What Kids Absorb In Addiction

Your kids are learning something from your home right now and it may not be what you think. When addiction is in a marriage, children don’t only witness the addicted parent’s behavior; they study the sober parent’s responses, the silence, the excuses, the tension, and the ways the household rearranges itself around chaos. That’s why this conversation is one of the hardest I’ve recorded and why it matters so much. 

I’m Steve, and on Reclaiming Your Identity we talk about hope, healing, and support for spouses who are partnered with an addict, grounded in your identity in Christ. Here, I walk through what research says about children of addicted parents, including how common this reality is and why risk increases across generations. Then we get painfully practical: kids learn what love feels like, what their needs are worth, and what they should tolerate by watching us survive. We also name a hidden driver many families miss: codependency being modeled by the non-addicted parent who is trying to keep everything from falling apart. 

I share real stories from my own family, the cost of staying in a long cycle, and the patterns that can show up later as insecurity, resentment, denial, and even “caretaker” roles that steal childhood. Part 1 ends with one blunt question: are you willing to break the cycle before your children repeat it in their future relationships? 

If you want help taking the next step, I mention a free guide linked in the show notes, plus ways to connect through partnersofatics.com and the weekend course You’re Not Alone. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more spouses can find a path toward healing and clarity.

👇 YOUR NEXT STEP IS RIGHT HERE

🙏 Free Community — You don't have to walk this alone 👉 https://partnersofaddicts.com

📖 FREE GUIDES — Choose What Speaks to You:

💛 Navigating Love — Codependency & where you lost yourself 👉 https://funnel.walkrightcommunity.com/guide

💛 10 Truths Unspoken — What nobody told you about loving an addict 👉 https://funnel.walkrightcommunity.com/download

💛 Your Kids Are Watching — A guide for the sober parent 👉 https://funnel.walkrightcommunity.com/kids-guide

📚 READY TO GO DEEPER?

🔥 Weekend Course — You Are Not Lost 👉 https://funnel.walkrightcommunity.com/weekend-course

🎙️ LISTEN TO THE PODCAST Reclaiming Your Identity 👉 https://reclaimingyouridentity.buzzsprout.com

🌐 Learn More 👉 www.walkrightministries.com 

Transcript

A Hard Truth With Compassion

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This episode's going to be one of the hardest subjects I've talked about on the podcast. And before we go any further, I'm not here to condemn you. I'm not here to make you feel bad. I'm not here to make you feel like a horrible parent. I'm not here to tell you to leave tomorrow. I'm here to just speak truth. Because I know you love your kids more than anything in the entire world. But I also know this. Love without truth really isn't love. And we're going to talk about that today. And we're going to talk about the people inside your home that never asked to be a part of this story. Your kids. I know what my kids live through. I carry it every day. I see it almost every day. And if I can just spare one child from growing up in that pain and living with that pain day to day, that's my whole mission on the earth. And if I can spare one child in your home from carrying that same weight, then every uncomfortable moment of this episode is so worth it. Let's talk about it. I'll see you on the inside.

