My daughter Astrid and I were on the couch getting ready to watch “Backrooms.” She had already seen the horror film in the cinema, but she also wanted to watch it with me.
I asked him how his therapy was going while I opened Prime.
“Good,” she said. “My therapist told me I was parentified.”
“Parentified? » I said. “What does this mean?”
“It just means that because of your bipolar disorder, I became a parent in a way. Parentified children may excel in academics and find employment earlier, but may later have mental health problems, or even self-harm.”
She said, “That’s totally fine with me. It’s not your fault you’re bipolar.”
Astrid, now 19 years old, has struggling with mental health issues and self-harm. The movie distracted me, but the next day all I could think about was whether I had “parentified” Astrid. I called my friend Carrie and tearfully told her what Astrid’s therapist had said.
“Danielle, Astrid was never hungry, dirty or in danger. You loved her and did everything for her. You were and are a phenomenal mother.”
“When I was stable,” I replied, “but what about when I wasn’t?”
Kandace Ledergerber, a licensed professional counselor who runs a trauma-focused practice in Phoenix, says parentification can be “a perceived or actual role change, in which the child feels responsible for the parent’s happiness, stress, emotional well-being, or even physical well-being.”
A parentified child may get up and get ready for school, make their own lunch, or cook for themselves or their siblings at too early an age. When I was depressed, I still did physical things, but only the bare minimum. I would give Astrid money for her lunch instead of packing a healthy one. I would drive her to school in my pajamas instead of walking her to the bus stop, because that meant an extra 15 minutes of sleep, and the second I was home, I was back in bed, where I stayed.
If another adult (like my husband or my mother) could fill in, I let them.
Astrid never wanted to contribute to my mania or depression. When she was 8, she woke me up because she had a bad dream. I woke up easily, climbed into her bed, scratched her back and sang Braham’s lullaby with my own words until she fell asleep. Afterwards, I was manic and kept awake.
Sleep is the antidote to mania, so when Astrid heard me tell her father, “I couldn’t go back to sleep after Astrid woke me up,” she felt guilty and worried that she had made me sicker.
Alex J. Anderson-Kahl, certified school psychologist and founder of Raise Strong, says a child whose parent has a mental illness might think, “How’s Mommy?” instead of “How am I?” ” This change can cause the parentified child to have difficulty identifying his own needs because he “has become so accustomed to noticing what everyone else needs.”
When I was depressed, I would stay in bed for weeks, sometimes months. Recently, Astrid showed me her diary. One entry read: “Some kids were mean to me at school today. I really want to talk to mom, but she’s depressed.» I told my friend about this and she pointed out that her son could say the same thing about the times he wanted to talk to her while she was working.
“Yes, but when you get home he might talk to you,” I said.
“Danielle, I remember you saying Astrid would lay down with you when you were depressed to talk, cuddle, or just hang out.”
“Well, according to her diary, there were times when she felt like she couldn’t do those things.”
Ledergerber says, “Parenting isn’t about a parent doing something wrong. It’s about how a child’s nervous system responds to what it feels is needed at home.”
When I’m manic, the whole house can feel it. I have a short temper and expect cleanliness and order – these are not things that matter to me when I am stable. One day, when Astrid was 7, I asked her to clean the playroom, and instead of putting her Legos in the trash, she put them on a table.
When I saw them, I asked sternly, “Did you put that here?” Astrid nodded and I swept the table, making the little colored bricks fly. I would like Never did that when I was right.
Astrid could tell if I was manic or depressed, and sometimes she tried to take care of me. She walked on eggshells, tried to keep things clean, was aware of my need for sleep when I was up and had to deal with my absence when I was in bed and lying down.
She would have “spa sessions” where she would put a towel on my bed and give me a massage to help calm me down. We hung out in my bed sometimes when I was depressed, but if she came in and I was asleep, she didn’t wake me up. If another adult replaced her, she might not see me for days.
Photo courtesy of Danielle Huggins
Which raises another point: Children who have been parentified do better when they have other reliable adults to rely on. Astrid says her father was definitely her rock, but she also had her two grandmothers, her great-grandmother and a few neighbors who knew my situation.
On the surface, Astrid seems to be doing wonderfully. She excelled in college and worked two jobs. Ledergerber, who also runs Soul Mission EMDR Therapy, says, “When children have a parent with mental illness and take on a caregiver role, they are often seen as high achievers and achievers on the outside, thriving in their careers, schools and lives. »
Although these attributes are positive, parentified children can push themselves to the point of exhaustion. If Astrid isn’t productive, she says she feels lazy.
According to Terra Brigando, a licensed marriage and family therapist, parent/child role reversal “can also occur when a parent treats a child like a peer, or leans on them for support in a way that is developmentally inappropriate for the child. This bond may feel like closeness, but it is often unhealthy. They learn that their own needs are secondary.”
I absolutely shared too much with Astrid. During manic episodes, it was difficult for me to change what came out of my mouth, but regardless of my emotional state, I often treated her more like a friend than a child. We have an extremely close relationship, but my oversharing may have contributed to his anxiety and made him feel like he’s not entitled to his own needs.
Parentification is more common than I thought. Many parents with serious illnesses have difficulty caring for their children. My friend Carrie was parentified when her mother contracted multiple sclerosis when she was 13 years old.
As her mother deteriorated, Carrie took care of her and did the cooking and cleaning. After her mother’s death, Carrie retained these roles until she moved away.
In situations like this, Anderson-Kahl says the child should receive age-appropriate information; they must be aware of the situation without feeling responsible for its management. Additionally, if possible, reliable adults should be identified and a plan put in place for difficult times. He notes that it should not be the child’s responsibility to “coordinate the entire response.”
However, Brigando asserts that parentified children are not “doomed to fail” and that “there is a path to recovery, and often the very traits that parentification engenders can serve as strengths if childhood trauma is overcome with a supportive therapist.”
I quoted Anderson-Kahl to my daughter, telling her, “You handled things that should have been handled by adults. It was too much for you, and it wasn’t your fault.”
She said: “That seems right. But a lot of it was out of your control. You did your best.” Still, she said that holding me accountable for my actions then made it easier to move forward in our relationship now.
I blamed myself for Astrid’s problems, but many children struggle even when they grow up with perfectly healthy parents. If I knew what I know now, I wouldn’t have shared so many details of my bipolar journey with her. And when she was old enough to know about my illness, I would have made sure she knew it wasn’t her responsibility to make me feel better.
I wish I hadn’t put my daughter in that position, but now that I know I did, I can tell her I’m sorry. Even though she’s older now, I no longer share details about my bipolar disorder. And I support her in therapy so that she can overcome the difficulties that can arise from parenting.
Most importantly, I remind her that the only person she needs to take care of is herself.
Danielle Huggins lives in New Jersey and writes primarily about her life with bipolar disorder. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Short Reads, Mutha Magazine and GOMag.com. She also contributes to the Writing Class Radio podcast. Danielle has a memoir about her life with bipolar disorder in progress and posts about her illness on many platforms under @bipolardanielle or @bipolardaniellehuggins.
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