Emily Walker PARENTIFICATION: Healing From the Trauma of Growing Up Too Soon

Parents and children always should have clear boundaries - parents will protect, guide, and take care of their children and their needs, and children will focus on their growth and development. So what happens when the lines get blurred or the roles are reversed? Parentification. That's what happens. Instead of giving to their child, the parent takes from them. In this role reversal, the parent may relegate duties to the child. At other times, the child voluntarily takes them on. Either way, the child learns that taking over the duties of the parent is the way to maintain closeness to them. Parentification and being parentified can have massively adverse effects on a person's psyche and mental health. Even after entering adulthood, the wounds of a traumatic childhood keep on haunting them. So in this book PARENTIFICATION , we will explore the definition of parentification. Then we will address the different types of parentification and discuss how it happens within families. After that we will consider the impact on the parentified child. Finally, we will offer some suggestions for healing from parentification.