#the parentification of children

[brucewaynehater101]

Reverse Robins AU is a fun concept, but I need more of that Jason POV angst.

If Tim and Jason are swapping roles (i.e. Tim dies and Jason is the third Robin), I need that focus on Jason's early Robin years.

Bruce, who's a grieving brutal man, would scare Jason. The violence, the coldness, and (if it's your flavor) the alcoholism. Bruce finds this child and, unlike for canon Jason, doesn't show him love and care.

So why does Jason stick around? Why would Jason put up with this behavior?

Bruce reminds Jason of a gnarly combination of Willis and Catherine.

The violence, the yelling, and the fear of a father figure are reminiscent of Willis. The lack of self-care, depressive spirals, and dissociative states are a messed up way Jason can see some of his mom again. Jason gets glimpses of his parents, but only in the worst sides of Bruce.

I want to see Jason tucking in Bruce and humming songs that would comfort his mom. Similar to when Catherine would forget or be unable to prepare food, Jason would ensure Bruce ate. He would chat lightly for hours to bring Bruce back from staring at Tim's case.

If Bruce is an alcoholic in this fic, Jason would be rubbing Bruce's back as he vomits. He would watch as Bruce poured another glass knowing he can't stop him.

When Bruce goes on a rampage, when he's screaming and hollering and throwing things, Jason would be hiding in his closet. Damian probably told Jason to call him when it gets like that (Damian can get Jason out of there if he can't stop it), but why would he? It's not like anyone was there for him before. It's not like calling for help led to him actually getting the assistance he needed. Instead, it usually led to the situation becoming worse.

So, despite the parentification (that's all that Jason's known), the kid stays. Bruce needs him after all. He eventually pulls Bruce away from the ledge. He finally gets a dad that doesn't cause his hands to tremble. Damian comes around more often and teaches Jason how to protect himself. Finally, the kid is Robin and able to help people (like how he saved Bruce).

Then Tim comes back from the dead.

[kernsing]

never over the fact that han yoohyun remains also a victim of child neglect/abandonment/having adult responsibilities foisted upon him too young even as he grows up under yoojin’s care. it’s not yoojin’s fault, he did his best and he did good raising yoohyun but. you’re not supposed to be able to hurt your parent, you’re not supposed to learn how to manage your parent’s emotions/wellbeing/public image, you’re not supposed to have to fear for their physical safety and desperately try to figure out a way to protect them, you’re not supposed to be capable of real cruelty toward them, not supposed to be able to fuck up their life. but your parent is your brother who is only five years older than you, and suddenly the new and dangerous world demands you (you who are new and dangerous too) in its spotlight, and you are just a child and he was just a child. the world is so wholly unjust to both of them and i will never fault either for how their relationship was in shambles for three/eight years, even when han yoohyun makes his terrible decisions with terrible consequences, paving the road to hell. you’re not supposed to be able to hurt your parent like that. you’re not supposed to be a brother that he needs to rely on, just as much as you rely on him, both of you abandoned.

haven’t even mentioned yet how you’re not really human you don’t understand humans you try your best for your brother but you Don’t Get It, how and why society works and the full emotional harm its hatred can wreak. you might see it but you don’t get it like physical danger and there is so much of that latter danger in the world now. you might see him and keep tabs on him but you don’t get your brother, that he needs you like you need him because of the very fact that you need him and children realizing their parents are complete emotional beings is not something that should happen before you learn to stand on your own. and learning to stand on your own, paradoxically and inevitably, takes much longer when you are forced to grow up too fast. you are forced to mature too early and so you are immature in ways invisible. so many flavors of terrible responsibilities foisted upon them that no one should ever bear (raising a child while you are a child/the world is on fire and so are you/your parent also needs you to bear your shared emotional burden).

it’s so unfair. i’m bundling them both up in a blanket. han yoojin’s childhood was stolen away so he could give this simulacrum of a childhood to his brother but the world is terrible and yoojin is just a child too and it’s not possible it’s not his fault that the wonderful beautiful childhood he built is not, cannot be the bulwark in the face of brutal reality, that delicate childhood shaped by hands still so small too.

