Parentification Quotes

“Family dysfunction is progressive. It never stays the same. As it progresses, appropriate boundaries between parent and child may become nonexistent and communication becomes increasingly strained.”
― Kenneth Adams, Silently Seduced, Revised & Updated

“Cooperation does not equal enjoyment.”
― Kenneth Adams, Silently Seduced, Revised & Updated

“There's nothing loving or caring about a close parent-child relationship when it services the needs and feelings of a parent rather than the child.”
― Kenneth Adams, Silently Seduced, Revised & Updated

“I was, as I said, only nine. But my mother often spoke to me as though I were a peer rather than a child and expected me to understand things for which I did not yet have context. I didn’t know then to resent her for it.”
― Kelly Barnhill, The Crane Husband

“As long as the abuse or neglect experienced in childhood remains buried within, we re-recreate our family in adult relationships.”
― Kenneth Adams, Silently Seduced, Revised & Updated

“Assigning responsibility where it rightfully belongs is the first crucial step in gaining access to one's true feelings, needs, and wants.”
― Kenneth Adams, Silently Seduced, Revised & Updated

“All families function as a system in which one person's actions affect another and vice versa.”
― Kenneth Adams, Silently Seduced, Revised & Updated

“The fact that you are questioning your relationship with your parent means you are bringing about awareness and activating the process of change in yourself. By increasing your awareness, your own intuitive healing journey began. Trust in time for answers that are not clear yet, and love the questions themselves.”
― Kenneth Adams, Silently Seduced, Revised & Updated

“You're too young to have to cross things off a list. You worry too much."
But I kept writing. Someone had to remember to do things.”
― Kimberly Willis Holt, Keeper of the Night

“But Michael was only six. He should be worrying about learning how to tie his shoes, not about our mother’s checking account.”
― Kelly Barnhill, The Crane Husband

“Your mother doesn't know these things,” he said, a note of pleading in his voice. "She has always been that way. She is an artist. Her feet barely touch the ground. I've been the one to keep her tethered to the earth. And now it's your job. And you're too young, and it's not fair, but there it is." He was right. It wasn't fair.”
― Kelly Barnhill, The Crane Husband

“I knew exactly how to behave in the presence of adults, what made their eyes light up: speak intelligently, be polite, listen when spoken to, ask meaningful questions... When I became a teenager, I'd overhear adults laugh and say to my mom, "She's thirteen going on thirty, isn't she?" That felt like winning the lottery, to be told I wasn't like other kids. I was more like an adult. I was extraordinary.”
― Megan Farison, Dissonance