You are in your 20s or 30s, and you have finally decided it is time to move out. You rehearse the conversation in your head, wondering how to tell your parents without making them feel abandoned. Will they think you are leaving them behind? Will they be lonely? On the other side of that conversation, your parent is trying to make peace with the fact that their ‘little’ child now wants a life of their own. “Don't move too far,” they plead. “Settle somewhere nearby.”
For some families, moving out to a house close by becomes a compromise. For others, it becomes a source of guilt, conflict and emotional dependence. So where does healthy family closeness end, and the inability to let go begin?
“Healthy parental attachment gives a child love, security, guidance and roots while gradually preparing them for something many parents find extremely difficult to accept; separation. A child is not born to remain psychologically attached to the parent forever," child psychologist Dr Eliud Ngugi, founder of Newness Counselling Organisation, explains.
The parent’s responsibility is therefore not simply to keep the child close, but to prepare the child to live without needing an adult to manage every aspect of their existence.
The line is crossed when the psychological boundary between parent and child disappears, and the child's life becomes an extension of the parent's own.
If the child succeeds, the parent feels victorious, and if they fail, the parent also feels personally defeated. If the child makes a decision the parent dislikes, the parent takes that decision as a personal attack.
Overattachment, Dr Ngugi says, can manifest differently as the child grows.
“During infancy, it may appear as an inability to tolerate separation. As it progresses into childhood, it may become overprotection and doing everything for the child. During adolescence, it can become excessive monitoring, control and intrusion into privacy.”
Psychologist Eliud Ngugi.
Photo credit: Pool
In adulthood, it can present as constant checking, interference, unsolicited rescue, emotional manipulation and an inability to accept that the child now has a life the parent cannot control.
“If your child's freedom terrifies you, you may not only be afraid for them. You may also be afraid of who you will become when they no longer need you in the same way.”
Dr Ngugi notes that loving too much is as toxic and damaging as not loving at all. When parents attach too much, they start removing every obstacle, solving every problem, paying every debt, defending every mistake and rescuing the child from consequences.
“A parent gives because giving makes them feel useful. They rescue because rescuing makes them feel needed. They intervene because intervention temporarily reduces their anxiety and may continue doing everything for an adult child because they cannot tolerate seeing that child struggle.”
However, if the parent refuses to allow the child to struggle, it may prevent the child from discovering that they are capable of surviving struggle. “An adult who is repeatedly rescued may never develop the emotional strength, responsibility and resilience that consequences were supposed to teach.”
Another hidden danger is that the child can become dependent on being rescued while the parent becomes dependent on being needed. The child depends on the parent for solutions, while the parent depends on the child for a sense of usefulness and importance.
He shares that sometimes the most loving thing a parent can say is not, "I will fix this for you," but, "I love you, and I believe you are capable of facing this."
A parent should ideally enter parenthood as a whole person rather than secretly expecting a child to complete what is missing inside them. “A child should not be a cure for loneliness, emptiness, failed ambitions, emotional wounds or a lack of purpose. Many parents unconsciously make children the centre of an emotional economy in which the child's success becomes the parent's achievement and the child's happiness becomes the parent's emotional medicine. The child's happiness becomes something the parent needs rather than something the child is simply entitled to experience for themselves,” he adds.
Children should listen to what their parents are saying and fill in information so they can feel respected. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP
The child learns that their job is to make the parent proud, happy and emotionally secure. “They begin suppressing their own needs, hiding failures, performing for approval and living according to expectations. What the parent experiences as love can gradually become psychological pressure for the child.”
Over time, this can contribute to distress, anxiety, depression, resentment and a painful feeling of having no life of one's own.
“This should not be confused with the claim that parents are the reason teenagers become depressed or suicidal. Young people's mental health and suicidal behaviour are influenced by many interacting biological, psychological, social and environmental factors. But emotionally overburdening a child can be deeply harmful,” he cautions.
So what happens when parents expect their children to make life choices based on what will make the parents happy rather than what the child genuinely wants?
