Children are not born only with the need to be loved. They are born with a deep need to be held emotionally by an adult. The parent functions as an external regulating system: when a child is frightened, angry, hurt or disappointed, they look for a familiar figure of safety who can bear their feeling without collapsing, and who can teach them how to manage it.
But what happens when the adult cannot bear their own difficult feelings?
Then, sometimes, without conscious awareness, the child may find themselves in the position of regulating the parent emotionally. Of becoming the recipient of the anxiety, anger, sadness or agitation that the adult cannot process alone. The child does not simply hear the parent’s feelings. They may begin to carry them, into other relationships too.
Emotional regulation as a core function of the parental relationship
Contemporary developmental psychology stresses that a child’s ability to regulate their emotions does not appear automatically. It develops through repeated experiences of co-regulation with safe adults.
An infant cannot soothe their own fear or distress. They need an adult who recognises their state, stays relatively calm in the face of intensity, gives the feeling meaning and offers safety.
Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby, through attachment theory, described the parent as a “secure base” from which a child can explore the world and to which they can return when they need protection. But this process presupposes something important: the parent must be able to hold the child’s feeling without being flooded by their own.
When the parent cannot “hold” their own feeling
Some adults grew up in environments where emotions were regarded as weakness, were ignored, were punished, or were attended to only when they became very intense. So they may not have developed adequate skills for processing feeling.
And then the child can become the person on whom the parent “leans” their difficult feeling, looking for a familiar figure of safety to whom they can express what they feel in order to find relief. A parent expressing feelings to a child is not in itself burdensome. The difficulty appears when the child becomes the parent’s main or only means of relief — that is, when the adult’s emotional balance depends systematically on the child’s response. Many parents, and people in general, have not developed the capacity to do this internally and look for someone else — a partner, a child, a parent, a friend — to perform that function.
Projection of feelings: when the child becomes the “carrier” of the emotion
Often in relationships a person does not simply attribute a feeling of their own to the other, but unconsciously pushes the other to experience it or to take it on. In the parental relationship this can take forms such as:
“You make me angry.”
“You always disappoint me.”
“You’ve upset me so much.”
“If you loved me, you wouldn’t do this to me.”
The message the child receives is not simply:
“My parent is feeling something difficult.”
The message becomes:
“I am responsible for my parent’s feelings.”
Parentification: when the child becomes the parent’s caregiver
One of the most important terms in the literature is parentification. Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy, and later researchers such as Gregory Jurkovic, studied cases in which children take on roles that go beyond their developmental stage. Parentification can be practical, when a child takes on adult responsibilities — caring for siblings, managing the household, or making decisions that are not theirs to make. It can be emotional, when the child becomes the listener for the parent’s problems, the comforter, the peacemaker, or the one who has to “keep” the family calm.
Examples might be:
“You’re the only one who understands me.”
“I have no one else but you.”
“Don’t upset me, I can’t take any more.”
“You have to be strong for me.”
The parent does not have to say any of this out loud, however. Often the child senses it without it ever being put into words. Children learn not only from what parents say, but from what the body, the tone of voice and the emotional state communicate. So a child may feel important because they have a role. But at the same time they lose something essential:
The right, and the lightness, of being a child.
The cycle of emotional transmission
Feelings are transmitted within relationships. Research on emotional contagion has shown that people influence one another’s emotional states. This is normal. But it is one thing for a child to think:
“My mum is sad and I can feel for her.”
and quite another:
“My mum is sad and I have to make her better.”
In the first case there is a relationship.
In the second there is a burden.
Emotional availability and safety
Edward Tronick and his colleagues, through the well-known Still Face Experiment, showed how sensitive children are to their parents’ emotional responses. Children notice the tone of voice, the facial expression, the bodily tension, the absence of emotional availability.
When a parent cannot regulate their own state, the child often tries to restore the connection. They may become an excessively good child, constantly smiling, the one who causes no trouble, the one who anticipates other people’s needs.
This adaptation can later be connected with difficulties such as: excessive responsibility for other people’s feelings, difficulty saying “no”, fear of conflict, guilt when caring for oneself.
“If I don’t calm you down, I risk losing your love”
For a child, the relationship with a parent is not simply important. It is a matter of survival.
A child cannot easily think:
“My parent is struggling to manage their feelings.”
More often they think:
“I’m doing something wrong. I’m too much, unworthy, or bad.”
And so they may develop beliefs such as:
“I have to look after other people in order to be loved.”
“I mustn’t get angry because I’ll hurt someone.”
“My needs are a burden.”
“Other people’s calm is my responsibility.”
The therapeutic perspective: returning feelings to where they belong
Therapeutic work often involves a deep repositioning:
Parents’ feelings belong to the parents. Children’s feelings belong to the children.
This does not mean there is no love, compassion or connection. It means that love does not require a child to become their parent’s therapist, regulator or emotional caregiver. It requires a boundary — and within that boundary it can be sustained in a healthy way.
A parent needs to be able to say:
“I am angry and I can manage my anger without projecting it onto my child.”
“I am sad and my child does not need to take care of me.”
“My child can love me without being responsible for my psychological balance.”
The greatest emotional safety a parent can offer is not the absence of difficult feelings.
It is the ability to show the child: “My difficult feelings exist, but you do not have to carry them.”
