Transcriber: Caroline Sha Reviewer: esra kurul
You're really mature for your age.
How many times have you heard that growing up? I know I have.
Well, have you ever felt proud when you heard it?
Or did your heart just drop a little when they said it? I know mine did.
When you were a kid, how many times did you feel like life would be great
if you were just an adult? How many of you felt like you were already an adult?
You acted older. You acted wiser. You acted like a parent.
Now ask yourself, why? The answer may lie in parentification.
Parentification is a term coined by two psychiatrists.
Slide, please.
Parentification is a term coined by two psychiatrists who specialize in family
therapy, Dr. Ivan Boszormenyi-nagy and Dr. Geraldine Spark.
The principle is simple. The roles between a parent and child reverses.
In a healthy parent child dynamic, the parent acts
as a caretaker of the child.
But in this role reversal, the child acts as a parent of the caretaker.
There are two major classifications of the term.
They depend on who is being parented and the type of parentification.
With the first classification, we ask ourselves,
Is it the parent or is it the sibling?
In my life, my older sister acted as my parent.
Both our parents were constantly traveling for work
and unintentionally assigned her the role of my caretaker.
She had to learn to raise a toddler when she was only nine years old,
and I did not make it easy on her.
Every month, I would get in some new accident,
like swallowing a key or sliding my hand in a moving treadmill,
or almost getting crushed by a car,
only to be saved by a plastic cup.
But that's a story for another day. In this case, my sibling acted as my parent.
Similarly, it can be the parent that needs their child’s support for various reasons.
Now, this leads us to our second classification.
And with this, we ask ourselves, what is it our parent needs from us?
There is first instrumental parentification,
which is taking on age-inappropriate, practical responsibilities.
In my sister's case, this is what was expected.
She would come with me to my preschool open houses,
take care of me when I got sick, and come with me to the hospital
the numerous times that I injured myself.
Tasks like attending to family or paying bills
or housekeeping matters are all examples of these practical responsibilities.
Now, when I say housekeeping matters, that does not include things like chores.
When your parents tell you to do the dishes and do your laundry,
that's healthy and normal.
Now, the second type of parentification is emotional parentification.
Now with this, the child fills the role of therapist in their parents’ lives.
The child acts as a peacekeeper, confidant and overall emotional supporter.
Now, this is what was expected of me.
From a young age, I would act as the middleman
between my family and their polar views on issues.
Since then, I became
the acting therapist whenever somebody got hurt or frustrated.
I essentially became my family's emotional support system.
I was always calm. I never raised my voice
and I never shared my own opinions. Everybody called me mature for this.
But was it maturity or emotional suppression?
My favorite definition of emotional suppression is inhibiting
the outward signs of your inner feelings.
So the rage or the guilt or
the frustration you feel you need to let loose, you push back down instead.
Emotional parentification is often more detrimental to the mental growth
of a child than instrumental parentification.
By dealing with the emotions of their parents,
children have less room to process their own.
The effects of parentification may not be prominent immediately,
but continuously trying to meet these impossible standards takes a toll in
the long term. Adult children of emotionally dependent parents face
a long list of consequences later on in life,
like social isolation and emotional disconnect from oneself,
emotional disconnect to oneself.
When a child is forced to mature at an unnatural rate,
it hurts their growth and development in society.
Already, about 1.4 million people in the US face parentification,
and that's just the recorded number.
Now everybody has different ways of healing from these invisible scars,
whether that's seeing a professional therapist
or just being more open about one's emotions.
But the best way to prevent this psychological issue
is to prevent it before it starts.
We need to be cognizant of what we ask of our children and youth.
What children experience in their childhood impacts them
for the rest of their lives.
So, the next time someone calls you mature for your age
and you can’t tell why that doesn’t feel like a compliment,
Think parentification.
Thank you.