Parenthood is no easy task. Parents are human, too. They are flawed, fallible, and often burdened with their own unresolved dysfunctions as they attempt to create a sanctuary in which their children can thrive.
To be parented with wisdom and grace is a rare gift, one that not only equips a child to navigate the world but also grants them a solid foundation from which they can actualize their potential.
This is not to suggest that parents must be perfect or immune to struggle. Disagreements, financial hardship, and emotional turmoil are natural parts of life. The true test of parenting lies not in the absence of adversity, but in how such adversity is managed, especially in the presence of their children.
A competent parent shields the child not just from the harshness of the external world but also from the unprocessed chaos within themselves. Even when a child witnesses conflict or hardship, it is the grace with which their parents handle such moments that offers reassurance:
Mommy and daddy are handling that problem with so much grace. I want to be like them
Parenthood is both active and passive. Direct acts of engagement include teaching, comforting, and disciplining. Passive modeling comes in how the parents treat each other, handle stress, or confront failure.
Children absorb both.
Forced to Adapt
Due to tumultuous family dynamics or parental incompetence, some children are forced to “grow up” too soon. They become caretakers, mediators, and peacekeepers, roles they were never meant to play at that age.
They begin managing the household emotionally, and sometimes even practically, looking after siblings, soothing parents, or numbing themselves to survive.
Such children are often gifted — emotionally attuned, highly perceptive, and quietly wise. Coupled with a great degree of sensitivity, they can read a room with remarkable precision.
When their parents argue or fight, they easily notice the subtleties: the shift in tone, the tightening of the jaw, the bitterness buried beneath words. And whilst their infantile minds cannot comprehend nor explain what is happening, they can feel the dissonance. They know something is off.
Their parents, caught up in their own fight, fail to notice the silent observer, mistaking the child for an NPC in the two-player game they think they’re playing. They forget that life is a multiplayer experience where every action creates ripples affecting other players.
Invisible Wounds
Parental dysfunction doesn’t always announce itself through shouting or violence. Often, it’s more subtle and quiet. A lack of emotional investment. A failure to show up with love, warmth, or attention.
Many parents provide materially but not emotionally, and it’s the latter that most deeply shapes a child’s inner world.
Material support is a blessing, but without emotional connection, it’s not enough.
A well-nurtured child, even in scarcity, can grow into someone capable of creating abundance.
But a materially wealthy child who is emotionally starved grows into an adult still searching for a home.
What Becomes of the Inner Child?
The inner child represents a vital part of the psyche that is meant to be integrated, not outgrown. It is the root of wonder, spontaneity, vulnerability, and play. In a well-parented childhood, this part is appropriately nurtured into the personality, enriching the individual’s way of being in the world.
But in survival-mode childhoods, the inner child is cast aside. Spontaneity feels unsafe. Play becomes foolish. Emotions become liabilities.
They self-erase not out of a lack of depth or intelligence, but because their nervous system learned early on that being playful or spontaneous was unsafe. As a result, they cling to stability and structure, often to an extreme.
Though this may support and benefit those around them, providing an environment in which others can thrive and play, they forget that they too need play.
Over time, they equate their worth with usefulness.
Winning, But at What Cost?
What may appear as moral heroism manifesting as maturity and strength, in truth, masks a loss of the child within. These individuals may be extraordinary in their ability to support others, manage crises, and fulfill roles.
But they carry an ache, the yearning to be wanted, not just needed.
They also suffer an existential form of isolation.
Their exceptional abilities cast them as saviors to those in their immediate circle, reducing their identity to their capacity to help others.
Though they yearn to be recognized for their full humanity, those around them lack the capacity to appreciate their complexity.
This creates a profound alienation as they shoulder responsibilities beyond their years or those that others have avoided.
At times they even wish they could relinquish their talents if it meant finding genuine connection, preferring material or circumstantial hardship over the existential loneliness of being perpetually misunderstood and unseen for who they are.
In their relationships, they perform. They anticipate needs, solve problems, and remain steady. They hope that by being indispensable, they will earn the love they seek.
You can’t blame them, because this is how they were wired to survive. They internalized that love must be earned and emotion must be managed.
They become the responsible one. The functioning one. The provider. But never the desired one.
Because desire cannot be engineered.
Reclaiming the Lost
Picking oneself apart is a slow and, at times, painful process. You come face-to-face with your dysfunctions and must let go of beliefs you once held to usher in the new, or rather what was meant to be. The beauty in this is that the child is still there.
Still within.
It may have been cast into the shadows, but it always remained, asking, “When can I come out?” Perhaps you were afraid to release it because your circumstances were difficult, believing it would get in the way. But it only wanted to tell you to take life less seriously.
That existence isn’t merely about solving problems and fixing everything that appears broken. It’s about making the world your playground and extracting meaning from it during your brief time here. It yearned to integrate with you, to equip you with the vitality to live whilst maintaining stability and caring for yourself and those closest to you.
This integration takes time, accepting and recognizing what was lost, then gradually allowing the child to emerge so it can remind the adult in you to be spontaneous. A journey toward wholeness, reminding you that you’re not meant to merely function but to live—freely, joyfully, and sometimes messily.
It often takes time for them to recognize this truth, and even longer to be willing to loosen their grip on structure for the sake of play. But when you do, you begin to reclaim the childhood experiences they missed, and in doing so, discover that there is far more to life than simply being useful.
Because the truth is that we are meant to be stable paradoxes: beings who can fluidly balance maturity and play, responsibility and joy, structure and spontaneity.