Emotionally Immature Parenting, The Different Types And How It Affects Their Kids
The way we're raised has an indescribable amount of influence on who we become as adults. Some of it is nature, sure, but how we react to and engage with the natural aspects of our personality is fully up to nurture. When a parent isn't able to handle being a proper parent, often due to their own struggles, that then affects their child. They feed off each other.
Emotionally immature parenting is an often overlooked form of bad parenting, with many different categories it can fall under, all equally as dangerous.
Understanding the effects of childhood neglect can help victims identify some lingering issues they still deal with, but what if you don't even know where to begin? How can you start understanding something that you struggle to think about?
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Muddied Parenting
Growing up with an emotionally immature parent is a strange, isolating experience. Many people aren't even aware that it happened to them, thinking instead that their parent was just stern, dramatic, or any other trait that emotional immaturity can manifest as. Some common traits seen in these types of parents include nonexistent boundaries, putting their needs above those of their kids, being too much of their child's friend rather than their parents, and being dismissive of their child's feelings.
This type of behavior is often caused by their own parents also being emotionally immature, raising them to believe that behavior is okay and leaving them without the skills needed to heal themselves. It's passed down from generation to generation, a vicious cycle.
Stopping It Here
Though there may be a cause for these parents behaving the way they do, that doesn't make it right. It's still important to understand just how much an emotionally immature parent affects their child's development and what those lasting scars can look like in adulthood. By being aware of how this upbringing affects you, you prevent it from being passed down to yet another generation, effectively breaking the cycle of bad parenting.
Here are just a few of the types of emotionally immature parents, how they behave, and how that behavior impacts their children.
1. The Controlling Type
You might know this type as "helicopter parents," known for hovering around their children and constantly monitoring them, exercising any amount of control they can get. They put a lot of pressure on their kids, expect them to always be performing, and react to any misgiving with anger or excessive punishment. Even when they're in a good mood, they'll be overly critical and invasive.
This leads to a child that grows up to be an absolute perfectionist, so much so that it becomes a detriment to their mental health. They're workaholics, they have impulsivity issues, and they bottle up negative feelings so as not to appear weakened. They suffer in silence.
2. The Emotional Type
The main trait of emotional type parents is their overreactions to things. This can go in any direction, from rage to sorrow to joy, but it creates a volatile environment where children may be afraid to speak their true thoughts lest their parents lash out. They can either appear needy, overly reliant on their children or be very distant, seeming to refuse any sort of real connection.
As children raised under these conditions grow, they often become very anxious and depressed, always afraid of saying the wrong thing and making someone else upset. They yearn for a real connection with others but don't know how to approach it in a healthy way, as they were never taught what that looks like.
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3. The Rejecting Type
This type is fairly self-explanatory, they reject their children. They're dismissive of their child's wants and needs, avoiding any sort of heavy or meaningful talk. They always seek to be alone, even appearing selfish in the ways they'll deny their children quality time or any time at all. Any interactions are cold, short, and sometimes very harsh.
Children raised by these kinds of parents may have stunted empathy. They never learned how to care for others because they were never cared for, and that will extend to the relationships they have in adulthood. They have no way to regulate or manage their emotions, with their only tactic being to dissociate from them entirely.
4. The Negligent Type
Negligent type parents may sound similar in name to rejecting type, but there are a few notable differences. Negligent parents are completely passive. They avoid any and all confrontation, which is often needed to parent a child at all. They pride themselves on being easy to get along with or "chill," but they lack boundaries. The second anything stressful happens, their child tries to talk to them about their feelings, or there's anything serious that requires them to actually be a parent, they shut down.
A child raised by this type of parent often deals with shame and feelings of being a burden, both stemming from deeply rooted anxiety. Your parent being your friend is fine in a bubble, but without any sort of structure or guidance in their life, the child basically had to fend for themselves the entire time. This leads to an adult that's tired, lost, and pent up.
A Parent's Scars
No one ever said that parenting was easy, but before having kids, people should examine whether they're truly ready and able to give a child the appropriate level of care, attention, and dedication they need to grow into a healthy adult.
These misgivings are often born of pain, but that pain doesn't have to continue into another generation. Be the change you want to see in your family. If you're the child of an emotionally immature parent, know that you are not at fault for how you were raised. You can seek your own help, you can grow past the marks they left behind, and you can become a better parent to yourself and any children you may have.
