The Devastating Effects of Parental Addiction on Kids
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Having an addicted parent most certainly affects the children, even if they're adult children, but specifically if there are young children in the home and the parent that you live with or even maybe you stay with part time, when they have an addiction, it has a profound effect on you. Now sometimes you can't quite see those effects in children and a lot of times you may even think oh my gosh this kid is just the greatest kid like I don't know how they overcame all that.
Too often you will see the effects, maybe not create a lot of chaos when the person is young, But you'll see it play out in their adult relationships. And so today I want to take a look at all the different ways that having an addicted parent can affect a kid. And what are the sort of signs and symptoms you might see in kids who have an addicted parent, because it doesn't maybe look, Like the way you think that it looks.
[00:01:00] The thing that spurred me to think about this is some of you probably saw this, but I recently put a post in the YouTube community about this experience I had a few weeks back. I was Riding in the car with my son and he's in this phase where he likes to, we like to listen to music and we like to like car sing and car dance.
And it's really fun. And since he's almost a teenager, I'll take any moment that I can get where he's like connected and having fun. So we're singing and he's in a country music phase. So he likes country music. We're listening to that. It's an old song, but a new version that song fast car.
I don't know if any of you guys have ever heard of it, but near the beginning of the song, there's a line in the song that says this says basically my dad lived in a bottle, my mom left him. I'm paraphrasing here, but. Essentially my mom left him and I quit school to take care of my dad. Of course, in the song, it says a lot better than that.
But I looked at my son. I said, do you know what that means? Lives in a bottle. And he said, what? And I said it means that his dad's an alcoholic. And he said, oh, and then [00:02:00] I don't know why he always does this. He always, he just does this with everything and say, what if I did that? He's always done that.
But he said, what if I did that? And before I could think about it, before I could even process it and think, what's a good answer right here out of my mouth, very quickly, I said over my dead body, only I said it more sassy than that, like I meant it. And I, it was one of those moments where you like, shock yourself.
You're like, Oh, and I think it was just such a, like a visceral, Immediate reactive statement because typically with my son, I like I'm all about you live, you learn, you make your own lessons. He'll ask me things like, what if I don't do my homework? I'm telling you, I always like to say, what if I did this or that?
But if I don't know more, I said, I don't know. It's between you and your teachers. What if I, what if you told me to do something and I didn't do it? And he's always asking me that and I'm like you'd lose my trust. What does that mean? And I'm very much in whenever possible, except in some kind of major safety situation, I'm like, Hey man, you, this is your choice.
If you made a choice, then you get the natural [00:03:00] consequences. Not so much in the, you're going to get a punishment. I really try hard to stay away from punishments. The groundings I'm going to take this away from you and that away from you. I'm sure at some point I may have to get there, but so far I really had to do a lot of that because I'm of the belief that Punishment just makes the person mad at you and they don't really learn the lessons.
So I like to let the world teach the lessons whenever possible. Anyways, I say that really quick and he says, why? And I didn't even really have a good response for him. And it wasn't until later that I really had time to, to process that because I'm sure, and somebody wrote this in the comment on the post, but I'm sure that response, it just hit home.
I grew up in an addicted household and I'll talk a little bit about that with you guys, but it hit really close to home. And I think being so acutely aware of how growing up in an addicted home impacts you. I'm a lot more aware of it now than I was as a kid. I really didn't even realize I grew up in an addicted home as a kid.
I know that's crazy. That's a story for another day, but looking back on it now, [00:04:00] being able to see through adult eyes, all the impacts and implications of that. Definitely has a strong impact. It impacts me still now today. And I want to talk about how that plays out because that's why I said, when he said, I would drop out of school and take care of my dad or not my dad, but my parent who's alcoholic, which, By the way, neither me or my husband drink at all.
So it's not even a reality thing. It was just like a, what if, and a reaction to it. Made me really dig in because you guys know I'm on here. I make all these videos every day. I'm on here talking about how to support someone with an addicted loved one and how they can get better and how to stick with them.
And I'm sticking with all that. I believe all that. However, I don't think that responsibility even if it's an adult kid, and I know I'm going to get some backlash from that, but I do think that the parent kid relationship is one of those relationships that really is mostly one sided, it's not a two way street like friendships are, or romantic relationships are, or sibling relationships are, the parent In almost all situations, it's mostly give from the parent, right?
