychological Trauma. 3 Things You Should Never Do With Children
The child's psyche is a very fragile mechanism. It is very simple to inflict psychological damage on her - it is impossible to fix it. There are 3 things that parents should never do in front of their children if they want to maintain their love, respect, and spiritual well-being.
