Hey, Psyched Goers, we understand family is important, and we get it that parenthood can have its challenges. We are here to try to give you a helping hand by providing some information. But please don't take any of this personally. Moms are great. Rather, they can be great. But we know that some mother and child relationships aren't so great. Maybe you're worrying about whether you are or are going to be that good mom. Or maybe you're the child who wants to analyze the kind of relationship that you have with your mother and what impact it's had. Either or, let's take a look at five kinds of unhealthy mother child relationships to watch out for. And please note that these refer to the child as being prior to adulthood. Number one, bosom buddies. She's my best friend. I'm not a dictator. Have you heard someone seriously proclaim that their child mother relationship is one where there are BFFs rather than parent and child on the surface. It sounds good, right? The reality if that's truly what it is. Not so much. This kind of relationship is egalitarian, meaning neither party has authority over the other. This means nobody is in charge. The mother is exhibiting a permissive parenting style. That's not healthy and has negative long term repercussions. We're in sharing secrets from child to parent have shown to result in higher quality relationships and a lower likelihood of delinquency. The mother burdening the child with things like personal problems and economic strains has shown detriment to the child. What can be concluded based on these findings? Building intimacy with your child does not mean wholly dumping your personal and emotional problems onto them. A mother can still share a small dosage of her own mental life with her children, but not to the extent of distressing them. It should be just enough to help them learn and understand mom as a human. Number two, boss and subordinate. Before we talked about no one in charge, this is swinging the pendulum way to the other side where mom is constantly a micromanaging dictator. The typical scenario. The child wants to go on a trip. They ask mom and have outlined all the safety measures and all the educational, mental and recreational benefits. Sounds golden. And yet, the response is, no. I've decided what you're going to do and it's this thing that I have decided. The child reiterates the benefits, pleading their case. Yet the answer is still. No, this is my final decision. This is for you and your own good. Mother knows best. Watching Psycho and Bates Mattel, we can see this is not a precursor to healthy things. The micromanaging spawns feelings of inadequacy. And despite sharing this with mom, she's dismissive, enforces her roles and expectations as law, since only she can possibly know what's good for you. Your words and choices have zero validity. If this is constant, without any give, this leads to the child feeling insecure and helpless. They may suffer from low self-esteem and be very fearful of rejection, possibly to the detriment of any future choices. Number three. The role reversal relationship. The entire role of a mother is to raise, care for and protect the child. Because as non-adults, they do not have the fully formed mental or emotional capacity equipped to care for themselves or others. Yet, this is exactly what happens in the role reversal relationship, also known as parentification. An unfortunate but realistic scenario is when there's the divorce and the child is nowhere near adulthood, but is old enough to perform basic functions. The mother starts acting consistently reckless or responsible and maybe even violent. Since mom is no longer being mom, the needs of the child for comfort, attention and guidance must all be sacrificed so they can fulfill the logistical and emotional needs of the mother. A parentified child has to bear the responsibility of becoming a parent to mom because the latter neglects their own parental role. Zegotheraist Dr. Samuel Lopez de Victoria notes, there are two types of parentification. Emotional and instrumental. Let's start with emotional. This is the most destructive type of parentification. The child is forced to meet the emotional and psychological needs of the parent. The mother doesn't get these needs fulfilled from her partner, so she forces this confident a role on the child. Within instrumental, the child is expected to be a tool. The child is forced to be an adult caregiver by taking over the physical responsibilities of the parent to near exclusion of being able to be a kid. An example is having to constantly cook and raise their siblings since their parent is not doing it. The fallout is that the grown-up, parentified child may experience difficulty building a healthy connection with their friends, spouse or their own children. Number 4. The emotionally absent mother. So how are things with your mom? Is she distant, preoccupied, or only consistent in her inconsistency regarding your emotional needs? You just might have an emotionally absent mother. UK psychologist Dr. Becky Spellman notes that a mother can intuit their child's emotions and respond appropriately to suit them if they're uneasy, like a warm hug, for example. When a mother is emotionally absent, she lacks the empathy to meet the child's emotional needs. Cognitive development starts at around age 5, and it's around this time the child might notice the mother ignores them, despite their efforts to engage with her. The message they get is that engaging is useless, so they start to suppress their emotions, which can become a precursor to mental health issues such as eating disorders and other types of addictions. Further down the road in adulthood, it can also impact intimate relationships where they choose partners who are just as absent as the parent was. They may also become closed off because of the heightened fear of rejection they experienced as children. Number 5. The mom and her trophy child. Sometimes a mother may have unrealized dreams or wishes, so she uses her child as a surrogate to do what she couldn't. Her child becomes an extension of herself, known as narcissistic appendage. The child is no longer an individual unto themselves, but an object to be shined up and shown off to others to engender envy, status, and symbolize success. It's all about what the mother wants for herself. The child soon learns to discard their authentic self in order to conform to what the mother wants them to do. The relationship built between a mother and child is complex, fluid, and usually affected by the environment, the emotional and psychological state of the mother, personalities, and the mother's own upbringing. The parent phrase a quote by BJ Neblet, who we are is made up of our experiences and responses to all we have encountered. As life does not stand still, those experiences continue to ripple through our lives and affect us both good and bad. A healthy mother and child dynamic can be achieved if the mother is self-aware and self-reflective. This allows the mother to behave authentically with their aspirations, which in turn leads to the positive growth of the child. Information from this video has been based on certified research and studies, details of which have been shortened for the sake of brevity. If you would like a full list of references, feel free to write to us and ask. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to like it and hit the subscribe button for more content. Thanks so much for watching, and we'll see you again soon.