Children have capacities for deep understanding that one might consider surprising if one knew their extent. More than others still, gifted children accept this role without even thinking of refusing it: it is a mission, it does not occur to them to refuse a mission when it is entrusted by the adults to whom we owe it. life.
These are not necessarily problematic families, whose paths are punctuated by dramas that must be overcome at the cost of hard sacrifices or impossible bereavements, but of normal-looking, close-knit family where parents love and protect their children. However weaknessesof the injuries so old that their trace does not make them considered as wounds, but only as an event that occurred in a distant, almost forgotten past, or family stories drowned in the mists of memories that fade, suddenly appear, by an association escaping to reason, and transform the behavior of these adults who then seem, for a time, unrecognizable. Spontaneously, the children immediately think that they have a role to play, they are unable to remain helpless in the face of these disturbing reactions. They must help their parents to regain their composure since these parents would suddenly seem deprived of common sense and moderation. They have fallen into a world foreign to children who have no choice but to bring them back to the reality of everyday life from which they have suddenly moved away. Sometimes words fail them, attempts to get them out of their slump would be ridiculous. They cannot use the same recourses as their parents when they want to console the child’s great grief. The only presence then remains, to make it understood that they are there, very close, that they are accompanying their parent who has plunged into a distress that nothing justifies, if not an innocuous event, banal in appearance, but it will have brought out a very buried problem.
The role of the eldest who “will know what to do”
A banal quarrel between the couple, for a reason so futile that it is quickly forgotten, can degenerate into a hurricane of cries and pains, and then only one remains, annihilated, while the other has left to vent his anger. Child spectators turn to the eldest, who will know what to do, and this eldest must draw on unknown resources within himself to help, at the same time, his parent in pain and his worried younger siblings. If he is alone, he trusts his instincts, tries to say a few words without being sure of being heard and tries to give an even stronger intensity to his presence to convey a little comfort. It takes a long time for children, even the most gifted, to understand that this is the way their parents operate, which come out of these battered storms, of course, but the traces they could keep seem to be quickly forgotten, until the next burst. Children need much longer to calm down. Without waiting for the next crisis, they look for the best way to react, they don’t like being caught off guard, especially since the notion of an imperative mission to be fulfilled remains present, but no one gives them any indication. It is even astonishing that adults who are most often sensible, organized and even capable of humor suddenly turn into individuals devoid of reason, driven by emotions so violent that they spiral out of control. They are no longer parents, they are no longer even adults, they play a scene that is beyond them without worrying about the spectators and without being surprised that the latter, still so young, give them the comfort they then need.
The extraordinary ability to adapt
The turmoil passed, they behave again as responsible and loving parents, concerned with education and the application of the precepts that they want to instill in their children to enable them to become adults who are also responsible, autonomous and enterprising. They seem to forget the times when they changed roles, implicitly asking their children to assume another one too, as if it were an ordinary situation. Gifted children show an amazing ability to adapt to a situation that bears no resemblance to those expected of caring parents. It is true that, more often than not, they have witnessed these tornadoes very early on, so they are not as surprised by them as an impartial observer might imagine. This is also why they think in the depths of themselves that they have a role to play, which would perhaps justify their coming into the world. During the lulls, when family life is ordinary and almost routine, their parents tell them that they are the best gift that has been given to them during their entire existence. They cajole them, spoil them, take into consideration their desires to please them wisely, they seek their happiness and their well-being. They seem to forget the show they gave, as if it were only about their life as a couple, which would therefore not directly concern their children, moreover they are not the same. They are no longer those adults who work and know how to make decisions, appreciated by those around them. They are completely immersed in complex stories that the presence of the other revives, without it being very clear for them.
A surprising maturity in the child
In such a context, children acquire a surprising maturity early on, someone had to remain lucid and pragmatic, their gifts are used with remarkable efficiency, except that they still do not manage to modify the behavior of their parents, who are too deep in their history. Some behave shrewdly on the pretext of a vague uneasiness so that their parents accompany them to a psychologist, who will help them in their difficult task and will try to lighten it once they have grasped the non-explicit message launched by a child when he really feels helpless and he calls for help. These children do not take this difficult situation as an excuse for adopting so-called “deviant” behavior. It’s already complicated enough they apply, on the contrary, to build themselves with rigor and to prepare their future, their gifts facilitate their studies and they have acquired enough strength of character to know how to succeed, without relying solely on their intellectual ease. Although always aware of the frequent support provided to their parents, they do not want to dedicate their existence to them. They want to build a peaceful, calm and cheerful life, which they will know how to create and appreciate. It happens that, when they have left, their parents divorce, saying that they were waiting for the departure of their child, without specifying, because they do not know it themselves, that this departure has made the situation much more difficult for them to endure without the calming and understanding presence of their child.