How to become emotionally mature at any age: We often don't realise the hurt we're causing'

A self-help book titled Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents gained renewed attention during 2020 as more people reflected on childhood experiences. It resonated with readers who described parents with uncontrolled emotional outbursts, self-absorption, unavailability, or low empathy. The book frames emotionally immature parents as emotionally stuck at an early developmental stage, with children eventually noticing the mismatch. A newer guide, How to Raise an Emotionally Mature Child, offers practical guidance for parents who want to prevent their children from repeating similar experiences. It emphasizes self-awareness, noticing emotionally immature patterns, and being bothered by them. A central starting point is treating children as real inside—sensitive, sentient, and capable of feeling humiliation and embarrassment like adults.

"Around the time of the pandemic, a self-help book with a somewhat unglamorous but functional title Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents took off on social media. It had been published five years earlier, but in 2020, when more people had time to reflect on life, it was rediscovered, its success fuelled by readers who recognised their own childhood in its pages and their experience with parents who had uncontrolled emotional outbursts, or were self-absorbed, unavailable or lacking empathy."

"In the view of its author, Lindsay C Gibson, these were parents whose own emotional developmental stage was closer to that of, say, a four- or five-year-old. Their own children had overtaken them, and were now recognising it. Gibson's latest book, How to Raise an Emotionally Mature Child, is a guide for those of us who don't want our children to experience the same kind of childhood we did."

"Perhaps you've realised the self-awareness is key that you're lacking enough maturity of your own, and feel clueless about what you should be doing. If you have an emotionally immature parent, it doesn't mean that you're doomed, says Gibson, via video call from her home in coastal Virginia. However, you've probably learned emotionally immature attitudes and behaviours that may pop out at times. The difference is that if you have adequate emotional maturity, you're going to notice it and it's going to bother you."

"Perhaps the most important attitude parents could start with, says Gibson, is the idea that your child is real inside. It will probably be obvious to other parents, but from my own experience of often viewing my children as objects to be fed, clothed and ferried around, this was a sharp reminder. They are sensitive, sentient; they feel things just as acutely as an adult does, she says. We may treat our children in ways we wouldn't dream of treating a cherished friend."

Read at www.theguardian.com