by Caroline Kramer

Created on: November 28, 2008   Last Updated: October 28, 2010

We all know our children need us, the problem comes when we start to need them.....too much. Co-dependency is not a benign looking after each other, it is something much deeper and more insidious. It is not simply wanting to be with someone but rather basing your whole personality on them, and not just on them but on their need for you to look after them.

Perhaps it is easier to see this when we look at the relationship between two equal adults. In such a relationship, one would expect that sickness or need in one would evoke feelings of sympathy and patience in the other. The non-sick adult may offer help and support, especially if the relationship is a marriage or friendship. Where things start to go wrong is when the carer cannot function in the relationship unless the other person is sick. Perhaps they have a substance abuse issue and try to clean up - the carer may then, subconsciously, try to sabotage recovery as they are no longer capable of normal relating, but need the apparent safety and power of the co-dependant interaction.

When we come to children and their parents, there is a less clear distinction between appropriate and inappropriate need. A five year old needs a lot of care. If a fifteen year old, without any learning or other physical or mental difficulty, is receiving the same level of care as a kindergartner we should look to the parent as the problem. The parent's needs and motives should be questioned. Are they, indeed, fostering dependency in their child to preserve their own psychological comfort?

With a large age range, it is easy to see the difference in care needs; but when we compare children between one or two grades, it becomes much harder. Some children are higher maintenance than others. Parents themselves would do well to do a sort of self-inventory from time to time. How challenged do they feel when their child expresses appropriate independence? Examples of this would be things like tying shoes and brushing hair in younger children and organizing rides home with friends (instead of parents) or completing homework alone in older children. If these are matters of pride for a parent, then it is a good sign. Of course all growth in a child is accompanied by some sense of loss, but if this is overwhelming to the point where the parent seeks to take back the task or gain control over it or over the child's time in some other way to compensate, then it could indicate a problem.

Allowing children to mature is appropriate and, in fact, is a duty for the good parent. Co-dependency stifles both child and parent and runs the danger of trapping them into an infantile relationship which may never fully be healed or worse, of causing the child to rebel so strongly against the parent that the fall out from that rift causes irreparable damage or damages the young person in some permanent fashion.

Co-dependency is not careful parenting, it is selfishly allowing untamed psychological dysfunction to dominate relationships which are too precious to risk with this sort of dynamic. If parents find letting go so painful that it affects their child's ability to be allowed to grow up, then they must seek help for themselves. Children are designed to move towards independence, parents must facilitate this.

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