[furiousgoldfish]

Parents will go 'I did the best I could', 'I'm not perfect', 'You can't blame me, I've been through worse', 'I didn't mean it that way', 'You're too sensitive', 'I did it out of love' and 'Sometimes people make mistakes', and pretend like they're too dumb to understand that they hurt you, like they just didn't realize you were in extreme amounts of pain, neglected, feeling despised, condemned, irredeemable and suicidal, but for you there was never a moment of your life when you were allowed to 'simply not realize what you were doing.'

You have been punished every single time your intentions were right and you didn't notice you were annoying someone or testing someone's patience. You were held responsible not only for what you did but for how it affected everyone else, until you learned to be hyper vigilant of the effect of your every action, to the point where you'd get paralyzed because any action could end up in someone taking offense. You were never allowed to be dumb about your actions, you were not even allowed to learn! Even just not knowing everyone's reactions in advance could get you hurt.

You learned that they are allowed to be dumb, ignorant, walk over everyone else's feelings, demand attention, demand sympathy, consideration, leeway, compassion, understanding, and space to learn (even when they outright refused to learn), but you were not allowed any of these things. Even as they were the adults, they could play dumb and cause havoc, while you, a child, were responsible for being, in every situation, absolutely perfect, or condemned to hell for imperfection.

Why was this necessary? Why is the world still fighting for everyone to take it easy on the parents, but condemn the children? Do we need children to emotionally and psychologically serve their parent's needs, to the point where they grow up neglected and traumatized? Do parents have children in order to have easily broken and controlled servants? Someone they could burden with all of their emotional baggage and then demand compassion and love from? While neglecting that same child, and pretending the child doesn't need any attention or help growing up? Punishing them for showing pain?

We don't need that kind of world, and we don't need that kind of parents.

[powersandplanetaries]

Thinking about Kristen Applebees, fleeing a hostile home for people who fully accept her but still feeling guilty about not being there to "shield" her younger brothers...

Thinking about Penny Luckstone, with 18 siblings who are all definitely loved but she's still helping her parents run the house and struggling between duty to a family she loves fiercely and pursuing her own dreams...

Thinking about Aelwynn Abernant redirecting her parents' scorn for Adaine, again and again, not always kindly but eventually, finally standing up to her parents when it became clear what they were willing to do to her little sister. "But Father, Adaine's just a baby..."

Idk guys having some real normal thoughts about the role of eldest daughters in Fantasy High.

[the-imitation-blog]

Spencer Reid’s above average intelligence actually set him up from a young age for far more trauma than the average kid.

It’s always the intelligent ones who are expected to be able to figure things out on their own, always the intelligent ones who end up parenting the incapable parents or raising themselves, always the intelligent ones who are overlooked by the majority of adults because they are assumed to not need the same level of support as the kids who don’t have that understanding of the way life is.

This leads these kids to be over achievers to try and get some of the attention they never received by just being a kid, and then when they reach adulthood they’re burnt out from trying so hard to be noticed so they just fade out of friendships, relationships and even job opportunities. They isolate themselves because they have learnt the hard way that the only person who’s ever truly there for you is themselves. And Gideon leaving in almost the exact same way as his father just solidified this.

Yes, Spencer is brilliant and could probably work out almost anything he put his mind to, but sometimes even the brightest most talented people need a little help, a little consistency and some consideration of their feelings and emotions.

We need to stop adult-ifying high intelligence in children and treat all children with the same level of care, boundaries and expectations as the rest. Spencer may be a fictional example of this phenomenon but he’s not some extreme example that never happens in reality, he’s the norm for a lot of smart kids.

[aphantimes]

.

