Parentification: When Children Become Caregivers in Abusive Environments

Today, we're talking about something that happens in abusive homes that nobody talks about: parentification.

When children become caregivers. When kids take on adult responsibilities. When the roles flip, and the child ends up protecting the parent.

This is real. This is painful. And if this was your childhood, you're not alone.

https://www.youtube.com/@TERRORTOTRIUMPHLIVE

https://www.peltsemporium.com

Transcript

Welcome And Where To Watch

SPEAKER_02 1:19

Hello, everybody. Welcome to Terror to Triumph. My name is Alphonse. And for tonight, my cohole storm should be on the way. So I would like to apologize for that. That was funny because of my lateness and trying to get her together to come on the show. But she should be here shortly. Regardless, I thank you all for coming. I thank you for supporting the show. I thank you for watching and learning and growing and being a part of this community. 74,000 viewers worldwide. I thank y'all for that. I appreciate y'all for that. Thank you to Singapore and Australia and Germany and UK and excuse me, uh Korea and all the other countries that have been watching India. I appreciate you all. I appreciate you all. So without further ado, I'm going to get started into the show. Today's topic is going to be a tough one, y'all. So try to bear through it with me. As a survivor myself, this is going to touch on, of course, as all the topics do, but I just I just want to prepare you. This one is this is not a light show. Thank you all for amending your schedules as well for coming to check out the live at 9:30 p.m. Standard Time. This is our first evening broadcast. So thank you, thank you, thank you. Okay. Uh here we go. Uh to let you know, Terra to Triumph, this podcast is live on Facebook and YouTube. You can follow us on Facebook on my personal page, Alfonso Pelt for me. And you can follow us also on our YouTube channel, Terra to Triumph Live, all one word, no spaces. And if you want to support the show, you can go over to Pelt Symporium. That's www.peltsymporium.com and buy merchandise there proceeds from that website, goes to help fund this live broadcast. And for those who haven't caught the message I just put out yesterday and today, we now have subscriptions, paid subscriptions. The Tuesday's QA will not be public anymore. Our specials and our series will not be public anymore. If you want to access those, which I do recommend, um, those are now paid subscriptions only through our podcast website that's buzzsprout.com. Look for Terra to Triumph there. Okay.

What Parentification Really Means

SPEAKER_02 4:39

So today we're talking about something that happens in abuse of homes. Something that nobody talks about. Parentification. That sounds like a long word, it sounds a little confusing. You can break it down and say, a parent, but it's parentification. When children are made to become caregivers, when kids have to take on adult responsibilities, far beyond when they're supposed to, they're still children, when the roles flip and the child ends up protecting the parent, or ends up protecting its siblings. Okay, this is real. This topic is painful. And if this was your childhood, you're not alone. Me personally, I haven't experienced parentification because I was the youngest of my siblings. But my siblings have. My oldest brother had to take care of his younger siblings and me before he was ready. My oldest sister, and then my middle sister had to take care of my youngest sister and me. So that was a lot passed down through the family. Parentification, responsibilities before they were ready to handle that. So I want to address that tonight.

The Different Types Of Parentification

SPEAKER_02 6:36

Parentification, by definition, is when a childhood child is forced to take on adult responsibilities before they're developmentally ready. Okay. It can look like emotional caregiving, being your parents' therapist, emotional support or confidant. I've seen that happen in families, where a parent might be unstable, and the child has to be the stability in the family for the parent and the siblings. Physical caregiving, which is obviously cooking, cleaning, rearing the children or siblings, and managing the household, trying to make sure the bills get paid, or keep the lights on, or handle the care of the house, you know, cutting the grass and pulling weeds and washing windows, you know, all that stuff. And the financial responsibility, which I hinted on, or paying the bills, or working to support the family. Decision making, making adult choices that should be the parent's job. Protecting the parent, shielding them from consequences, or lying for them, managing their emotions that can happen to family that's dealing with domestic violence. Okay. So this is this is not just touching with childhood abuse, even though it's part of childhood abuse. This is touching on a multitude of things, okay? So in an abusive environment, like I just said, parentification is even more damaging because it happens alongside the arm. You're being hurt, and you're responsible for taking care of another person that's hurting you getting a headache just thinking about that.