And I think that's okay. I think that's [00:05:00] the way that it's supposed to be. And a lot of people gave me, people gave some really interesting comments on there. Some were like, I totally get it. And some people were like if you really believe it's a disease, then, if the parent had another disease, would you still say that?
Another person made an interesting comment and they said I think if a kid is willing to take care of their parent that way, it really says something that the parent must've been doing something right. And I want to address those comments and thoughts. Cause I did think they were interesting and they made me think a lot, actually.
Some of you guys have seen my videos about whether or not I think addiction is a disease. And I don't quite put that label on it. I think it's an illness. I have a whole video on that. You can take a look at it, but it doesn't even matter. Because in my mind, my thought was no, even if it was another illness, I don't care what the other illness was.
I would not be cool with my kid quitting school and putting their whole life on hold to take care of that parent, no matter what that illness was. And if that's what I said over my dead body, because I'm like, no, if I'm still alive, that's not going to happen. And I'm not super halsey like that with him in general.
[00:06:00] But In that situation, I'm like, no, no matter what the illness was, but especially if it was addiction, I don't think that's up to my, to a kid to have to sacrifice their life to take care of it and way too often.
Speaker: That is exactly what happens. Maybe they don't quit school to like physically, nursing home their parent, but they do in fact put their life on hold, which we'll talk some about how that happens. But so my response to that comment about if you think it's an illness or whatever, would you feel differently?
I would not feel differently. And then somebody I think made a comment about if it's not a choice, I don't think people make the choice to become addicted, but I think you make the choice every single day over and over again about whether or not you're going to address that addiction.
And to continue to make the choice to not address the addiction to the point that is put in your child in a bad situation is causing harm to your kid in a big major way. I don't think that's cool. And I know that puts a lot of. People in a bad situation. [00:07:00] I know a lot of people watch this channel because they do have addictions and I'm not trying to make you feel guilty, but I do think we have to look at the reality of it.
And others of you watch this channel because maybe your partner or your spouse is an addict or an alcoholic and you're not sure what to do to protect your kids. It's a very complicated, hard, and difficult situation, and I don't have all the answers for exactly how to protect kids from this, but I can tell you some of the ways that it plays out, some of the things to look for, and give you some really important things to think about as you make decisions on how to deal with this.
A lot of you already know that I grew up in an addicted home. My mother died pretty early in my life of a stroke. Not early in my life, I was like in my twenties, so I wasn't a kid but young from a heart attack basically. But really it was brought on by her methamphetamine use. I have a sister who was an addict who did all those same things, who from the time she was older, half sister, and from the time I was probably, middle [00:08:00] school for sure.
I was working jobs to give money to pay for bad checks she was writing. Because you're young, you're like, I don't want nothing bad to happen to my sister. And you're handling the responsibilities of that other person. In that case, it was my sister.
As a young child and on the outside that can look like wow, they're so great They're so responsible. They work so hard But it is still a dysfunctional state even when it looks good So let's talk about some of the ways you're going to see this manifesting kids in old school recovery They used to do there used to be this talk they call it the sort of addicted family model And it looked at the dysfunction of what typically happens when you have a parent that's addicted.
And you see these different roles that kind of surface when you have addiction in a household. And it doesn't have to be with kids. You'll see these roles manifest in different ways, even if they're older people. Older kids or even young adults living in the house. One of those roles will be [00:09:00] the scapegoat.
And this is the person in the family, usually a young person, but not necessarily, that's always in trouble. They're always doing something wrong. Maybe the school's calling all the time. Maybe they're getting arrested. Maybe they're doing drugs or alcohol themselves. But they're always in trouble.
It's like an acting out dysfunction. And that serves a purpose for the family. The purpose that it serves is to pull attention away from what the real issue is. And the real issue is you have an addictive parent. And if there are two parents in the home, then the issue is not only is the parent addicted but the crazy dynamics that ensue between the addicted and the non addicted parent.
And it causes so much stress inside of a young person, even if they don't even know what's going on, they can still sense that stress and that sense of I'm not okay. Cause we look to our parents to, for safety, basically to say it's okay. And if they're not okay, then we don't feel okay. And a lot of times you will see acting out like that.
