Parenting

Did You Grow Up with Emotionally Immature Parents?

When caregivers are selfish, distant, and dismissive, their children carry anxiety and low self-worth into adulthood. Begin your healing journey here.

Amy Marlow-Macoy, LPC
By Amy Marlow-MaCoy, LPC Updated on February 11, 2026
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Growing up, did you feel that your parents’ needs came before your own, or that you could never please them? Were they dismissive of your ADHD-related struggles because it was easier to believe your symptoms weren’t real than it was to seek help? Did your parents try to control you, discourage your independence, or make you feel that you had to care for them?

Emotionally immature parents exert a toxic force that can leave lingering scars. Their children often carry anxiety and low self-esteem into adulthood, leading to unhealthy relationships and destructive behavioral patterns. Not surprisingly, emotional immaturity is a leading cause of parent-adult child estrangement, according to a Cornell University survey.1

Were My Parents Self-Absorbed?

Traits commonly exhibited by emotionally immature caregivers:

  • Egocentricity: Self-absorption and lacking self-awareness; a child’s emotional needs are sidelined, even if material needs are met.
  • Mental rigidity: Little respect for differences and defensiveness when challenged.
  • Low stress tolerance: Difficulty coping when things don’t go their way.
  • Inconsistency and unpredictability: Shifting rules and expectations; affection feels conditional.
  • Intense but shallow emotions: Quick mood changes, rarely with nuance.

Tactics of Emotionally Immature Parents

  • Parentification: Expecting children to take on unreasonable, inappropriate adult responsibilities, like mediating parents’ arguments or acting as their therapist.
  • Gaslighting: Questioning a child’s memory, judgment, or sense of reality.
  • Moving the goal posts: Shifting and changing expectations without rewarding progress.
  • Guilt-tripping: Making a child feel bad for their choices, becoming resentful or playing the victim if confronted.
  • Rug-sweeping: Ending arguments without resolution or acknowledgement of the issue.
  • Favoritism: Treating one sibling as the “golden child,” while making the others feel invisible.
  • Intrusiveness: Lacking boundaries and feeling entitled to a child’s personal life.
  • Straw man arguments: Misrepresenting or distorting a child’s views, often putting them on the defensive.
  • Blame game: Rarely accepting accountability.
  • Strings attached: Giving gifts only with conditions that are later held against the child.
  • Questioning worth: Making a child feel they must constantly prove their worth.

Take the Test: Were You Raised by Emotionally Immature People?

Emotional Immaturity vs. Narcissism

Emotional immaturity spans a range of problematic behaviors. Narcissism fits under the umbrella, but with key differences:

  • Image is paramount to narcissistic parents; children become a source of “narcissistic supply” to bolster a parent’s worth.
  • Deviation from an emotionally immature caregiver’s wishes may get you the cold shoulder; narcissistic parents often retaliate more severely (e.g., cutting you off from other family members).
  • Change may be possible for emotionally immature individuals with insight and effort; change is nearly impossible for narcissistic individuals given their highly defensive nature.

What Causes Emotional Immaturity?

Authoritarian Parenting

Many emotionally immature people were raised by authoritarian parents who prioritized obedience over social-emotional development. In families with a history of trauma, survival and “mental toughness” typically trump emotional well-being. Cultural norms also shape parenting (e.g., “children should be seen and not heard”).

Uncomfortable Truths: The ADHD Connection

ADHD is highly heritable. If you have ADHD, it’s likely that one or both of your parents — who likely grew up at a time when neurodivergence was rarely acknowledged and highly stigmatized — also have it, regardless of whether they acknowledge it.

Parenting with unrecognized ADHD stretches a person’s limits. Without support or self-awareness, it’s difficult to meet the demands of raising a child, especially if the child is also neurodivergent. The link may explain why childhood emotional abuse is commonly reported by individuals with ADHD.1 What’s more, abuse can worsen ADHD symptoms1, creating a vicious cycle.

Read: Will I Break My Child in the Same Places I Was Broken?

The Fallout from Toxic Parenting

Anxiety and Poor Self-Image

Children of emotionally immature parents often develop perfectionism, chronic guilt and shame, depression, and harsh self-criticism.

Hyper-Independence

Fear of burdening others leads to self-denial, neglecting one’s own needs (even physical), and avoiding asking for help.