Why This Becomes A Two Part Series

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Welcome to Reclaiming Your Identity, a podcast dedicated to providing hope, healing, and support for married individuals whose spouses are battling addiction. Rooted in the truth of your identity in Christ, this podcast offers practical guidance and biblical insight to help you navigate the challenges of addiction within your marriage. Here we'll find encouragement and embrace God's plan for restoration in your life. Let's walk this journey together, one step at a time. Welcome to Reclaiming Your Identity Podcast. I'm Steve, your host, super excited that you're here today. Maybe have kids, maybe don't, maybe you're a follower of Christ, maybe you aren't, but those that are partnered with an addict. These episodes bring truth, insight, and healing from a place of experience and love. But anyway, I am super excited you're here today. We are talking about uh a hard one today, and there's so much information to give you, so much information to share that we're gonna turn it into a two-part series. So make sure that you hang around for part two that will come out in a couple days. So if you are new to this podcast, I want to welcome you aboard. If you would like, subscribe, follow me, do all that stuff on all those platforms, whether you're on a listening platform, whether you're on YouTube, if you would just interact with me. Also, at the end of the show, I'll give you an opportunity to join our mailing list. Please do so and find your way to a better life with healing, transformation, and clarity. So, this episode is called What Your Kids Are Learning While You're Married to an Addict. It is so true that kids are sponges and will just suck up so much stuff, and we need to break that down and talk about that today, and share some really powerful statistics, share some really powerful stories of what my kids are going through, and just give you a chance to absorb all this and help your kids if you have them. This really has to hit home. If you've been struggling with an addict for more than five years and you have kids, man, this you really need to find yourself a quiet spot and just get into a zone of listening. Because there's going to be some stuff in here, the spirit is just going to talk to you, but you have to really, really listen to this. If you haven't been able to break free, this is the episode that you need to go. I need to make a change. So let's jump right in it. According

The Statistics That Change Everything

SPEAKER_00 4:13

to a 2025 study from JAMA Pediatrics, there are about 19 million kids in the United States, and one in four of them are subject to a parent who has addiction. That's a little league. That's a classroom. That's two blocks of your neighborhood. One in four kids are dealing with a parent that has an addiction. But here's a number that should stop you breathing right now. Out of those, the children that have a parent that is a drug addicted parent are eight times more likely to become a drug addict themselves. Eight times. Nobody ever told me that when I was battling with my ex-wife who was addicted to narcotic pain medication. Nobody sat me down and said, Steve, you know what's going on? A script is being written out that your kids are going to live out for the rest of their entire life. Nobody ever told me that. And I wish somebody had. So we're going to talk about that too. The big part of codependency coming from you to your children.

How Kids Learn Codependency From You

SPEAKER_00 6:00

So, yeah, your kids are watching, and here's what I really need you to understand. Your kids are not just watching what addiction does to the one spouse. They're watching how you handle it and how it's affecting you. They're watching you cancel plans on them. They're watching you make excuses why they can't have friends over. They're watching you make excuses for the spouse. They're watching you when you cry in the corner of the kitchen. They're watching you or hear you when you're crying in the bathroom. They're watching you shrink, and they're watching you slowly disappear as a person. And in their minds, in that little place that they're forming every single belief about their self-worth, about their love, about relationships, about what they deserve, they're writing it all down. They're learning what love looks like. They're learning what a marriage looks like. They're learning what they should tolerate, and they're learning it from you. My kids learned it from me. Now I want to take you somewhere where this really wrecked me when I fully understand it. They're not just watching you. They're not just taking notes. They're downloading this. They're downloading this as a learned behavior. They're downloading all of this in their little mind. And what they're downloading has a name and it's called codependency. And we talk about it quite frequently on the show, but we never really talk about kids developing a learned pattern of codependency that they're getting from the sober parent who's trying to fix a chaos of hell. We never discussed that. And again, this is not to condemn you, not to shame you, not to put you down, not anything. It's to wake you up. I'm here to help people. I'm here to save people. I'm here to let you know that God never designed you, God never designed any of your kids to absorb any of this stuff. You have a choice. Break the cycle. You have a choice. The very thing that brought you to this podcast. Maybe a friend gave it to you, maybe just found it by accident. I don't know. Maybe you saw me on social media just started popping up and you started listening. Whatever brought you here, the walking on eggshells, the putting your value into somebody else, the feeling stuck, the feeling like you're in a prison, the feeling like you're never ever going to get out of this cycle. Whatever brought you here, know this that your kids are feeling the same way. And I think in your gut, you really, really know it. Children with a codependent parent, learn that behavior from that parent. Now you could put all the blame on the addict. You can put all that blame on there when you see your kids growing up starting to be codependent because they're going to start to have insecurities, they're going to start to have self-doubt. They're going to start to isolate themselves. They're going to start to put value into other people just to find themselves important. This happened to one of my sons. You know, we had to go do karate. We had to go do basketball. We always had to go into something where he felt wanted and needed by other kids. He wasn't his own person. And he was always doing new stuff. Not to try new stuff. He was always doing new stuff to try to find a way to fit in. And if you're a girl, this was happened. This is where all the selfies come in. This is where all the dressed down meaning showing skin, you know, pucker face, duck face, duck kiss duck, whatever they call that stuff. You see all these young girls on social media trying to get attention because they're not confident in herself. Now there's a bunch of reasons that can happen. I'm not saying that that's just because of codependency, but a lot of that comes from codependency. And a lot of that comes from troubled homes. It's a learned response. It's a learned pattern. It's a learned trait that comes from somebody that usually is an addict in a home, or it comes from trauma at a young age. Well, they're getting both. I had codependency due to trauma at a young age, got married, and then all my codependency just blew up when I started to try to fix my wife. So that stuff is real.