It's the scapegoat role. And it can look like, Oh, this is the bad [00:10:00] kid. And then that deflects from all the arguing between the two parents. It deflects from, dad coming home drinking every night. It gives us something else to think about and focus on. That role is usually pretty easy to say. Because you, cause it's problematic.
Usually you get in phone calls. Cause and trouble, that kind of thing. But there are other roles that aren't so easy to see. Another role in an addictive family is called a lost child. And in that situation, you deal, the person is quiet. They stay in the background. They don't make a lot of noise or drama, maybe they're reading, maybe they're playing video games, maybe they're just minding their business, maybe they just stay gone all the time, but they, their way of managing it is to fall into the background, to try not to interact with it, to try to stay away from it and avoid it as much as possible, and to fly under the radar, to not get any attention, to not cause any waves.
And that's the way. That a lost child is protecting themselves. You don't always see that as a dysfunction. You might see that as, Oh my gosh, [00:11:00] they're such a good student. They're always back there studying or, they're just introverted and they're quiet. They don't never causing trouble.
They never get upset. They never throw a fit. They're just great. And when we can. Validate that over and over because it looks like good behavior. Sometimes if it's like they're playing video games all the time, we might get upset with them because we say that's unhealthy for you. But other than that, they don't really cause a lot of waves or trouble.
That's their MO is to stay quiet and not call attention to themselves. Another family role that you see is a role called the mascot. And this is a way of deflecting all the negative, really uncomfortable. Tension in the house, the mascot is usually funny or entertaining or really cute.
Maybe it's like the youngest kid in the house and they're just cute. And they're just like a little performer. And it's a way of trying to get all the attention off of all these arguments and stresses and uncomfortableness and just be like, Hey, let's just smile. Let's just, everybody be happy. Let's just get along.
It's like a little [00:12:00] entertainer role. And. That gets a lot of attention. Sometimes it's negative attention because sometimes you can, it can turn into a class clown kind of thing. But a lot of times it's just fun, cute, entertaining. It's easier to think about. And when kids are doing these things, they don't realize that's why they're doing it.
This is a subconscious defense mechanism. Coping kind of thing that people don't realize that I'm the family mascot or I'm the scapegoat or I'm lost child. It's just happening and you can see it over and over again in families. Another role that you will see that pops up a lot is called the family hero.
And the family hero is usually the person in the family that seems to really have their head on straight. They're very like productive. They're very responsible. You can count on them. Maybe they are always Taking care of other people. Maybe they are like a super excellent student or a star athlete.
And they're that function in the family system is it [00:13:00] creates a lot of sort of admiration, this is our star, this is our person that we're proud of. And that creates that kind of deflection from what's really going on in a household. And that role will for sure get.
Validated and reinforced because it looks like, wow, they're really good. Wow. They, they always make the right decisions. You can always count on them. They always do their chores. They're the family hero. Looking back at my family is probably, I would fall somewhere.
Probably in that vein. I can remember my sister, Heather, she's one year younger than me. She would always be like Amber, from the, those of you who are old enough, y'all remember the Brady Bunch? And Jan would say Marsha. That's what she would say. Really realizing it, but looking back.
Even for myself, it's there's a need for somebody to be responsible. There's a need for somebody to be looking out for all these things. There's so there's that a feeling of a subconscious feeling of pressure, like somebody has to do it, but also a distraction for yourself and the [00:14:00] way I describe it is it's almost like putting blonders on and being like, I'm just not going to pay attention to this, the whole world can fall apart around me, like literally walls burning down, whatever is happening around you, but I'm just focused.
And it, In your mind, it's almost like a way of escaping it, not just in the moment, but this is how I'm going to get out of this mess. This is my ticket out. I'm going to go to school or I'm going to get that scholarship and be an athlete or whatever it is. It's the way out of the dysfunction and it looks crazy healthy on the surface, but it really isn't.
Maybe isn't necessarily. Then you also have, of course, you have enablers in the family and in some ways all these roles are enabling because they're serving a purpose that deflects from the real issue in the house. The reason it's called dysfunction is because the word dysfunction means everybody's not getting their needs met.
