They seem more mature and responsible. They take on household responsibilities, taking care of younger brothers and sisters. Parents for various reasons force them to grow up faster. How does such a childhood experience affect their adult life?
Parents are those who take care of children, provide them with the necessary, give warmth and support. But in some families, the roles of parents and children are distributed differently than we are used to. And it’s not just about situations where a father or mother, for example, takes drugs or abuses alcohol, thereby forcing children to take on some of the adult responsibilities.
Unfortunately, life sometimes prepares unpleasant surprises. When a parent is seriously ill or has to care for a relative or other child in need of assistance, this inevitably introduces an imbalance in the family system.
The growing child takes on some of the functions of an adult: helping to care for the sick, doing housework and raising younger children. In addition, sometimes he also has to become a source of emotional support for parents who find it difficult to bear what is happening.
Elusive nuance
There are situations when the imbalance in the distribution of roles is much less obvious. In such families, fortunately, no tragedy occurred, however, for example, the infantilism of one of the parents also affects how the children feel.
The need for security is one of the basic needs for a child. And it’s not just about having a home. It is important for children to feel the predictability of what happens to them every day. Chaos, the complete absence of rules and daily routines are just as dangerous as excessive strictness and hypercontrol.
If a parent is infantile, having difficulty organizing his own day, this can cause anxiety in a child. In this case, children will strive to organize their surroundings on their own and unwittingly take on some of the adult functions.
From the outside, it may seem touching when a child wakes up a parent in the morning so that he does not oversleep, or prepares breakfast for him. However, inside he may experience intense anxiety, which forces him to mature faster. If this happens too often, the child has a feeling of lack of support. As if there are no adults around, which means that he is left alone with the world.
How does mixing family roles affect children?
When a child takes on part of the functions of an adult, this becomes a potential source of stress for him. Of course, it is important to consider how often this happens and what share of responsibility falls to him.
There is nothing wrong when children have household chores, but rather the situation is dangerous when they take them on out of a sense of hopelessness and a desire to make the situation less stressful. As a rule, they grow up into anxious and overly responsible adults who reproduce the model learned in childhood in relationships with others.
“Donors” in relationships
Quite often, such early matured children choose infantile partners for themselves, in need of guardianship and control. They often show almost maternal care to them, put other people’s needs in the first place.
Malcolm West and Adrien Keller, scientists at the University of Calgary in Canada, suggest that a child who is used to being a support for a parent perceives the need of another for custody as a sign of affection and love. It can also be difficult for such a person to ask for help himself, because he was not used to it from childhood. In a relationship, he would rather give than receive.
Deaf parents
The mixing of roles in childhood also determines what kind of parent the child himself, who had to grow up early, will become in the future. This is evidenced by several studies by Amy Nuttall, assistant professor at the University of Michigan.
“When we were children, if our parents demanded too much from us, not allowing us to develop our own identity, this can affect our expectations of our own children, which means that we will also interfere with the satisfaction of their children’s needs,” says Nuttall.
Mothers who have not managed to be children themselves will find it difficult to understand what their own child needs. According to Nuttall’s research, they often show insufficient sensitivity to the experiences of children, their guardianship interferes with the child’s natural desire to explore the world around them.
Whatever childhood we get, this does not mean that, as adults, we will not be able to build harmonious relationships or become attentive and sensitive parents. Childhood experiences do influence which scenarios we play out later, but it is up to us to discover and change them.