by Leslie Anderson

Created on: September 17, 2008

Parents create codependant children. Children are born depending on their adult caregivers for everything. Children learn how to make sense of their world through their parents (or caregivers). Parents that attach to their children in unhealthy ways create codependant children. The goal of parenting is to work oneself out of a job. Some parents find it difficult to give their children extended freedom as they grow and mature. Children learn that the world is unsafe and that they cannot navigate it without their caregiver and/or other significant adults in their life. Thus begins the process of codependency. If the parents adopt a standpoint of fear when it relates to their kids, they can create fearful children. Codependence in general is less about love and more about fear. The codependant fears the autonomy of those around him/her, so they enmesh emotionally with others around them.

Children are especially prone to the tendancy to become codependant because they have legitimate needs for help in many areas of their lives. During the different phases of growth and development, children take on more and more identity and responsibility for themselves if they are in a healthy emotional environment. In an unhealthy, in this case, codependant environment, the parents can teach the children lessons that they cannot make it, and that they have no right to autonomy. It is done subtely, but damaging nonetheless. Does this mean codependant parents are unloving? No! Codependance can be insidious and sneaky. Codependants rarely recognize they have a problem until it is brought up by someone else.

Does it mean that the children are starved of love? Or that they have a need for love? Not necessarily. All children have the need for self-identity. In fact, this is the primary goal of childhood. This is why the middle schooler tries out make up, or the elementary student joins a club at school. The search for their likes, dislikes, and what makes them unique from the rest of the world. In essence, the goal of childhood is to define where one's space is in the big wide world. If parents don't foster the growth of this necessary task, children become codependant.

They are searching for acceptance outside of themselves in people, activities, or even addictive tendencies. What the codependant child needs is the means to develop autonomy and self-assuredness that they are safe-no matter what is going on in their outside world. A codependant child's parent can be the most loving parent on earth, because they often over-identify with their children. Their thoughts focus on the child, and the child's thoughts are focused on pleasing the parent, and not detaching for fear of certain disaster. Codependant children need support if they are to branch out of codependency and into a healthy emotional state. They do need love, but codependance is not cause by lacking love, it is the need of autonomy and self-reliance that is lacking.

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