SPEAKER_05 9:01

Here's what happens, okay?

SPEAKER_02 9:04

The abusive parent is unstable, obviously. They're struggling, they're in pain, and instead of getting help from an adult or outside help, they turn to their child. You gotta work. But if you don't go with the child to protect the child, you're putting them out there with elements that could bring harm to the child. So the child learns, it's my job to manage, manage rather, my parents' emotions. It's my job to keep this household running, it's my job to make sure my parent is okay. That's something you should be thinking about. When you're an adult and your parent is elderly taking care of your parent at that point, that should be along those lines. Not when you're in your preteens, teens. So you see the dynamic and the distortion, the difference between the two is vastly different. What happens to the child's needs? They disappear. It's like the child has no time to focus on being a child anymore. Oh emotional parent parentification, okay. Your parent tells you about their adult problems. You know coming up as a child of the adults in our family. I'm talking about outside our family, like our near adults, uncles, aunties, grandmothers, grandfathers, even though I've never met my grandfather on either side, but those people in our family taught us what growth phones for talking. You're not supposed to be in the room, you're not supposed to be privy to that conversation. Period. Go play somewhere, go outside. Don't you see me on the phone? Go upstairs, go to your room. So always go away from the adult conversation. There was no where kids were allowed to hear an adult conversation, or sit in and listen to adult conversations. So now with the advent of parent slash friend to the children, to the child, children are now becoming aware of adult themes, and that's above their maturity level. So they can't really handle that, and now they're going out speaking on adult themes, they should have no business speaking on. But that's going into another topic. I want to stay on point. So your parent tells you about their pops. Okay, so you become their emotional support, you learn to read their moods and manage their feelings, you comfort them when they're upset, or you become responsible for their emotional well-being. Okay, physical parentification, you cook meals for the family. Why are you doing that? That should be your parents' job. But if the parent isn't around, I have to say that's very common nowadays. Not that parents want that to happen, but because our society has made it so where both parents now have to work in the family for most households. And that means children are being left at home, oftentimes without adult supervision. What does that mean? That means children have to fend for themselves as far as their feeding, their clothing, their bathing, their whatever. So whoever the eldest or oldest child is is made to be that responsible person over the siblings. That's kind of harsh, but that's the reality of it, y'all. So they're managing the household task, and they're the glue that holds everything together at that point. So protective parentification is when the child protects the parent from consequences, or they lie for them, or they cover up their abuse, or they take the blame for things they did, or they shield them from getting in trouble, which is pretty much all those above. Financial partification is when the child works to help support the family. We already have child labor laws, so that's not even supposed to be something to be, uh, for lack of words right now, in the mix. It's not even supposed to be a part of the dynamic of the home. So the child's not supposed to be managing the money, the child is not supposed to be the make making decisions about spending, the child is not supposed to be feeling responsible for the family survival. These are things a child is not supposed to be or isn't mentally capable of doing. So that could cause even more stress factors in the family dynamic.

When Responsibility Becomes A Threat

SPEAKER_02 16:26

Here's the thing in abusive homes, okay, these responsibilities often become threats. Obvious, right? Because how can a child really deal with something like that? It can also become guilt or punishment if a child does not comply so forced into doing things a child is not ready to do. Okay, so it's one thing when you learn about chores, it's one thing, or it's a different thing when you're beat to do them, and you're not even mature enough to know what a chore is. Okay, so that part I've experienced. If you don't take care of your siblings, they'll go hungry. You've heard that. Or if you heard, if you don't keep this house clean, I'll beat you. How many times I've heard that? Oh my god, wake your ass up and beat you if you don't do it right, if you don't clean this house, if you don't keep this house clean, and in so many different ways I've heard that. So if you tell anyone what happens in our house, I'll hurt you worse.

SPEAKER_05 18:00

I've heard that.

