My 6 Takeaways from ‘Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents’ as a Therapist

Adult children can spend years trying to make sense of an emotionally immature parent and their own feelings about this challenging person.

In her book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents, clinical psychologist Lindsay Gibson breaks down the behaviours and thinking styles people can develop from having an immature parent.

I keep reflecting on Gibson’s book after reading it. It helped shed more light onto the work I do as a psychotherapist with adults who are trying to process their complicated relationships with their parents.

I’m excited to share my own insights and takeaways from the book with you. I hope you find them useful, too.

You can get the book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents on Amazon. 

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What it’s about

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents explores the influences an immature parent has on the development of their adult children.

It looks at what happens to a person to make them “immature” as an adult, and when they become a parent, what their immature behavior can do to the development of their child.

The book offers practical ways to help break the cycle of immaturity — to avoid becoming an emotionally immature parent toward your own children.

Gibson also looks at how these roles play into the family system run by the immature parent. She explores how a family with an immature parent interacts, and how this system can be slowly changed in a healthy manner.

Here are my takeaways from the book.

1. There are different types of immature parents

I was surprised to learn that there were distinct types of immature parents, according to Gibson: Emotional parents, driven parents, passive parents, and rejecting parents.

In sessions with my clients, I often see the emotional parent type behaving in blatantly immature ways. This type of parent often has strong emotional reactions and needs to be taken care of by their children.

I find that this type of parent behavior tends to lead to parentification behaviours by children.

Parentification is when the child takes on a caretaker role toward their parent, while the parent often fails to fulfill this role for the child. The emotional parent tends to be overly expressive with their anger, sadness, and discomfort, and generally tends to be unpredictable.

As Gibson describes in the book, driven parents are highly goal-oriented and often very busy. Passive parents tend to avoid parental responsibilities. And lastly, rejecting parents tend to be guarded and do not like being around their children. 

I find clients that have the driven parents tend to display issues with self-pressure and perfectionism. Reading more into this book, I found the cause and effect to make sense, as driven parents tend to constantly evaluate their children, which may make them feel like they’re always being assessed.

Children of passive parents tend to express feeling emotional confusion, often saying that their parents were actively involved for the fun parts of their lives, but when it came to emotional providing support to their children, they would be emotionally unreachable.

Gibson explains that these parents most likely learned to avoid conflict as children themselves, so they may have never developed the right tools to support their own children in difficult times. 

Lastly, children of rejecting parents often express in session that they never felt a connection to their parents because of their lack of involvement in their lives.

I also find that this type of immature parents can influence their child to develop a dismissive attachment style. Dismissively attached people tend to avoid conflict, problems, and people, but they feel emotional dysregulation (upsetness) on the inside. 

2. When a parent makes up after a conflict, it may be people pleasing, not taking responsibility

Gibson explains role reversal as the parent relating to their child as though the child were their parent. They expect the same type of attentiveness and comfort from the child as they would have wanted from their own parents.

There is a part of the book that discusses the traits of emotional immature parents, one of which is low stress tolerance. When emotionally immature parents tend to act out due to their dysregulation, they may notice that their children are upset with them.

As immature parents can be influenced by their own childhood experiences, they may attempt to please their children as if they themselves were children seeking their parents’ affection.

In other words, they begin to try and do damage control and get back on their child’s good side, which is what they may have done for their emotionally immature parents when they were children.

This was when a light went off for me.

One of the biggest confusions for my clients in sessions can happen after they get into an argument with their parent. Sometimes after the conflict, the parent will come back to them being suddenly kinder and more engaged, or giving monetary gifts.

But the parent is not trying to take responsibility for the conflict and apologizing.

Accepting these gifts can feel like you’re betraying yourself, but you might not know why.

When you understand this takeaway from Gibson’s book, you can see this behavior for what it is. They’re simply trying to ease their own discomfort by pleasing you to keep the peace — a trauma response that’s also called “love bombing.”

When my clients can see this for what it is rather than as a true apology, they can learn how to manage their own expectations and protect themselves.

Once you realize your parent is doing this, here are a few things you can do.

Reflect on the incident

By reflecting consciously on what happened with the parent, you can stop the cycle where you fall for the love-bombing. Instead, you can take time to process the negative emotions and experiences you felt because of the conflict.

This would be a healthier alternative than brushing things under the rug and possibly feeling gaslit into thinking the interaction was not as bad as the parent thinks you “made it seem.”

Putting your finger on this cycle when it’s happening can help an adult child change how they deal with their parent.

To avoid falling for this love-bombing, ask yourself:

• “Does this kindness feel real?”
• “Did they actually apologize and want to talk about it?”
• “What did I need from them? And what did they give me instead?” 

If you don’t feel satisfied with the answers to these questions, take some time to write down some of the reactions you wanted from your parents. Write down what you’re comfortable expressing to them about it.

Ask them to change the behavior

You can let your parent know how you feel and request they change a specific behaviour. This could look like telling them neutrally what you need them to do for you if something similar happens again in the future. Like, “Next time, an apology from you would help me more than a gift would.”

Some immature parents may not respond well to this, so you could also try thanking them and acknowledging their efforts to reconcile, while also stating what you need from them instead next time.