“This begins much earlier than adulthood. The child learns that when they do what the parent wants, they receive approval, affection or reward, while doing what they genuinely want may bring punishment, shame, withdrawal or disappointment,” he says.
Slowly, the child, instead of asking, "Who am I?", begins asking, "Who do I need to become so that my parents will love and approve of me?"
This is how children become psychological photocopies of their parents. Their own interests, temperament, abilities and desires are gradually pushed aside in order to become what the parent considers acceptable.
The parent may say, "I wanted to become a doctor but never got the opportunity, so one of my children must become a doctor." The intention may sound loving, but underneath it may be an attempt to complete the parent's unfinished life through another human being.
A child may therefore grow into an adult who is successful on paper but internally disconnected from themselves. They may achieve the career, relationship, status or lifestyle their parents wanted while quietly grieving the life they never lived.
“A parent's disappointment is not proof that the child has made the wrong decision. Sometimes the healthiest thing your child can do is disappoint you. Let them disappoint you without making them responsible for repairing your emotions,” he says.
Other times, parents worry about the child's relationships, money, career, health, friendships, mistakes, failures and future. Even when the child becomes 30 or 35, the parent remains psychologically stationed at the child's doorstep, waiting for the next crisis.
But there is a question every parent eventually needs to confront: When will your life finally become yours? You sacrificed your youthful years raising them. Must you sacrifice your old age worrying about them? Must you retire with your feet up and still spend every night wondering whether your 35-year-old son is making the right decisions?
“If your adult child repeatedly chooses destructive behaviour despite having the freedom and opportunity to choose differently, destroying yourself with worry will not rescue them.”
“Chronic stress and anxiety can have real consequences for psychological and physical wellbeing, although parental worry alone cannot responsibly be identified as the direct cause of a particular illness or death,” he says.
But children grow while parents sometimes remain psychologically frozen at an earlier stage of the relationship.
“A parent must grow old and grow up with the child. If you remain psychologically stuck at the stage when your child was five, you will continue treating a 30-year-old as though they were five. You will continue issuing commands where conversation is needed, protection where trust is needed and control where freedom is needed.”
There is also a painful assumption that comes with excessive parental control: The belief that because you are older, you necessarily know how your child should live. “But being older does not automatically mean knowing how another human being should live,” he says, adding that many parents are excellent at surviving, sacrificing and enduring, but survival is not the same thing as living.
The distinction is simple but painful, support says, "I am here if you need me." Control says, "You must do what I believe is right."
Dr Ngugi notes that parents must also understand that they cannot manufacture another human being into maturity. Children naturally develop through experience, exploration, mistakes, relationships, consequences and discovery.
Respect also cannot ultimately be beaten into a child. You can force compliance through fear, but you cannot manufacture genuine respect through intimidation. If you want respect, become respectable. If you want honesty, become safe enough to receive honesty. If you want emotional maturity, demonstrate emotional maturity.
“A parent who learns to regulate themselves, pursue purpose, maintain boundaries, admit mistakes, enjoy life and respect other people's freedom gives the child a model worth observing. Do not spend your entire life trying to raise your child while refusing to raise yourself; raise yourself, live well.”
Parents who recognise that they have become overly dependent on their children emotionally can begin by confronting the most uncomfortable possibility. “You may be afraid of losing the version of yourself that exists when your child needs you,” he says.
Two, recover the person who existed before parenthood. Develop relationships that have nothing to do with your children, such as rebuilding friendships, rediscovering interests or travel if possible.
When adult children make decisions they dislike, resist the immediate urge to interfere. “When they experience a problem they are capable of handling, allow reality to teach them. When they move away, let yourself miss them without making your loneliness their responsibility. When they fail, do not automatically rescue them from every consequence.”
Detachment does not mean, "I don't care what happens to you." It means, "I care deeply about what happens to you, but I understand that your life belongs to you and mine belongs to me."
“Do not spend the final chapters of your existence standing outside your child's life, trying to control a story that was never yours to write,” Dr Ngugi concludes.