SPEAKER_02 18:03

So the child is trapped, they're responsible now, and they're terrified. Yes, I was. Yes, I was. So it's the impact on a child, okay.

How It Shows Up In Adulthood

SPEAKER_02 18:18

So when you grow up as a parent, oh, I was about to say parentification child. When you grow up as a parentified child, your development gets interrupted, okay? You skipped childhood, you skip your adolescence, you go straight to adulthood, and you do it while being abused. That's a lot to carry. This is why I said this this is heavy, y'all. So we fast forward to adulthood. What does parentification look like in your life? Codependency. You learn that your worth comes from taking care of others, so you pick partners who need fixing. Does that sound familiar to you? Somebody that needs help, they're struggling. So you stay in relationships where you're doing all the emotional labor, and you can't say no, you can't set boundaries. Okay. Uh uh, that was me. That is me. Difficulty with boundaries, okay. How about you were never allowed to have boundaries, so as an adult, you don't know how to set them. Or you say yes when you mean to say no. You take on other people's problems, and you re you feel responsible for their feelings. All of the above, all of the above, right here. And I I I feel that about this one you learn to read your parents' moves to say safe, stay safe. So when you're always scanning the room, looking to stay safe, always alert, always ready to manage someone else's emotions, and that's exhausting. I know that is because I know I do it, I do that. I don't like to do it, but I do do that. I don't want to do it, but I feel myself to do that. Difficulty asking for help.

SPEAKER_05 20:42

That's a big one for me.

SPEAKER_02 20:46

And with that, you learn early that your needs don't matter. So as an adult, you don't ask for help. You don't tell people when you're struggling, and you carry everything alone.

SPEAKER_05 21:06

God bless my best friend and his family. If y'all only knew what I'm going through right now. And it's hard to ask.

SPEAKER_02 21:34

As a as a man of childhood abuse who suffered childhood abuse, it's extremely difficult to ask for help. It's such a weight on your shoulders, especially with this grentification crap. Trying to deal with all these emotions. Trying to handle stuff yourself, fumbling all the way and still needing the help and incapable of asking for assistance. That's a tough deal. That's that's a tough deal as well. Excuse me, God.

SPEAKER_05 22:26

That's a tough deal as well.

SPEAKER_02 22:34

Ah that that's that's a hard one right there. Because I I know I need help. I know I need help. It ain't no secret that I need help. But because of the abuse and the trauma that I've suffered, I have a serious problem asking. If they didn't offer it, I wouldn't even accept that. That's how serious it is. But you don't even want to open the window to say help me.

SPEAKER_05 23:26

Oh, Lord have mercy. All right, all right. I ain't trying to. I ain't trying to get stuck.

SPEAKER_02 23:41

Okay. What about this? You gave up on your childhood. You sacrificed all your needs. And now as an adult, you're angry about it. Sometimes at the parent, sometimes at yourself, sometimes at everybody around you. It's not even their fault. But you're angry because it happened to you. And there's nothing you can do to reclaim that, right?

SPEAKER_05 24:13

Or how about this one?

SPEAKER_02 24:16

Self-care feels selfish because you were taught that it's your job to take care of others. So taking care of yourself, you end up neglecting yourself. Hello, that's me right there. Put everyone else first, and then you burn out.

SPEAKER_05 24:39

How about this?

SPEAKER_02 24:41

You learn that you're not perfect. Bad things happen. Okay, that's most of us, right? But you strive for perfection. You can't make mistakes. You can't be vulnerable. You can't fail.

SPEAKER_05 24:57

You hate to lose. That sound familiar?

SPEAKER_02 25:12

This episode is beating me up tonight, y'all. It's like when they say you go to church and you you hear the pastor saying all these things, you're like, dang, you how you know everything about me? It's like one of those type things. This episode is touching me on a lot of different areas. But it's information that's vital to you. And I'm hoping this is helping somebody out there. How about this one? You spend so much time being what your parent needed that you never develop your own identity. Hallelujah.

SPEAKER_05 25:51

Can I get an amen out there somewhere? Who who's been in that situation? So as an adult, you don't know who you are. I told my therapist that I don't even know. Oh, Lord have mercy.

