![]() ![]() ![]() In Kiesel’s case, looking after her brother as a kid has led to a tenuous and chaotic relationship with him over the years, fraught with bouts of estrangement and codependency. Hooper noted that “the literature is very scarce in this area.” Scholars agree that there are gaps in sibling research-primarily an incomplete understanding of how these relationships and roles are affected by abusive family environments. And there is virtually no empirical research on how this affects relationship dynamics later in life-both with siblings and others. While there is a large body of literature that focuses on the neglect children experience from their parents, there’s less examination of how this neglect puts kids in roles of parenting each other. “Children’s distrust of their interpersonal world is one of the most destructive consequences of such a process,” writes Gregory Jurkovic in his book Lost Childhoods: The Plight of the Parentified Child. Some of these behaviors start out in childhood and become exacerbated in adulthood, she explained. Hooper, a professor at the University of Louisville and a prominent parentification researcher, told me. “The symptoms look similar to some extent, from cradle to grave,” Lisa M. Others report succumbing to eating disorders and substance abuse. Many, like Kiesel, experience severe anxiety, depression, and psychological distress. ![]() Researchers are increasingly finding that in addition to upending a child’s development, this role reversal can leave deep emotional scars well into adulthood. Kiesel’s story is one of what psychologists refer to as destructive parentification -a form of emotional abuse or neglect where a child becomes the caregiver to their parent or sibling. It wasn’t until she was older, she said, that she began to understand the connection between her childhood experiences and numerous chronic illnesses. By the time Kiesel was 14, she said she suffered from daily panic attacks, OCD, and depression. “I sometimes picked on my brother or was quick to shove or slap his arm because I was overwhelmed and didn’t know how to handle the shrieks of a 2-year-old when I was 8.” “It’s been a challenge for me to separate out feeling like I’m a parent to them.”Įventually, at age 9, Kiesel and her 3-year-old brother were taken in by their grandparents, but the trauma of their former living situation stayed with the children. She started breaking out in severe hives for months at a time, which she believes were triggered by the “burden of loneliness and responsibilities at that age.” Becoming responsible for an infant at such a young age came with a toll, she explained. “I felt a lot of weight on my shoulders, like my brother could die without me there,” Kiesel remembered. “I became the buffer or scapegoat of her rage to divert it my younger (much more defenseless) brother.” (Kiesel’s mother is no longer living.)Īt one point, she said she learned to take her small brother and kitten into their bathroom and barricade the door to keep them safe. “During dope sickness, she would unleash a lot of fury onto me,” Kiesel, a 38-year-old freelance writer, told me. It was a dark time made even bleaker by her mother’s violent outbursts. At school, she remembers becoming a morose and withdrawn child whose hair was often dirty and unkempt. For the majority of her early childhood, she remembers, she tended to his needs while her own mother was in the depths of heroin addiction.įrom as early as she can remember, Kiesel says she had to take care of herself -preparing her own meals, clothing herself, and keeping herself entertained. She says she was also in charge of changing his diapers and making sure he was fed every day. At home, his crib was placed directly next to her bed, so that when he cried at night, she was the one to pick him up and sing him back to sleep. Laura Kiesel was only 6 years old when she became a parent to her infant brother. This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. ![]()
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