What This Looked Like In My Home

SPEAKER_00 10:55

And it's not just me saying it, and it's not just me reading it out of a textbook. I'm telling you, I lived this with my kids. My older kids that went through the addiction are 16, 27, and 29. And the two older ones are battling with so many issues because I stayed for 13 years trying to fix my ex-wife. 13 years they went through this. Now, I can sit here and go, well, it's all their mother's fault. She was the addict. She's the one that caused everything. And I can try to sell my kids on that. And oh, well, she was the problem, and it wasn't me, and I was just trying to help. And what kind of, I mean, what kind of parent is that? I take full, you can go back and listen to all my episodes. You can go back and listen to all my podcast interviews. I never dishonor their mother. I take part in full responsibility for the crap that I caused for my kids to be messed up today. Well, Steve, what do you mean by messed up? I'm talking about codependency. I'm talking about insecurities. I'm talking about all that stuff. Anger, hatred, rage, because they can't control their emotions, because they don't know how to deal with them because they saw me not being able to deal with mine. They're watching everything that you do, they're absorbing, downloading everything that you do, and they're learning the behavior. And they're going to continue the cycle. Your kids are learning what love is supposed to feel like. Don't rob them of that. They're learning of what they're worth. They're worth so much more than your spouse's addiction. They're learning whether their needs really matter. And most likely you're putting them on the back burner because you're dealing with chaos. And this is a highlighted note. Research has found that the traits children that grew up in this environment carry with them is denial. Meaning that the situation's not as really as bad as it is. They are minimizing how bad things really are. So they're going to carry that into every single relationship, along with resentment. So they're going to attach themselves to somebody almost with the same traits. Maybe not an addiction. But maybe with they're with somebody that doesn't treat them the best. But they stink around because they're afraid of being alone. That that they're the only person they're going to find. Or maybe they find somebody that's controlling because they just want to be with somebody and it doesn't matter if they get walked on because they don't have any needs. They they're not allowed to express their needs because they watched you do that. And