SPEAKER_02 26:17

I don't I feel like I don't know who I am because I've been a chameleon. I've been so many things for so many different people for other different people, to other different people, to help them feel comfortable, help them that you lose who you are to to help somebody else. What you want, what you believe, what makes you happy. I mean, I'm reclaiming some of this stuff now, but I don't know. Like I said, I'm 54 years old, and I just started seeing the therapist last year. So a lot of these things I've gone decades, okay, longer than a lot of people have been alive with this stuff. So when I say I know about childhood, child, but this is not something I'm making up, okay? How about this? You feel guilty for not being a good enough caregiver. Even though you were a kid, now I feel for my siblings right now because I'm thinking about them taking care of us.

SPEAKER_05 27:42

My brother and my oldest sister. What they might have felt from this. You feel shame for needing the help. You feel shame for setting boundaries that shouldn't protect you. You feel shame for your anger when you have the right to be angry for that situation.

SPEAKER_02 28:16

Because your emotions aren't valid. Sorry, y'all. Not trying to be on here boo-hooing. But the truth is none of this is your fault. You were a child. You did what you had to do to survive as a child. You were trying to keep yourself and your family safe. But now, as an adult, you have to make different choices. You get to make different choices. It's your choice now, not someone else's, not someone telling you to do what you should do. It's you who get to decide now.

Steps To Heal And Rebuild

SPEAKER_02 29:06

Healing from parentification is about reclaiming your right to be human, to have needs, to be imperfect and perfect.

SPEAKER_05 29:17

I don't know why I said it that way. To ask for help.

SPEAKER_02 29:23

Step one, you have to grieve what you lost. You lost your childhood. You lost your chance to be a kid. You lost the safety of having a parent who took care of you instead of you taking care of them. That's a real loss. And that deserves to be grieved. Step two, you recognize it wasn't your job. You were a child. It wasn't your responsibility to take care of your parent or your siblings, whichever scenario was in your household. It wasn't your job to manage their emotions or your siblings' emotions. It wasn't your job to hold the family together. That wasn't your responsibility. Lord have mercy.

SPEAKER_05 30:07

The tears just keep coming.

SPEAKER_02 30:26

So you have to practice saying no. Okay? It's hard, I know, for us survivors, because we always trying to appease and fund to create an atmosphere there where there won't be any conflict. But you have to say no. Because saying no feels like abandonment to us, like we're abandoning our parents. That type of feeling. We're abandoning our family, we're abandoning those who care about us. It's like you're being selfish, like you're hurting someone. But saying no is an act of self-respect. People will tell you saying no is you being mean or stingy, but it's a boundary, and boundaries are healthy. Start small. Practice saying no to small things and notice. Notice how it feels. Excuse me. Identify your needs. You spend so long meeting everyone else's needs that you might not know what yours are. What do you need? Do you need rest? Connection? Solitude? Creativity? Do you need to play? Be active? Do you need support? Start noticing what you need and start naming them. Step five is to ask for help. It's okay to ask for help. This is vulnerable, but it's necessary. You can't do everything alone, and you're not supposed to. You're human. We are all part of the human race. And being a part of this human race, we're supposed to find people we can trust and tell them if we need help. And then we're supposed to let them help us, not push them away, not tell them no or say I'm good. When you know you're not good, you need to help, let them help. If they truly, genuinely want to help. Step six is to grieve your relationship with your parent. If your parent was abusive and parentified you, you or your relationship with them is very complicated. You might love them, you might hate them, you might feel both at the same time. I know I do. And it's it was it's uh the economy of the situation. To love somebody, to want them to love you and despise them at the same time, to hate them for what they did to you. How do you do that as a child coming up? You know you love your parents, and when they start abusing you, you still love them, but you don't like what they do, you just you detest it. But as you grow older and you still suffer through it, the years that you suffer through it, it becomes a hate situation. You've grown into hate. So that's something that you might want to look at right there. I mean, hate doesn't come with one instance. In a situation like that, it comes from repeated instances. So that's normal and it deserves space to be processed, okay? And you need to give yourself that time and that space to do that. Step seven, redefine your identity. Who are you outside of being a caregiver? Have you ever tried to step away from trying to help others and say, who is this person that I am? Without trying to satisfy somebody else's needs, who am I?

