Kenneth Glad
A tense exchange at home can reveal more than a bad mood. A new book argues that what happens after a clash may shape a child as much as the clash itself.
A child starts talking while dinner is burning, emails are waiting or a parent’s patience is already thin. The answer comes out cold or sharp.
In an interview with The Guardian’s Emine Saner, psychologist and author Lindsay C Gibson says these ordinary moments can leave a mark, especially when adults never return to them.
Her earlier book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, became widely discussed during the pandemic. Her latest, How to Raise an Emotionally Mature Child, was out on May 21.
Seeing the child
The book is aimed at parents who recognise habits from their own upbringing and want to stop passing them on.
For Gibson, the starting point is remembering that a child can feel embarrassment, rejection and shame even when they lack the words to explain it.
“They are sensitive, sentient; They feel things just as acutely as an adult does,” she told The Guardian.
The answer, Gibson argues, is not constant patience or flawless behaviour. It is the willingness to go back after a mistake.
A parent who snaps can still say later that the reaction was unfair. That matters because a child may otherwise decide the problem was not the adult’s stress, but something wrong with them.
Gibson admitted to having apologised to her own son before he left for university, saying she had sometimes been too hard on him.
Rules without force
The approach does not mean letting children do whatever they want. Boundaries still matter.
The difference is in how a parent delivers them. A teenager may roll their eyes at an explanation, but a calm reasoned “no” can teach more than shouting or humiliation.
“If your child can come back and apologise, they are well on the way toward emotional maturity,” Gibson said.
Gibson’s framework is not a clinical diagnosis. The Guardian notes that critics say the idea can be too broad and may tempt readers to label ordinary flaws as pathology.
Even with that caution, the idea has struck a chord with adults trying to raise children differently from how they were raised.
Her larger message is that emotional growth is still possible. Sometimes it begins with noticing a child’s face after a harsh word, then choosing to go back.
Source: The Guardian, Lindsay C. Gibson – Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
