Reflections on Being a Thrown Away Golden Child

Posted on by Astrid

I’ve been struggling with memories lately, as well as with the role I played in my family. I was for the most part the golden child. For those not aware of what this means, this is the child in a family in which one or both parents are narcissists or otherwise emotionally immature, who ends up being the parents’ favorite.

My parents often half-jokingly (though it wasn’t funny) said that my younger sister was oh so nicely average. More like invisible, I’d say.

I, on the other hand, was exceptional in both positive and negative ways. I was a genius when doing calendar calculation, which for your information is a common savant skill in people with developmental disabilities. By contrast, I was threatened with being thrown away into institutional care and called all kinds of insults for people with mental illness when I was acting less than excellent. I at one point thought of printing out the table of contents for the DSM so that my parents at least knew the correct terms for what they were calling me.

Then, when I was admitted to the psychiatric hospital in 2007, my parents more or less actually threw me away. No, that’s not even entirely true: they threatened to abandon me when I announced that I was taking a second gap year in order to work on independence skills in 2006 and only came back into my life after the independence training home promised to prepare me for university and independent living. Which they couldn’t.

I struggle with both the fact that I was thrown away and the fact that I was my parents’ favorite before that. After all, it adds an extra layer of shame to my life: the layer of “if only…”. If only I hadn’t taken that second gap year… If only I hadn’t consented to being admitted to the psychiatric hospital… If only I hadn’t applied for long-term care… would I still be the hero… in my parents’ fantasy tale? In other words, isn’t it my choice to have fallen off my parents’ pedestal?

I don’t know how I feel about the idea that it might’ve somehow been my choice to be thrown away. On the one hand, I feel it makes me responsible for not having a “normal” relationship with my parents. On the other hand though, I know how many golden children turn out and that’s not pretty. Many end up repeating their parents’ toxic patterns with partners or children.

I’m forever grateful for being childfree for this reason (and others), as just today I had a memory of shoving my and my wife’s then cat Barry out of the bed. I feel forever guilty about this and the very thought of doing this to a child, makes me sick.

Remembering this and other things makes me realize I’m glad I didn’t stay in the golden child role. If I had, I might as well have ended up in prison… or should have.

Dysfunctional Families: Characteristics Seen in Adult Children #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today’s topic choice was hard once again, so I eventually decided on one related to yesterday’s topic of codependency. Today, I am going to describe the characteristics of adult children of dysfunctional families.

First, what is a dysfunctional family? It could refer to a family in which one or both parents are alcoholics or addicts. This was how originally ACoA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) was started, but later “and dysfunctional families” was added. Dysfunctional families are, in this sense, also families in which one or both parents are abusive or neglectful.

What effects does growing up in a dysfunctional family have on adult children? Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families has a laundry list of characteristics of adults who grew up in dysfunctional households. This list includes being an approval-seeker, being frightened by angry people and frightened of personal criticism, having low self-esteem and stuffing or denying your feelings.

Most of these characteristics are what Lindsay C. Gibson, author of Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, calls “internalizing” traits. However, depending on your role in a dysfunctional family, you could also end up externalizing your trauma. By this I mean that you end up being toxic or abusive yourself. This particularly happens to adult children who were the “golden child” or “hero” in an abusive family. A “golden child” is a child who is praised excessively and used to uphold the family’s “perfect” image. These children are often the parents’ “favorite” and may get spoiled. As Pete Walker, author of Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, says, however, being spoiled excessively is traumatic in its own right.

I myself exhibit both internalizing and externalizing traits of being an adult child. I could, for instance, relate to at least half the items on the “laundry list”, but also can be emotionally volatile and demanding. I was, also, usually treated as the family’s “golden child”. This sometimes makes me feel sad, but I try to focus on self-awareness and healing instead.

Was I Sometimes Raised as a Golden Child?

Posted on by Astrid

I have been feeling really off lately. I keep having flashbacks. I also keep having what I’d describe as flashforwards, where I imagine my parents’ reaction to the different possible outcomes of the long-term care situation. These then lead to more flashbacks. One particular flashback I keep having is to a phone conversation I had with my mother when I’d just been admitted to the mental hospital in 2007, or maybe it was shortly before then. She yelled at me “You can’t even wipe your butt without your support worker there”. While this was and still is exaggerated, I do have issues with my personal hygiene, including sometimes with toileting.

I have noticed that there’s a lot of shame attached to my needs. Like, there is this constant nagging voice in my mind saying that I really do manipulate everyone into giving me more care. After all, am I not getting by? This part of me is telling me to erase everyone from my life and just go live on my own, since even if I lived with my husband and no support, there was still my husband to be manipulated.

I was discussing all this with my nurse practitioner last Thursday. He said even if I do manipulate people (and I no doubt do, as does everyone else), these people also let themselves be manipulated. Like, if they have an attitude like they’d rather help me with every little thing than endure my frustration, it’s no wonder I become dependent.

There was this show on Dutch television last Sunday about a second grade class. I didn’t see it, but a term used in it that was repeated often throughout the week, was “curling mother”. I have no idea whether that’s the correct English term, but it refers to a parent who helps their child with everything until they’re eighteen and then magically expects them to have learned independence and leave the nest. My nurse practitioner was reminded of this when I described my parents. It feels odd, because even though yes my parents did help me with every little thing, this expectation that I move out at eighteen was made very explicit from an early age on. It wasn’t like my parents were hoovering over me not realizing that they’d not be there for me forever. In fact, I’m pretty sure they couldn’t wait for me to move out. It just ugh, feels so off. Like I was spoiled somehow because my parents did everything for me.

At this point, I remember a discussion in an inner child healing group in which the original poster commented on some author or speaker saying that the golden child of narcissistic parents suffers a lot. This person was confused, because the golden child is the child favorited by the narcissistic parent, the child who doesn’t get abused (or so it seems). Some people said that the golden child suffers a lot because, well, they are only the narcissist’s favorite as long as they live up to their perfect standards.

I was raised in a household where the golden child/scapegoat roles reversed repeatedly. For those not aware, the scapegoat is the main target of obvious abuse in a narcissistic family. As such, I can relate to a lot of golden child attributes. Like, I was often praised excessively, bragged about and let off the hook. Then again, I was, and this was always very clear, expected to livve up to my parents’ perfect-image plan for me. Once I stopped doing this, I was placed in a clearer scapegoat role.

It still feels off to think of myself as having been spoiled. I know Pete Walker says spoiling is a severe kind of trauma too. However, in society, it is often treated like the spoiled child is to blame for being spoiled. And they definitely aren’t. Only as adults can they choose to undo the effects of this trauma, but they have to admit it first. I have to accept this.