SPEAKER_05 34:37

What do I love? What makes me come alive? Truth is you survived.

SPEAKER_02 34:51

You have to start exploring, you have to start building a life that's about you, not about somebody else, not about their needs, not about their problems, about you. You can't you can't help anybody unless you help yourself first. If you're drowning, how can you help somebody else stop drowning? Yeah, you're gonna pull them under too eventually. So learn how to stay afloat and then teach the other person once you've mastered it. So you kept your family alive, you kept yourself alive. That took incredible strength. Kudos to my eldest brother and sister. I I applaud y'all for that. I give I give y'all y'all roses on that. Now use that strength for yourself, you deserve that.

Family Examples And The Missing Childhood

SPEAKER_02 35:58

So, as I mentioned in the podcast, I did experience parentification, some aspects of it, but I had siblings that experienced the full blast of that. My eldest brother, my elder sister, even up to my middle sister, me being the youngest of five siblings. I I've witnessed how they had to watch over us because parents were unavailable. Working or drinking or out, hanging with the buddies, doing whatever, God knows whatever. So, yeah, I saw them struggling with the responsibilities of making sure the rest of us were fed, make sure we had clothes that were clean on, make sure the house was clean. And they were the ones trying to tell us how to do chores and stuff. The parent, the mother, actually, because my dad wasn't in line with child rearing whatsoever, but my mother was the one who laid down the law. And if we didn't do our chairs, right, that's when the beatings commenced. But obviously, like most jobs, they don't have proper training. And so mistakes happen when throw somebody on the job when they're not trained. So that's how it was in our household within proper training. We got beat for it. But these are the things that a child shouldn't have to address in the first place. So when you miss out on your childhood because of these things, it becomes a hole in your heart that you feel like can't be repaired, will never be repaired. It's the relationship between you and your parents is destroyed forever. And that's something that you feel like you can never get back, even though you long to love them. You long for that relationship with your parents, and that's not something that may or may happen. So you have to grieve that and let it be. Sometimes you have to just drop it off at the door and keep walking. Instead of trying to carry all that with you, the grieving process, I'm still going through that. Learning to go through that. I'm gonna have to get into that with y'all on another episode. I'm gonna have to dig and do some research to find out on what that is, and I can make an episode on that for you guys.

Your Homework For This Week

SPEAKER_02 38:51

But this week I want y'all to notice one area where you're still taking on responsibility that's not yours. And practice saying no. Or practice asking for help for yourself, not for somebody else for yourself. I want y'all to join us Tuesday on Tear the Triumph, on our live QA session, on Facebook and on YouTube for our interactive QA. Remember, these live QA's are now under our subscription. You have to pay for them now. Our subscriptions are very inexpensive, they're only $10 a month, and you still get that content. You get the QA's, you get our specials, you'll get our series when we come up with the series. So all that critical information will be only for our subscribers now. And you can only subscribe to that content through our Buzz Sprout channel. All our affiliate podcast channels will not have this content, they will not have the subscription for this content. So, in order to receive that content, you have to go to BuzzSprout.com and subscribe there. Also, I thank you for being a part of this community. Please go out, tell somebody, spread the word about this podcast.