Be your own protector

It also helps to ask yourself what you need, like “What self-care do I need right now?”

Your parent may not have the capacity to help you feel better, so do things you help yourself. That includes finding other supportive people to talk to.

3. Learn to separate your real self from your role-self

Gibson explains that children of emotionally immature parents often develop a “role-self” to better fit into the family system, especially if their true selves are met with negativity or indifference.

They create this role-self to get better responses from the parent, but over time it can begin to compromise and overshadow the real self.

Often when discussing the complications of immature parent relationships in sessions, I find adult children tend to express that they can never truly be who they are in front of their parents. In fact, this often creates a dynamic of fear, as they feel that their opinions, thoughts, and feelings illicit a more negative reaction from their parents, or that acting authentically will damage their family system.

Gibson explains that the relationship will never be satisfying if you are only operating from the role-self. 

She says it’s important to heal your relationship with yourself. This may start by simply even getting to know yourself. Get curious about your thoughts and opinions, and slowly explore how you can express yourself.

4. We adapt by becoming internalizers or externalizers

Gibson identifies two common types of children of immature parents: internalizers and externalizers.

Internalizers

Internalizing is when people’s negative feelings come out inside or toward themselves. It can look like having anxiety or depression, and getting physical symptoms of stress.

Some children of immature parents are internalizers, says Gibson. They try to problem-solve by self-reflection and learning from their mistakes. They tend to be sensitive to the relationships with their loved ones, and as a result, they tend to react and feel strong emotions.

Internalizers have a deep need for genuine connection, but they try to make connections by putting others’ needs first. Giving more is their way of forging stronger relationships.

Internalizers tend to conceal their needs to gain their parents’ affection, so their feelings and needs may not be obvious. 

People I work with as a therapist have told me that their immature parents reacted positively to their quietness when they were growing up, which promoted them to hold back expressing themselves even more.

It’s likely that internalizers tend to comply with their parents’ demands because they want to please, particularly since they are more hesitant to advocate for their own desires.

Externalizers

In psychology, externalizing can look like hyperactivity or aggressive or antisocial behavior.

Externalizers are very much the opposite of internalizers, Gibson says. They tend to act before thinking and openly express their emotions. 

Other people may find communicating with an externalizer to be overwhelming because their emotional outbursts can be unpredictable.

Externalizers don’t tend to self-reflect, and that can become a problem for them and the people who care about them.

Gibson explains that externalizers do not give themselves the opportunity to grow because they don’t reflect on their own feelings and behavior. Instead they focus on externalizing their problems.

As a result, they may stay emotionally immature, and behave this way toward others, including their own children — continuing the cycle by becoming emotionally immature parents themselves.

Interestingly, Gibson says the immature parent often favors an externalizing child, giving them special privileges over their internalizing children.

In my own work, I observe that it may be easier for an immature parent to understand their children when they recognize their own behavior in their child’s. It may be that they can relate more to their externalizing children because they behave the same way. 

In contrast, it may be difficult for the immature parent to relate to an internalizer child, because internalizers are self-reflective, introspective, and emotionally mature.

For the immature parent to relate, there would need to be self-reflection and confrontation with their own maladaptive behaviours, which may be too emotionally uncomfortable for the immature parent.

5. Change is possible, but you’ll need to make tough decisions 

One of the biggest takeaways is that, if you’re having challenges with an emotionally immature parent, positive change is possible.

However, it may not look the way you want it to.

Ideally, you would want your parents to love you in a parental way that makes you feel safe and comfortable. But one thing that’s clear is that immature parents’ brains are shaped by their own histories of trauma, and changing these patterns is not simple. 

Ultimately you may not be able to change your parent, but you can control your own behavior. To change the dynamic you have with your parent, Gibson encourages readers to transition from being their role-self to fully embracing their authentic self.

She gives a few steps, including learning to be honest with yourself about your feelings, being OK with being angry, avoiding idealizing others, creating a new set of values, and challenging your childhood issues.

I found these tips extremely insightful, and I believe they can help both internalizers and externalizers.

6. Setting boundaries with yourself is key

Normally when we talk about setting boundaries, it’s related to setting them with other people. While it’s important to set boundaries with an immature parent, the book focuses on how important it is to set boundaries with yourself.

What does that mean? Set rules for how you will react and respond to your parent’s immature behavior.

Being able to understand your own triggers, responses, and feelings is crucial to setting those internal boundaries. For example, if your parent is often emotional, and dealing with them leaves you feeling upset, setting a boundary with yourself could mean limiting how often you speak with them.

The thought process goes like this. First acknowledge what’s happening that causes your bad feelings, like “I often feel upset after I speak with my parent.” Next, decide how you will change your behavior with them to protect yourself from feeling this way in future. And stick with it.

This may not be an easy task. If you’re going through this, I recommend getting support through different resources, like speaking with a therapist or friends you can confide in, and reading self-help books like this one.

By setting boundaries with yourself, you can move closer to your authentic self.If you’re experiencing abuse, please call the 24/7 National Domestic Violence Hotline for free, confidential assistance in the United States. Call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or text “START” to 88788.