Roles Children Play within Dysfunctional Family

The common definition of the family that we come across is “Family is the fundamental social group consisting of two or more persons related by birth, marriage or adoption. They live under one roof.”  With family comes the family dynamic, structure, values as well. Therefore, the family as the system consists of members in interdependent relationship and works in an interactions with each other, exhibiting the coherent behaviors, consisting of the own values and regulations.

 

Within the family, the significant people in the life of children are the parents. Parent’s attitude towards children and parenthood influences their own role as parents.  How we as parents, as teachers, as guardians deal with our own life stress has an influence upon the children around us. Being responsible for children is not merely limited to serving food, buying necessaries, enrolling in vacation programs, helping with homework, celebrating birthdays and appreciating them when and while being nice.

 

As the children grown up they could make sense of how the parents feel about them. They share the family values and perspective in viewing the world around them as well. Which also influence the children’s own feeling and attitude towards their family and themselves.  Many children are brought up in the emotionally barren environment.  Family where there is  constant conflict on small to big issues, negligence of parenting often, lacking support and care,  the parents may not be able to be present emotionally in raising the children.

 

In such dysfunctional families, most of the times the emotional and the physical need of the children are not taken care of as the parents are emotionally absent. In other situation where one of the parents has untreated mentally illness or workaholic parents, addiction problem, definitely such parent could not be available for children. On other hand,  when other parent is occupied in family and relations problem spend most of their time worrying about and managing their own problem. They might not be available as parents to their children as well.

 

When this is part of almost day to day life, consequently children grow up thinking that it’s the way it is and adjust self into such families in various roles over period of time.  The five basic roles that children might adapt to and role they play within such families and ways of appropriately supporting them are as follows: 

 

Role	Observed as (what we could see from outside)	Self-esteem issues (how they feel inside)	In general	To make a difference, we could ( as guardian / as teacher)
Scape goat “problem child”	Angry Rebellious Rude Impulsive Wild Not understanding Difficult to deal with and so on	Hurt Rejected Guilty Loser Misunderstood Hopeless Blamed	They show negative behaviors as the result of how they feel within the family. Such child pulls the attention from the family problem to themselves, and it’s easy for all to blame it on him/her. They hurt themselves, often break rules, for which they receive negative feedback and sometimes punishments as well.	Acknowledging when being responsible Showing empathy Discussing and sharing the consequence of their action and available choices Motivating them to be accountable for their act Motivating them to direct their bold nature to life goal Helping them to be aware of positive self-expression Unconditional support and care
Lost child “Dreamer”	Quite Creative Indivisible Artistic Scared Agreeable Indecisive Soft hearted Withdrawing, avoiding and so on	Isolated Alone Disrespected Fearful Powerless Confused Unwanted Fragile	Such child is generally lost in their own work and parent feel relief that at least they don’t have to worry about him/her. Inside they feel alone and could not express themself. They find it hard to trust others. They strive to go unnoticed during the family conflict and problem.	Valuing their presence Motivating them to express themselves Listening Pointing out and encouraging  them to identify their potential and talent Helping them to extend their social support system Involving them in team work, peer support Giving the positive attention Helping them to acknowledge how they could benefit from social support
Care taker	Caring Sensitive Accompanying Helpful Sacrificing	Low self-esteem Guilty Anger Seeking for approval of others Need to be feel needed by others Difficulty taking a stand	Such child generally act more as guardian toward other, as they are more focused on making other feel good. They are very sensitive and very caring towards others and work hard to be nice to others	Help them to identify their own  needs and desires Empathizing the need to focus on self-growth Involving them in fun activities  Show empathy As they are sensitive towards others, help them to be sensitive towards their own thoughts and feelings as well Validating their sense of self-worth, separating it from worth of  taking care of others
Mascot child “ Funny”	Break tension Lighten mood Funny Carefree Attention seeking Charming Light hearted Dramatic Lovable Immature Manipulative	Confused Ashamed Left out Helpless Dependent Angry Guilty Lonely Insecure	Help family to avoid issues with his/her funny behaviors. Mostly, they are not taken seriously. Make funny gesture and makes irrelevant jokes.  Let other tell them what to do and within them the pain starts to pile up	To give appropriate feedback upon their behavior as needed Listening Counting their opinion, thoughts, ideas Involving them and giving them responsibility  and holding them accountable Encouraging proper sense of humor Help them to reflection upon their feeling and thoughts
Hero child “ Perfect child”	Responsible Volunteering Hardworking Energetic Tactful Creative Always follow through Good student and so on	Need to take in charge Difficulty having fun Sense of self-worth attached to value of getting things done, praise and prizes they receive In adequate Terrified of failure Sad Lonely	Such child work to succeed the family, they have mindset that they need to be responsible for everybody and everything. And the family also feels good that they have raised the good child. They like the extra attention. Hero child is mostly oriented towards success and achievement and generally driven by the thought of being on the top	Giving them the attention even when they are not achieving Help them to understand themselves with their own abilities, coping style, limitations and so on. Help them to understand their sense of self-worth attach to  them as individual and their own qualities rather limiting it to their success and achievements Helping them to understand the need to say “no” when needed Deriving understanding that its ok to make mistakes but it important what one  learns from it Skill to handle stress

 

Children within such family may play one role at a time or only one role. The roles child play within the dysfunctional family hides the actual person behind. Therefore, the people need to analyze their own behavior, feelings to see the kind of the role they have been playing.  It is no that every child in such families do paly certain roles and it progress into their future as well. They may learn to be different and could achieve what they want in life as unique individuals.

 

Every individual have their own coping mechanism and as they grow up they learn from environment and others. Thus they could modify and/or add to the ways of dealing with challenges and problems of life. But when functioning in any of these roles limits the person from self-growth and constraint one from self it is wise to review the role they have been playing.

 

How these role have been affecting our life as adult could be generally seen in our society at large, within our neighborhood and of course our family and us as well. For instance, the sister in the role of the care taker does what she can to give brighter future for her brother and sister. She happily holds on to household responsibility, some may even compromise their studies and career.  So others could pursuit their goal. Time passes by, other carry on with their life and yes, she remains care taker.

 

Generally in groups we come across people who try very hard to be funny to get involved. Their jokes and comments are often irrelevant and create awkward situations. Some are very good at being the leader, taking the charge and they perform well. It is practical in life setting that everywhere we cannot take the lead. Such people may not know what to do and how to act as follower.

 

Emotional problem do exist at different stages of family life.  In a balanced family there is exchange of emotions and thoughts, understanding of members as individual and validate the feels and emotions of the person.  Such families generally cope better with the stress. Thus, the information here is to bring about awareness and motivate to make changes upon need but not for diagnosing purpose. Please feel free to ask questions, comment and drop your valuable feedbacks.

 

Sabita Shrestha

Psychosocial Counsellor