Relationship Issues

Unaddressed patterns may repeat across adult relationships. While estrangement is a possibility, so is enmeshment (unhealthy interdependence). People-pleasing and trust issues are common.

Trauma

Chronic emotional instability and insecurity may lead to complex post-traumatic stress disorder and dissociation – disconnecting from one’s thoughts, feelings, or the present. It can look a lot like daydreaming or distraction rooted in ADHD.

The Road to Recovery

Regardless of your relationship with your parents now, take these steps to begin your healing journey.

1. Shift Self-Talk

Swap harsh inner narratives, which only reinforce shame, for neutral or compassionate ones:

  • Critical:“I’m so stupid. I fell for it again.”
  • Neutral: “I have a hard time recognizing this pattern.”
  • Kind: “I’m learning to spot these signs so that I can react differently.”

2. Ask for What You Need

Express your feelings, ask for help, and state boundaries, even if it feels uncomfortable for others.

3. Practice Radical Acceptance

Consider the possibility that your parents’ harmful behaviors were shaped by self-preservation and their own unhealed wounds, not an innate desire to hurt you. Whatever the reason, you can accept who they are without approving of them. Acceptance simply acknowledges reality; if doesn’t give them a pass.

4. Heal for Yourself

You may want your parents to join you in forging a healthier relationship, but you cannot force them to do so. Your healing is for you only.

It takes enormous effort to recognize and change problematic behaviors you may have inherited or developed in response to toxic parenting. Forgive yourself, focus on what’s in your control, and seek support from a therapist who can help you understand how your upbringing may have impacted your wellbeing and how best to cope.

Should You Cut Ties?

Some toxic relationships do improve when adult children and their parents commit to working on healthier behaviors and boundaries. But some relationships are so unhealthy that the only ways to preserve an adult child’s wellbeing is to sever all ties.

How do you know if that’s the case for you?

Some relationships function best with minimal contact – you may see the other person occasionally, have limited phone or email contact, and speak only about superficial topics with a low emotional charge. This may be a good compromise if you feel that cutting ties might result in losing contact with a younger sibling or a vulnerable elder close to the toxic adult. The key is to maintain your boundaries without incurring new trauma.

In the other cases, the person’s behavior is so relentlessly abusive, manipulative, or traumatizing that continued contact is not healthy. If an emotionally immature parent manipulates or tries to coerce your children, if they repeatedly violate your boundaries without showing remorse or any effort to change, or if their behaviors escalate, it may be best to have no contact. A trauma-informed therapist can help you sort through your feelings about, and the possible consequences of, this decision.

Ending Toxic Patterns

If you are the adult child of emotionally immature parents, you can break the cycle of abuse and trauma with your own children – but first you must recognize the harmful behaviors you’ve learned and might be mirroring, such as:

  • Reacting with anger when a loved one doesn’t do as you wish
  • Opening your mouth and hearing your abusive parents’ words come out
  • Getting into power struggles
  • Being harsh or rigid, then feeling shame

Begin to break these patterns by following these steps:

  • Read and educate yourself on what is realistic. Emotionally immature parents often expect developmentally inappropriate behavior from their kids.
  • Get in tune with your inner world. Practice noticing and identifying your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors throughout the day to develop greater self-awareness.
  • Learn to respond rather than react. Reactions stem from impulse or instinct. Responses are chosen with conscious intention.
  • Apologize and take responsibility for yourself. Mistakes are human, but the way we respond to our mistakes can teach our children healthy ways to do the same.
  • Practice self-compassion when you struggle.

Amy Marlow-MaCoy is a licensed professional counselor and founder of The Courageous Heart Institute.

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View Article Sources

1 Cornell Family Estrangement and Reconciliation Project. https://www.familyreconciliation.org/faqs

2 Capusan, A. J., Kuja-Halkola, R., Bendtsen, P., Viding, E., McCrory, E., Marteinsdottir, I., & Larsson, H. (2016). Childhood maltreatment and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder symptoms in adults: a large twin study. Psychological Medicine, 46(12), 2637–2646. doi:10.1017/S0033291716001021

3 Brown, N. M., Brown, S. N., Briggs, R. D., Germán, M., Belamarich, P. F., & Oyeku, S. O. (2017). Associations Between Adverse Childhood Experiences and ADHD Diagnosis and Severity. Academic pediatrics, 17(4), 349–355. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acap.2016.08.013