The Cycle Your Children May Repeat

SPEAKER_00 14:03

here's the cycle I'm seriously trying to break. If your children don't get the help that they need, they're going to get married and go down and continue this cycle. What if they have kids? And then their kids are going to see this. And then there's going to be the chances of divorce, there's going to be the chances of these kids just going along doing the same thing, and then their kids, and I just want to break the cycle. I just want to help somebody. I want to help people get free and be transformed by the love of God and understand that they're worth so much more than the problems that they're facing right now. And all this stuff happens, it's not their fault. It's the environment that they're living in. And you're creating that environment. I want you to listen to this. I mean, really listen to this part right here. Children of addicted parents usually tend to grow up a little bit more and become more adult-like at a faster pace than other kids. They take on the role of caretaker at a young age, maybe taking care of siblings that are smaller, maybe taking care of the passed out parent, maybe taking care of responsibilities that they shouldn't be taking care of. You're robbing your children, possibly robbing your children from being a child. Your child is learning how to keep the peace. Your child is learning that love is managing someone else. Does that sound familiar? Because that's exactly what brought you here. And at this moment, I'm gonna probably have to ask you one of the hardest questions you're ever gonna hear. Are you willing to break that cycle? Are you willing to break that cycle? I didn't break the cycle. I've got an older child that is angry at the world, acts like he hates me from time to time. I know he doesn't. I just know he doesn't know how to handle his emotions. Because I didn't know how to handle my emotions. And I had rages, fits of rages, and took it out on them because I didn't know how to handle their mother or fix their mother. My other son just got out of jail. Because he was a love addict. And he was in one relationship with a narcissist, and he ended up jumping right into another relationship with a controlling narcissist. He was what we call a love addict part of codependency. And his self-esteem is just not there. I mean, he's had it rough. You know what? And I have to sit here and go, it's my fault. It's my fault. No, I can sit here and step right back into my kids' lives and be codependent and try to fix them. Or I can just love them day to day and not put any expectations on them and let them see how their father is fully transformed. The father they knew in that addiction is dead. He's gone. They do not know that guy anymore. And this new one probably looks kind of weird. But I believe God will do a finished work in them. He completes a work he started, and I believe he will do it in them. I didn't break the cycle until it was too late. And I ask you once more, are you ready to break the cycle? You have to understand that healing for you is wonderful. But healing is not just for you. It's for your children. Because you won't understand this. Your healing is not just about you. It never was. It's about every person your child's gonna love from here on out. That's gonna bring us pretty much to the close of this episode of part one. Please join me for part two. And

Free Guide Community And Weekend Course

SPEAKER_00 18:45

I just want to take a moment to let you know that I have a new guide out. It's a guide that will help you break the cycle and teach you more about what's happening to your children. It's all in the show notes. You can get there by clicking on a link. It's free, totally free. But I'd love to get that in your hands today. Would love to get that in your hands. And if you would, would you please go to partnersofatics.com and read the information there. That has a bunch of great information about the community. I want to take a little bit of time to talk about that. It's a place of healing. It's an online community that deep dives everything that I walk through to get healing. There's worksheets, there's interactive engagements with other community members, there's different things there that will help you get through healing. There's live calls, I do uh worksheet studies, different things like that when we do worksheets in these different lessons. So there's a place of healing there for you on your time at your pace, but at least it's a place that you could start. If you don't feel comfortable going into a community just yet, I have created a weekend course called You're Not Alone. It is a course that you can take over the weekend at your own pace, and it is a deep dive into your soul, and it peels back a bunch of layers. And the hope is by the end of the weekend you have enough clarity and encouragement to continue your healing. Whether you jump into community from there, or you go find yourself a counselor, or you go to a group, whatever you do, I just want to help you get there. You don't have to do it all through me. I just want to help people get there. But that weekend course is available also in the show notes. I know this episode was a little intense, as well as it should be, because your kids are worth it. You're worth it. You're worth so much more than the addiction, and your kids are so much worth so much more than the addiction. And it breaks my heart that children are living in fear, that children are losing out on being a child. They're losing out on being a child through all

Protecting Innocence Final Encouragement

SPEAKER_00 21:19

of this. You're robbing innocence from them. Jesus said, For us to enter the kingdom we have to be childlike. And when you think of it that way, it's the innocence of the mind. It's not you have to be immature, it's just they're so innocent. So please join me on part two. We're gonna dive into a little bit more uh with the Bible with this and give you some great insight from the Lord. And I just am so thankful that you stopped by today. I really hope this has helped you. I pray that you share this with people that maybe you know that need this help, but I am so thankful to be a part of your life today. And I want to mention, as I always do, the most important thing of every single show is to let you know that you are loved, you're holy, and I'll see you in the next episode.