The Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents

Families are complicated, and becoming an adult doesn’t automatically make navigating difficult family dynamics any easier. If you’re the adult child of an emotionally immature mother or father, chances are you either have a challenging relationship with your parent or have decided to go no-contact completely.

Children of emotionally immature parents are often parentified when they are growing up, meaning they have to take on the adult responsibilities in their household because the adults simply won’t. This can look like caring for younger siblings, completing household tasks such as cooking or cleaning, and worse-becoming a confidant for their parent. Parentified children are expected to anticipate and meet their parent’s emotional needs, despite this being a completely inappropriate role reversal. Parent’s are supposed to provide emotional safety and comfort for their children, not the other way around.

This toxic dynamic leads the adult children of emotionally immature mothers and fathers to believe it is their responsibility to make sure the people around them are ok. They becoming very competent at putting their own needs on the back burner or ignoring them completely. So, it’s no surprise many children of emotionally immature parents grow up to be people pleasers who experience high levels of anxiety.

You’re not crazy

Do you ever leave family interactions questioning your own sanity? When families rely on the unhealthy ways of communicating and interacting with one another that are common with emotionally immature parents, setting healthy boundaries or calling out unacceptable interactions is almost always seen as a threat.

As a result, adult children who are trying to develop healthier ways of coping and interacting are often made to feel like there’s something wrong with them or they’re crazy, when that couldn’t be further from the truth. Learning to recognize the unhealthy patterns within your own family and develop more effective ways of responding to toxic behaviors is crucial for your own emotional health.

Create healthier boundaries with your emotionally immature parent (that don’t depend upon their willingness to make changes)

It would be wonderful if your parent decided to go to therapy and work on themselves, but you can’t make anyone change. And, frankly, you’re going to exhaust yourself trying to do so. So, until your emotional immature parent decides that is something they want to do, your energy is much better spent on changing the way you interact with and respond to them. This means learning how to set healthy boundaries with your parents and learning how to enforce those boundaries when they aren’t respected.

This clearly isn’t the easiest thing to do. You may feel guilt, fear, or frustration at the thought of setting boundaries with your parent. Maybe there is concern that your parent won’t respect your boundaries. Maybe you’ve already asked them to make changes and nothing has changed. Maybe you’re afraid of how your parent will react to you setting boundaries with them.

It’s important to reach out for support when you feel like you’ve already exhausted all of your options. Therapy is one resource you can use to gain clarity on what boundaries are important to you and explore the reasons why setting them in the past hasn’t worked. Whether it’s done in therapy or not, it’s important to have a clear understanding for how you plan to respond if your parents ignore your boundaries that doesn’t include you ignoring your boundaries, too.