Subscriptions, Stats, And Spreading The Word

SPEAKER_02 40:24

If it's helping you, it'll help 10 others. 10 others that you know. And as I always state the statistic in America, out of every 10 people, four to six of them have suffered some form of child abuse. And the numbers are diminished because the statistic goes on to say that most survivors do not report the abuse that they received. So those numbers could be as high as seven, eight out of ten, or maybe more. And to break it down, out of every million, four hundred to six hundred thousand people, that's well over 50%. And then those numbers are consistently over 50% due to the non-reporting issue. So take heed to that. Know that just about every other person that you look at might be a survivor, might be suffering in silence. And I know as a survivor myself, we put on a good show, we put on a good front. You'll look at us and you'll probably say, they're a cool person, they're all right, but you don't know on the inside we're in shambles. We're a mess on the inside. Fixable, but we might not know that we are a mess in some cases. We don't even know that the trauma is still affecting us in our adult lives. We don't know. It's affecting us in our relationships for sure, in our daily judgments and decisions, in everything we do, and we don't understand why these things are happening to us. So you might you might be walking amongst 90% of the people that you know might be all survivors, but just don't know how to deal with it. So they're trying to cope, and they put on the face, say, I'm okay, I'm good, but they're not, and their actions show. That's what this podcast is for. For those people who are suffering in silence who don't know, to recognize their own flags, for you as non-survivors, to help see the flags that they're presenting, and to learn how to coexist together without conflict, without causing them to trigger and have an episode or something like that. This was a tough one, y'all. I thank y'all for bearing with us. This has been Terror to Triumph. I'm Alphonse Pelt, you're a host and creator of Terror of the Triumph. I want you guys to head on over to PellSimporium.com, help support the show, buy some merchandise there, anything except for what's on Crystal's Corner goes to help fund this podcast to keep the conversations going. And they're so critical, they're so needed, and it's helping people, obviously. So if I'm if I'm helping you, Don't keep these conversations up. That's all I'm saying. Or if you can't afford to support the show by going into sell support and buying merchandise or buying a subscription, spread the word. That's all I ask. That's free. That's free. Tell somebody. Whether or not you know if they're a survivor or not, just spread the word. They may know somebody who's suffering. And they can direct them. I'm gonna give you an example.

Therapy First And A Warning

SPEAKER_02 44:34

There was a certain person on my job. I'm not gonna really describe them because of the nature of the situation, but saying that I worked with a person is enough. But this person was dealing with a person that was very close to their heart. They were in a relationship with this person. This person was a survivor.

SPEAKER_05 45:04

This person revealed to them that they were a survivor. And they were adamant about receiving help.

SPEAKER_02 45:20

But they had been through some things, they had been through some things with uh physicians that did not help them correctly because they did not know how to treat things of that nature. So they wanted to prescribe medicine, which was an improper way of handling. They should have first sought therapy, or they should have first been told that therapy was an option instead of just instantly prescribing drugs. Okay, let's try to heal without chemicals. Can we do that for a change, family? I mean, if you love these people, if you love the people who are dear to your heart, if you truly love them, do not let them go down that road. Because the person that's suffering is gonna suffer even more if they don't get the help they really need. That was a classic case of malpractice, prescribing medicines for something that will not help that situation just to make money. And I look down on that flat out. I don't care who you are, what physician you are, if you're prescribing medicine just to make some money and it's not gonna help your patient, and you trying to write it up like this is this is what's good for them for what they presented, and they told you what their situation is, and you didn't recommend therapy first.

SPEAKER_05 47:09

That's that's the problem with you. These people are here stuff, they need help. We need help. Come on now. Okay, that's my rant.

SPEAKER_02 47:24

But this lady, this this particular person, this lady approached me with that situation after she got to know me, of course. And I told her about the podcast, and she went and watched, and it blew her mind. She didn't realize all the things that we go through, and she was like, Oh my god, you were describing what I'm going through, what he's been showing his flags, and he's been showing like seven out of the ten flags that you told about on that one episode. Yeah, people, I tell y'all all the time, this is some real stuff. This is this is not something I'm making up. I'm a survivor myself, I've been through it. I'm just trying to help because there's a huge gap between the survivor and the help they need. There's no signs pointing, you need to go to therapist, you need to go to therapist. If it wasn't for my brother telling me that I needed therapy, I wouldn't even have had it in my mind to consider it.

SPEAKER_05 48:34

My brother's a famous psychologist.

SPEAKER_02 48:43

And he had to tell me that. He could have said some medicine or something like that, but he had the common sense to know, hey, this is what you need. This is what's gonna get you the real though.