So when a family is functional, People pretty much get their needs met. But when you have one person in a family that has an addiction, they suck all the resources, the energy, the mood, [00:15:00] everything goes into this person because they're not participating and contributing to the family in a way that they used to.
And so it puts the family off balance. And that's why they used to call it the family mobile, like a baby mobile, it's a little, like stuffed animals or something on the end, if you pull one off and it gets lopsided. That's where that reference comes from. And so the dysfunction means people aren't people in the house are not getting their needs met.
And it starts usually with the other parent not getting their needs met. So it's not only is like you have an addictive parent, but then you have, maybe it's the mom or the dad, whoever the other parent is, they're definitely not getting their needs met from that marital relationship. And then that comes out dysfunctionally.
Maybe they fight, maybe they just enable, maybe they're just Covering for that person. And they're trying to mediate all the time and cover everything up. And they're trying really hard to like, keep everybody happy and make sure people on the outside don't know it and make sure it's not having so much impact.
But that imbalance in that marital [00:16:00] relationship, as much as anything creeps down, and then those effects, it's like a domino effect from down to everybody else. One of the really dysfunctional things that you see frequently happen in a situation like this is the non addictive parent isn't getting their needs met, they'll start getting their needs met in other dysfunctional ways.
And one of those ways that happens, Far too often is that they'll start, they'll pick one of the kids, maybe the hero kid or the lost child kid, or, something like that though. And they'll start to overly enmesh with that kid and treat that kid like another adult. And Kim who's one of our family counselors, she calls it emotional incest, which I feel like is a little strong.
It's Whoa, that's. That's a strong way to say it, but it it's true, right? It's because you're, you don't have this adult to adult relationship with your partner. You start leaning on your kid as a friend and you start talking about the problems and you start looking at them as a confidant and it's too heavy and it is too much for that kid to have to be aware of and to have to deal with [00:17:00] because that kid then feels like they have to protect you.
And they have to make sure dad's okay. He's not drinking too much. And I have to make sure mom's feelings aren't getting hurt. And that puts a lot of pressure on the kid in some ways, when that's happening, it feels really good because you feel like, wow, they really trust me or I'm really grown up or I must be really mature.
So you allow that kind of thing to happen. And maybe you're even instigating it to some degree. I do talk to some people who what will happen is the kid will become very parentified. And now not only they become parentified in the way that they're like responsible and taking care of themselves, but they become parentified and that they're like bossing around the adults and punishing and coming up with all these things.
Like they're really get way overly. The boundaries are just being crossed because they see themselves as the boss of the house. And when you're young, you're just not capable of doing that effectively. And it has a major impact on you. To the comment of the person that said, If a kid is taking [00:18:00] care of a parent, it says that this parent did something right.
I don't necessarily know that I agree with that because I think sometimes if you've grown up in a dysfunctional home, you feel like it's your responsibility. You're not doing it because they're so great and wonderful. You're doing it because you feel like you have to do it or something bad is going to happen.
Or because you've always had to be overly responsible and it's just your natural way. You don't know any other way to be, but that does eventually take a toll on you. Another scenario that happens that can really lead to not great things is when you have the addicted parent and then the other parent and the addicted parent becomes like the cool parent.
Especially this happens when the kids are teenagers, because, maybe they want to start drinking or they want to start smoking weed or they want to start doing whatever. And you've got this other parent over here who's addicted, who's probably minimizing it. He's probably saying, that's cool.
Boys will be boys. They're going to do what they're going to do. I can think of A client we had a long time ago in our intensive outpatient who was coming, he was in our intensive outpatient because he [00:19:00] had a substance abuse problem. He was a teenager. It's just, his parents were divorced and his dad was a successful guy.
He was a business owner. He did well financially, but He was a bad alcoholic. And of course, mom was the one that was trying to like, brush your teeth, eat your broccoli, follow the rules. And so once this young person became, an adolescent, they'd go over to dad's and they just thought dad was the coolest thing ever.
He had the cool house, he had the cool toys and cars, and he was just cool with whatever you wanted to do. And that is so hard to compete with. When you're dealing with a teenager, as that other parent, you really feel completely powerless. And in a lot of ways you really are because an adolescent really just isn't old enough to see that's not right and that's pretty.
dysfunctional. When that young person gets older, they may look back on that and say, dude, I can't believe you let me do that. Like that was uncool. Like you should have been there, because those repercussions then fall on that child as they grow up. Maybe they get addicted.