[eroticwound]

i’m reading adult children of emotionally immature parents, and it’s so weird! like some of the stuff resonates, but most of it feels like a miss.

the thing is my parents aren’t emotionally immature as described in this book. they’re both alcoholics (my dad is a functional alcoholic), and my mom is mentally ill in some way i am not privy to the exact diagnosis of. they weren’t withholding of closeness, they were too close.

it’s the boundary dissolution of parentification versus the emotional isolation and disregard (neglect ig) of immature parents. i mean, there’s def overlap! parents who parentify their kids still disregard their kids’ emotional well-being, but it’s more because they’re relying on them for support… i do think instrumental parentification occurs with emotionally immature parents, but emotional parentification seems to run contrary to the whole shtick of emotionally immature parents…

anyway, i’ve been trying to find anything that discusses the differences and overlap between the two. i’m assuming it has to do with whether a parent had substance abuse or mental health issues…

if anyone has a lead about that hmu!

[connieaaa]

I certainly utter the phrase "see if I care" for someone who does indeed care, often too much and too often.

[angelique-of-the-volturi-guard]

Your children are not required to act like adults for the sake of your comfort as their parent.

Sit with this as long as you need to.

[spite-and-waffles]

Thinking about that post, being tricked into self-love by projecting all that you are onto your favourite characters.

Uncomfortably personal reflections under the cut.

Jason echoes my keening for the love of a father for whom I was never enough and who failed me completely. The empathy that results in a sense of perpetually outraged justice that could easily lead me to do terrible things.

Dick mirrors my parentification trauma and eldest daughter syndrome; the hard-wired belief that I'm only worth what I can do for others.

Tim is my isolation and loneliness and losing everything I love over and over.

Stephanie is my refusal to become like my family despite the hurt of consistent rejection, shame at my mistakes and sense of inadequacy; trying to heal by being there for others the way no one was there for me.

Damian is never fitting in; the betrayal and confusion when everything I am and was made into by people I trusted turned out to be wrong and shameful out in the world. Wondering whether I'm a good person worthy of love and acceptance when everyone seems better than me no matter how hard I try.

Every one of them is my wanting desperately to be enough. To be seen and to matter. To be loved simply for existing. Being lonely and alone and unable to see or reach out and take the abundance at my fingertips by being trapped in my own trauma. All of it an outpouring of sadness and empathy for, as someone else said: "people succumbing under the same family curse over and over again, thinking they’ll be the one to break it. That this time it will be different".

[keroinnie]

need a better job so i can move out like dear god

[haveacupofjohanny]

Sunday's Hot Topic: Navigating the Complexities of Modern Parenting—A Car Talk Reflection

Are we burdening our kids with adult expectations too soon? In this week's #SundayHotTopic, I explore parentification and its impact on identity, with a tie-in to Isla's journey in Mrs. Franchy's Evil Ring. Read more at www.haveacupofjohanny.com

The other day, driving through familiar streets, I found myself reflecting on parenting in 2024. With all the information at our fingertips, parents are often still navigating with faulty maps, especially when it comes to the impact of parentification. This hits close to home for me—not just as a stepmom, but also because of the story I’m writing in Mrs. Franchy’s Evil Ring and the Six Months…

[venting-town]

I’m tired of having to play therapist with others

Especially my own father

He’s used me as an emotional crutch my entire fucking life and I’m sick of it

And HAVE been sick of it

I shouldn’t have to constantly console HIM about how much he “ misses me “

I shouldn’t be made to NOR gaslight to constantly cradle him and hug him when I don’t want to or look him in the eyes if I don’t want to or hear him constantly say how “ great “ I am

He needs to STOP overriding my boundaries and STOP USING ME AS HIS THERAPIST/SPOUSE!!!!!

That is NOT my job! Even if it “ is supposed to be “, I reject and deny it. Even though I still do it because I’m fucking exhausted of my boundaries constantly being overridden my entire life/before life/ /etc. And because I care about others too much

[furiousgoldfish]

If you've found yourself in that childhood hell with a narcissistic parent, where every year you gain you get treated worse, and the older you get, the more unworthy and unlovable you are, this is why it's going on.

