To start, a real quick word about labels:
In recent years, we’ve become more aware of mental diagnoses, such that they’ve become part of our common vernacular. Social media are quick to offer an explanation of why we do that thing we do.
Find it difficult to focus between the hours of 3:21pm and 4:14pm? It’s probably attention hypersomnia spectrum disorder. Or, perimenopause. It’s probably definitely perimenopause.
So, humor me for a sec while I say that labels (diagnoses) are intended to identify a problem, such that a professional can help someone establish a solution. I mean, I hope. I wasn’t consulted in the creation of them. I do have to use them all the time for work though. Either way, the DSM is not a personality assessment booklet, and all labels are imperfect. They cannot capture the entirety of a person.
When I use the label “emotionally immature parent,” I’m referencing the work of Lindsay Gibson.* She notes that all of us have moments where our behaviors could be categorized as emotionally immature. Sometimes we feel overwhelmed or tired and say something we shouldn’t have, or we just want things to go our way. It’s human.
This term is reserved, then, for folks who have:
A long-standing pattern of difficulty with emotional nuance/complexity. Emotions are surfaced and justified. They do not demand self-reflection on the part of the one experiencing them.
The tendency to center themselves and their immediate experience. What’s happening for them right then is how they shape their perception of past and present, and what’s happening is very likely to shift. Quickly. Everyone in the room is affected, everyone in the room is implicated.
Difficulty with relational repair. You’re likely not going to hear an “I’m sorry,” that is genuinely repentant from these individuals, even when they have ostensibly made a mistake. There’s an intrinsic sense of justification that they do what they want to do, and the other person deals with it.
Difficulty with attunement. These parents may not have been able to accurately “read” their kids non-verbals or emotional states.
A lack of interest in their child’s inner world, maybe even a lack of awareness that it exists. This falls under the category of misattunement and poor boundary establishment. Children are not necessarily seen as their own selves. Children are extensions of parents.
There are other elements to this, which I recommend checking out in Lindsay’s work (see below).
Also remember, these behaviors happen with more or less severity between people, between instances, and over the span of one’s lifetime.
Nonetheless, the effect of the above patterns leave children (adult and otherwise) feeling:
Unseen.
Potentially burdened with emotional or practical tasks of upward caregiving (parentification), which usually starts in childhood.
Alone.
On edge, vigilant, or anxious.
So what do the adult children of emotionally immature parents, or ACEIPs, do with that? Especially as they themselves become parents?
Maybe starting a family meant that the tasks of caregiving are, for the first time, not to-much-too-soon-too-fast, and parenthood is an empowering experience. “Finally, my skillset fits the challenge ahead of me,” these folks might say.
Or, maybe the intensity of what it means to have become a parent is overwhelming, especially if they served as a pseudo-parent for many years. Maybe learning what boundaries are and how to implement them is tricky. Maybe ACEIPs are learning to foster the development of their own identity, alongside their children’s. Maybe some combo of all of the above.
Wherever the ACEIP finds themselves, a good place to begin is the work of establishing self-compassion. I know, it sounds corny. But seriously, self-abandonment has likely been the name of the game, so finding a sense of self within relationships, including the one between you and you, may not have been an option until now. This endeavor is so much bigger than those sentences quickly read.
From there, the task is to change the relationship with hope. The hope that parent(s) will be who the adult child need(ed) them to be. I could write an entire entry on hope, and maybe I will eventually, but the idea is that this frees the ACEIP from remaining stuck in a pattern of working disproportionately hard in the relationship, only to feel crushing disappointment again and again and again by parents who cannot show up as emotionally needed.
Changing the relationship with hope of who parents could be, who we wish them to be, might sound like giving up, but I think it is freeing—for the parents and for the ACEIP. It gives the ACEIP the opportunity to move beyond the pain of who parents are not, and allows the parents to just be who they are. The ACEIP then, decides how they wish to interact with their parent, whom they cannot change.
Again, that is easer to say/write than it is to do. Changing the relationship with hope can open up other painful spaces, including spaces that hold grief.
And most people don’t want to feel grief; It can be a sticky little bastard. It’s complicated and multifaceted. It often forces us to face what we cannot control about life. It doesn’t just show up one day, ask something of us, and leave. For ACEIPs, it might show up at every holiday, every major life milestone, and every quiet space on a Tuesday afternoon where we long for the comfort of a protective and nurturing figure.
It might show up in the form of anger, to protect us from the pain of feeling the absence of what we cannot have. It might show up as disassociation, our minds/bodies letting us know that we’re overwhelmed. It might even show up as high achieving perfectionism, so no one else sees what we feel beneath.
It that’s you, I want you to know: It’s ok. It makes sense. You make sense.
My hope (there’s that word again) is that you will know your worth, your value, and see the great “both-and.” Most parents do the best they can, that’s their job. Then you become an adult and manage what’s left from that experience, be it a little or a lot. That’s your job. I think this offers freedom in the task of an ACEIP becoming a parent, because it reinforces that we are not meant to be perfect for our children, just as our children are not meant to be perfect for us.
And those imperfections do not preclude love.
Reader, may you have what you need on your journey. May you know what support feels like and find a place in this world that affirms who you are. And lastly, may you know on a bone deep level, a sense of belonging.
As always, with warmth,
-Kristin
PS. If you’re interested in reading more about the implications for and ACEIP, I recommend:
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to heal from distant, rejecting, and self-involved parents
Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical tools to establish boundaries and reclaim your emotional autonomy
Self Care for Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: Honor your emotions, nurture yourself, and live with confidence
*Emotional Immaturity is not a diagnosis, it is a categorical reference for a set of behavioral patterns.