Maybe they drop out of school. Maybe they make other bad choices because the parent isn't [00:20:00] there. Kids are going to do what they're going to do and you can't stop them from making bad choices. But if you're encouraging the bad choices and you're not even trying to stop the bad choices, then they may grow up lighter and feel.
resentful towards you, but they're not going to see it at the time. They're just going to see it like, Oh my gosh, you're so cool. You're the best, which then further alienates the other parent. These are just some of the ways that the dysfunction comes out. We haven't even gotten into Abuse. We haven't even gotten into trauma.
None of that super heavy stuff. This is just the surface level dynamics in an addicted, unhealthy family. Some of those dysfunctional dynamics are clear to see, like a scapegoat, and some of them are not easy to see and are actually being reinforced. Even the scapegoats being negatively reinforced, but the other roles can be being positively reinforced, and you're not quite realizing that still is.
a dysfunctional reaction to an unhealthy family system. [00:21:00] Now, saying all of that, which I definitely stand by all that, I will say that even though I came from an addicted family, I probably got more Love and affirmation and validation than most people. And I say that because now that I'm a counselor, I see people and I hear all about the families they came from.
And I think, dang, my family might've been like, off the wall, they may have done all these things, but they didn't. They they were kind they were mostly respectful to each other and they definitely made me feel loved. Now, I didn't always feel like my needs were met.
There was always financial stress. I had to provide for myself from very early age, all those kinds of things. So I'm not saying that it's always horrible, but what I am saying is that there are always effects. Some of the effects I feel like that I've gotten from growing up an addicted household are actually gifts, and are actually a lot of the reason why I can do the work that I do and why I understand things I understand.
So I don't. I don't necessarily wish it never happened because even though we get those [00:22:00] negative parts of us, those parts of us that cause us trouble in our adulthood, we also, if we can allow it, it grows into some strengths. And so it's not always terrible. I'm not saying an addicted parent is a horrible parent in every way.
I'm not saying if you're an addictive parent, you are abusing your child, like you're hitting them or saying terrible things to them, but if you're In the very least, if you are an addicted parent, you are not meeting the needs of your addicted partner. And that dysfunction, because these two people are not getting their needs met, it will trickle down into some level of dysfunction into that household.
And I don't care if the kid even knows that the substance use is happening. They may not even know it. Like I said before, I didn't even know it. I didn't even know what's happening for a long time. So I deal with a lot of people and they say, it doesn't really affect my kids. I just come home.
Like I don't get mean, I don't get obnoxious. I don't beat their mom. I just, I get sleepy and sometimes I go to sleep too early. I'll just sit in my recliner and I just drink my beer or whatever. But as that's happening, you can tell [00:23:00] yourself. It's fine. I pay the bills. I'm providing a good living.
So what if I'm sitting in my recliner when I get home and I'm just drinking my beer, watching my Netflix or my sports games or whatever, you're not bringing into the family, what you need to bring into the family. And if nothing else, you're definitely not bringing it to your spouse. And that's going to create a lot of conflict between you and that spouse, which then is felt by the children in the house.
I know that this is a really hard topic. It really. Can step on the toes of everybody in the situation, whether you're addicted person, you're the spouse, you're the sibling, whatever it is. But I do think it is something that we have to talk about and we have to realize that we need to. I know we realize that we need to look out for our kids, but sometimes we don't know how to look out for kids.
And I think when you're in this situation, if you're the spouse, I know you didn't mean to be in a situation and there aren't any good answers, right? Cause you're thinking I could leave, but then they either don't have a parent. Or worse, then I'm having to send my kid every other [00:24:00] weekend to their addicted parent's house, and I'm really scared of what's going to happen if I'm not there.
So you really are stuck and I get that. And it's a terrible place to be, but you can damage control it on some levels. And the way that I, the best way I know to tell you to do that is, is it is okay to be respectful of each kid's. reaction and needs in response to what's going on, sometimes the kid is really upset and feels like the addictive parent is mean or nasty or it's not fair.
And they're angry or they're upset and they may be acting out in that way. And it's easy to want to look at that kid and say your mom loves you and she didn't really mean that. But that can be invalidating. In fact, that can be gaslighting the kid because. Whatever happened, maybe at the dinner table, was completely uncool and out of bounds.
