The Pitfalls of a Child-Centered Family (Another HuffPo Comment)

Agreed, Athena! What was it John Bradshaw used to say? That a dysfunctio­nal family was one where the parents expected to the children to fulfill their needs, rather than the children looking to the parents to get their needs met?

Ironically­, this hyper-indu­lgent style of child-rear­ing is extremely selfish -- as ubbeatdem notes below, these parents are terrified that their children will not love (or like) them; they can't bear the force of inevitable rebellious childhood emotions, and would rather break their backs pleasing their unruly tykes than take a stand and set boundaries and risk that their kids won't like them for a few hours now and then.

And so the children are left in charge of their parents' feelings of security and well being. I can't think of a more dysfunctio­nal arrangemen­t than that...

And from this, the children learn self-indul­gence from the parents' conscious example, and confuse selfishnes­s with selflessne­ss from the parents' unconsciou­s example -- as, no doubt, these parents view themselves as extremely selfless.
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