Narcissists are unwilling to be parents, but they're ready to take advantage of every possible benefit they think parenthood has. The perceived benefit is how the world sees them, someone feeling sympathetic or engaged with them, getting popularity based on your kid's talents, abilities and successes, people having compassion for their 'parenthood struggles', and of course, the idea of unconditional love. For them, not for the kid. They also then go on and take extra stuff, like having their personal emotional caretaker, or a target for all of their anger, someone to feel superior to, someone they can violate, insult, touch, beat, and blend with, without any kind of consequences from the outside world. There's very few scenarios that would allow them such power over another person, and parenthood happens to be one of them.

So, why do they prefer small toddlers rather than grown-up children? Because toddlers gain them attention. They can go with a toddler in public, and have people gush and admire the cuteness. They can sometimes teach toddlers to do little dances or sing for the audience. They can do pretty much anything to small children, and children won't complain or understand what is going on. They can neglect their toddlers and nobody will know. They can punish small children for crying. They can convince small children that they exist only for to make the narcissist's life easier.

Once children start developing boundaries, start saying no, and no longer gather the attention of the crowd, that is where narcissists are no longer getting as many benefits from parenthood and start emotionally abandoning the child, and shaming the child for 'growing up' and 'not being as easy to control and manipulate'. And this is not how normally things work, you don't stop loving your kid when they're growing up, you don't value them according to how much attention you can get using them. Sometimes, if a kid has a special talent and is able to get them attention via child contests or tournaments, this kid will not be obviously immediately abandoned. But it will be clear to this child that the 'love' is completely dependent on how well they do and how far they succeed. The second they stop, they know that the parental love will be withdrawn and they'll be rendered a failure.

Narcissists will ask you to go not just out of your comfort zone in order to give them what they want, they will ask the downright impossible, and when you inevitably can't give it to them, you will be discarded, and possibly punished. You will degraded from 'special' and 'important because you can do this one thing for your parent', to nothing but a target for rage, forced to feel like you deserve it because you couldn't do what no child can - make a narcissist act like a normal parent. They convince children that they would be loving and thoughtful parents, if only the child was not so x, and y, and z, and the list is endless. Endless excuses not to love their child, because withdrawing that love will make the child absolutely desperate in their attempt to please the parent, and be good enough to deserve love.

This is not what would normally happen to a child. We're meant to be celebrated for growth. Our progress into adulthood should be about us, about what we can do now, how much new experiences and excitement it brings to have a bigger body, how much more capable and safer we are, what new skills we can develop, new games we can play, better connections and understanding with others we can now achieve. It's not supposed to be about whether we are of a benefit to someone, our growth is about us becoming a happy adult! Appropriating this entire process and reducing it to 'grovel endless to deserve love, and feel guilty for growing because you're of less use now' is absolute torture to a child, who doesn't understand that it's not meant to be this way, that they were never supposed to be a tool to use.

As we mature with the narcissist continually building this narrative of us not being good enough to deserve love, we end up having no other narrative, and believe that we're fundamentally, intrinsically lacking in something, and this makes us unlovable. It has nothing to do with the truth, and everything to do with a continuous lie that someone made up about us when we were still small, that we exist as a tool and a resource, and every hint of free will and desire and personal goals and boundaries is us failing to live up to that use. We were never meant to be exist for them, there was no achievable goal, us even trying to 'deserve their love' was nothing but a waste of our time and energy. We're not unlovable. We just don't a parent. We had someone leeching off of us, taking instead of giving, convincing us we don't deserve attention, care or resources, unlike them, who deserve to take it all.

For any normal parent, everything about you would have been good enough, you would have been a source of joy and celebration without ever even trying to deserve it. Nobody has to deserve parental love, it's either given by default, or there is nobody willing to be a parent to you. Being unwilling to parent you, they have no right to expect anything from you. You did not break the parent-child bond, because there never was such a thing in the first place, they betrayed you from the start.

[applewithteeth]

Me when I was 10: walking five blocks to and from school every day during morning rush hour.

Me now: being incredibly nervous about letting my 12 year old sister in our front yard unsupervised at 10 am, despite the fact that we don’t live near a main road and she has never been in a serious incident or gotten into any big trouble.