And if you're trying to say, oh, dad is just tired, and it's really clear that the situation is not okay, then you're reinforcing in the kid that they can't trust their own instincts about what's okay and what's not. And that will play out in their adult life. lives and in their other relationships [00:25:00] as an adolescent and as an adult.
So it's that balance of, you don't want to say too much to them. You don't want to be overly enmeshed with them so that you're putting the burden on them, but you also don't want to try and pretend like it's not happening or that it doesn't affect them or make them think that what they think they see is not what's happening because that also causes a problem.
A lot of people, I have people that ask me What do I say to my kids when they bring it up? One thing I think you can do is I think you should go to your spouse, the addictive spouse, and you should say, Hey, Johnny's asking me this. What do you want me to say? Because what happens is if you just go out there and say, where your daddy, he's just a drunk, he's just a no good loser or whatever then the addictive parent says, Oh, you're, you're splitting my kid against me.
It's perennial alienation, all the things, but that kind of puts some responsibility back on that. Hey, I don't want to turn your kid against you. I think they need you, you're really great mother, father, whatever it is for the most part, but this has become an issue and I don't know what to say, what do you think I should say?
And then that makes that other parent have [00:26:00] to own. The fact that the kid is noticing and the kid is saying something about it because most of the time The addictive parent believes that the kid's only saying those things and they're only acting up because the other parent is putting it in their Head, but that's not true.
They can see what's happening. And this is particularly happens a lot when The addiction is alcohol because the alcoholic doesn't realize how they acted last night. They don't even remember what happened. So they really do think that you're being crazy that you're overreacting. They don't remember how they acted at the dinner table.
So if little Mary's upset, then it must be because your mama's pitting you against me that kind of thing. And that's a hard dynamic. We are about to the point in our live where we're going to take some questions and some comments. Let's see. Can the mascot be a people pleaser? Yes, for sure. A lot of these roles can be people pleasers. Like the hero can be a people pleaser. And I think this is a really good question, Nick, because it's one of those situations where it looks like it doesn't look like [00:27:00] dysfunction.
It looks like, oh, there's this great kid. They never cause any trouble. They're so nice. But really there's this subconscious thought of there's not room for me to have problems. There's not room for me to ask for my needs to be met. There's not room or money for me to ask for something I need for school.
So I just need to like, be really good and say whatever I need to say to make sure there's no fighting. So yes, for sure. People
Let's see. Joachim says, I find, I'm going to have to put my glasses on, Brie. I'm blind. I find in my family, my addicted loved one who wants to confide in the kids and lead on them. Yeah, that's a good point. I didn't mention that cause I talked about very often it's the non addicted parent.
That wants to get by on the kids, but you're right. It can happen with the addictive parent because believe it or not The addictive parent is just as mad and angry and resentful at the non addictive parent as it is vice versa and it's really bad when you have both parents coming to the kids and saying, your daddy He's no good drunk and then your mama.
She's a controlling nag, whatever. That's too much to be putting on a kid You should not be [00:28:00] going to your kids with your adult problems. I'm firm believer in that All right, what else we got susan says If I have a child that has an addiction, does that mean my child does not have their needs met? This is a really good question.
If you have a child that has an addiction, it does not mean that as a parent you did not meet their needs. Probably, if they're far into addiction, they're probably not getting their needs met now because of their addiction. They're probably off kilter in some way, but I see people that have addictions that come from great families all the time.
Really good families. Campbell, who's one of our parent counselors here. She had two kids that went through this. And let me tell you, Campbell's probably Campbell's feeding them organic food, probably like knitting their baby booties, like doing all this stuff, in a nice house married to a good guy, it can happen in family. So I don't want you to say, I'm saying that someone has an addiction because. If it's your kid because you didn't meet their needs because I'm not so good question. I'm glad you asked that
Oh, let me say one more thing on that season if [00:29:00] you have a kid who has an addiction in the house Who's living in the house and there are other siblings? You do have to be careful because that addiction can start to take up so much time energy money all That then the other siblings stop getting their needs met Though that's the thing that you do need to watch out for Ivan and Lydia says How does the recovery process of the addicted parent impact the child?
