Some parents, deemed harmful or unbalanced by specialists, struggle to fulfill their protective role and favor their own needs. How to recognize a toxic, egocentric and manipulative parent? Answers with the child psychiatrist Stéphane Clerget.
Not all parents are benevolence towards their children. Some, voluntarily or not, adopt harmful behaviors that can deeply impact the emotional development of their offspring. A toxic parent is the very example, it is an unbalanced adult, centered on himself, who exercises a form of mistreatment and manipulation, sometimes without being fully aware of it, explains Dr Stéphane Clerget, child psychiatrist and author of Psychic vampires (Pocket book). In general, there are revealing signs. Dr Clerget distinguishes several types of toxic parents:
1 – Egocentric parents
“”Toxic parents generate disorders in their child because they consider their own well -being before that of their child “, Specifies the French child psychiatrist.
2 – Parents who want to be drowned by their child
“”They are also those who ask their children to take care of them as if they were their own parents. They seek only their own benefit in the relationship with the child and in doing so, give the child a role that he does not have to have “He says.
3 – Parents who do not control their emotions
We also recognize dysfunctional parents to the fact that they do not manage, or do not wish, contain their emotions, a behavior which then becomes constant. “”The role of a parent is that of bumper and therefore to protect the child from negative emotions of the environment, but also of his own “, Specifies the specialist.
4 – Parents who make preferences between their own children
Another sign, parents who display a very clear preference for some of their children. “” You can prefer a child while giving enough to the other. If you become detestable with the other, it becomes mistreatment “, Underlines Dr. Clerget.
5 – Parents who project their dreams on their children
Parents who use their child as a storage can also express a form of toxic parenting. “”They are manipulative because they use children in their profits. Some make them make YouTube videos or castings because they dreamed of a certain form of glory “, comments the expert.
Have toxic parents themselves had toxic parents?
Sometimes some harmful parents reproduce the patterns of their own past, but they may also have been overloaded with expectations and too emotionally involved by their own parents. “”A too spoiled child who becomes a parent will not necessarily want to take care of his children and will remain an extremely narcissistic parent who first takes care of him As has always been the case. It may be the worst toxic parents“Confirms our interlocutor.
Toxic parenting has short consequences, but also long -term on children. “”The problem is not to have had benevolent parents. This leaves hollow traces in everything that these children who have become adults did not have and who was necessary for their good development when they were younger. “
What if you have a toxic parent?
Dr. Stéphane Clerget recommends putting distance and if necessary to cut the bridges with his parent, announcing by oral in writing. “I meet a lot of people who have had toxic parents and who have a lot of trouble cutting the bridges. They always continue to be vampiris and to be waiting for them to become good parents. Unfortunately, that happens practically”, he says. The specialist also advises to find parents of hearts. “”This is often the case with parents-in-law who help more easily take distance from toxic parents “he underlines.