Who's the Parent Here?

When it is and is NOT Acceptable for Children to Help Their Parents

By
Relationship Advice Expert April Masini

I’m a mother of a three going through her second divorce — and I must admit, it’s no easier the second time around. It takes all the energy I can muster just to get through a typical day of going to work and taking care of the kids. Lately I’ve been noticing my youngest go out of her way to comfort and make me feel better—she even comes home with “Feel Better” cards she’s made for me in Art class! Though I recognize what a lucky mom I am, I’m concerned my daughter’s putting too much focus on my grief, and not enough on hers. Is it healthy for her to help me cope?

Signed,

Guilty Mom

Dear Guilty Mom:

It is wonderful for children to help anyone and to feel a sense of accomplishment that boosts their self-esteem. When children help parents it can create a special bond, as well as special self-esteem. However, there is a problem when children are placed in a chronic help position for a parent, that takes away some of their childhood and makes them feel resentful, angry or bitter.

When it’s NOT Okay to Let Your Child Help

Try to remember your own childhood. What did you care about? What were the things that concerned you on a typical day? Hopefully—if you were lucky, that is—the most anxiety-provoking thought that entered your head had to do with when the ice cream truck was planning on making its usual rounds. You cried if you got sent to your room for refusing to eat your lima beans at dinner. At the time, the most unfair thing in the whole entire world was having to share your new Malibu Barbie with your mooch of a little sister.

In today’s day and age, however, children are exposed to a different kind of lifestyle—a lifestyle in which divorce rates are noticeably higher, where Miss America publicly admits to the use of cocaine and where rehab clinics more closely resemble a Club Med Spa than a haunted house with straightjackets and electroshock therapy.

Many children who have to take care of alcoholic parents, for example, become enablers without any choice. They learn that a relationship involves their taking care of someone, without necessarily feeling that they deserve to be taken care of. Likewise, children of divorced families oftentimes end up parenting their parents more than their parents parent them — and if a child feels burdened by taking care of the parent, the result can be damaging.

When it’s Okay to Let Your Child Help

Plainly, when it’s not your fault — or, more simply, when no one in their right mind would argue it is. If a parent has a chronic impairment like being deaf, for example, or some other physical handicap, there will obviously be a different dynamic in that family. The child would most likely learn sign-language in order to communicate—and that would be a more than acceptable way for a child to actually benefit from their willingness to help.

The key is balance and the best situation is for the parent to get help outside of the child– especially for a chronic situation. Let’s say a child speaks better English than the parents, and the parents are learning English, then this is not a chronic impairment. It’s a temporary situation. But deafness or being handicapped doesn’t usually go away.

As for relationship issues, it’s best to seek the help of a therapist or other mediator for you and your children. If you need a comforting hug from your child every now and then, that’s more than understandable — but allow your child to have a childhood. Kids take on so much responsibility so early nowadays, that any unnecessary burden is best kept away from the kids.

April Masini -- nicknamed "the new millennium's Dear Abby" by the media, is author of the best-selling books Date Out Of Your League and Think & Date Like A Man, the two (just released) step-by-step dating and relationship manuals, Ideas for a Fun Date and Romantic Date Ideas, and the critically acclaimed dating and relationship online magazine www.AskApril.com.

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