Can we expect the kid to also go through some sort of transition? I think that there's a lot of different ways As we know that the recovery process isn't always a straight line So a lot of times there's a lot of backsliding and of course that affects the kids It can affect the kids if you've been being the cool parent and been letting them get by with everything or been or maybe you've been the Involved parent you haven't had an opinion for a long time and now all of a sudden you want to step into the role and Be the parent The kid can be like, I don't know who you are.
I don't know who you're talking to. I can tell you that I would have been that way as a kid because I took care of myself for so long. If somebody was trying to come in and boss me and tell me what to do, which never happened, but if they did, I've been like, who do you think you are? Like, I would have literally it would not have worked because I'm like, I've been taking care [00:30:00] of myself since forever.
Like what, it wouldn't have worked. So you can get all those kinds of responses from kid. If you've not been being in a parent role and trying to step back into that parent role, it's a difficult. Process and you do have to transition back into that.
Catherine says, Can you speak to when a child has an emotional reaction to the behavior of the addictive parent and the addictive parent tries to minimize or gaslight the child? This is a very common thing, especially if it comes to alcohol, but even with any kind of addiction, really. You can't make that addicted parent not minimize it, but you can, as another person say, you know what, that just wasn't cool.
You don't have to go into all the details and give the kid too much information so that it burdens them. But you can say, no, it really wasn't. That wasn't an okay thing to say to you, or that wasn't an okay way to handle it. I think it's okay to validate their feeling that was out of bounds because you're trying to help this kid understand appropriate boundaries.
And if they're being told that someone treating or acting [00:31:00] in a, not okay way towards them, towards another parent, towards another sibling. They're being told that's okay or it didn't happen. Guess what? You get a unrealistic view about healthy boundaries and you don't see it always in childhood, but when that child grows up and gets in adult relationships, you will see it play out.
every time.
Elizabeth says, yes, ending up with shared custody is a nightmare. My addicted loved one went to rehab and may not come back. The older kids want him back, but the younger ones do. I think there's more, but my guess is probably saying do not. Yeah, that's another aspect, Elizabeth, that we didn't quite hit on, which is, What do you do when the addictive parent decides to get better and you as the spouse or the partner, you try to support them and you want to give them a chance, but there's been so much damage with the kids that they're done and they're out.
If they're older, then it's a little easier, especially if they don't live in the house, but if they're younger and they're not ready to forgive the other parent, you really are in a tough spot. [00:32:00] In that case, I would say I'd probably recommend. Some counseling between the addictive parent and the kid, probably maybe even without the non addictive parent, because that relationship needs to be mended.
But I also don't think that you have to make your kid mend their relationship with the other parent, even if they've gotten better, because , that's not your side of the street necessarily to force them to do that. And that can feel very invalidating. And maybe they're mad at the other parent for how that parent treated you.
It's like you could forgive somebody for treating you bad, but you can't forgive somebody for treating your kid bad, right? Like you have to respect where that person is coming from.
Debbie says, what about kids in their twenties? Can I just treat them as another adult? Is it okay to share what's really happening with their addicted parent? I think it's okay to give them the surface level, but I still think even as an adult, you're still their parent and I don't care how old we are.
We still look at our parents as our parents. And. I would not, I would be careful about overburdening them [00:33:00] because they feel trapped in the middle. They want to help but they don't know what to do. And it's just a, it's just a bad feeling because they feel more responsible to do something about it than let's say if you're sharing that with your other bestie friend or whatever.
Like you can lean on your best friend doesn't necessarily feel an obligation to fix it or to protect you, in a big way, like your kid will. So I would avoid doing that. I would do it a little, like you're not lying to them, but I would not put that burden on them, like with all the details and the heaviness of it.
Noah says, can a non substance addiction cause the same unhealthy family dynamics and emotional neglect? A hundred percent. I'm glad you asked that Noah, because I didn't say that, but that is spot on. Any addiction, because when someone is addicted, it creates that imbalance, right? Like someone, when they're addicted, all of their emotional energy is going here, which doesn't leave anything else for the family.
For a long time, when people are addicted, they can play the game fairly decently on the outside, but the further they get into addiction, the less [00:34:00] able they are to even play the game. They are not emotionally present.
