Childhood should be a time of self-discovery. Ideally, our journey toward adulthood is shaped by the guidance of our parents or caregivers, while simultaneously developing our own unique personalities.But what happens when parents place undue responsibilities on children without their consent, forcing them to take on more adult-like roles? The result is parentification.“Parentification is when the relationship dynamics within a family system require a child to take on the role of parent, whether that means parenting themselves, parenting a parent or parenting a sibling,” licensed marriage and family therapist Saba Harouni Lurie, the owner and founder of Take Root Therapy, told HuffPost.Such a drastic shift in roles tends to occur “when a parent has an unmet need,” licensed marriage and family therapist Cristina Pasini Billingsley explained to HuffPost. Whether it’s emotional support, practical help or someone to help regulate the family system, parentification happens “when the child steps in to fill that gap.”Parentification can be present in families dealing with addiction, mental illness, divorce, financial stress, single parenting or “simply [in] a parent who never developed the capacity to self-regulate or seek support from other adults,” said Pasini Billingsley. “The child adapts to what the family needs to preserve connection and stability, even if it costs them their own childhood development.”What does parentification look like?To be clear, children can still — and should! — learn how to be a responsible family member. Helping out with age-appropriate chores is a healthy part of growing up. What makes parentification different, explained Harouni Lurie, “is that the child is taking on more than they developmentally should, often at a cost to their own growth, and they’re not necessarily receiving the care and attention they need in return.”d3sign via Getty Images“Being parentified is such a weird form of abuse because part of you feels chosen,” Walilko said. “You’re the person people come to with problems. You’re the one people think will fix everything. But you’re also the person no one looks out for.”Parentification can include physical caretaking, like preparing food or cleaning the home, and/or emotional caretaking, “where the child is responsible for managing another family member’s feelings,” Harouni Lurie said.Emotional caretaking is all too familiar to Vanessa Walilko, a public relations professional from Evanston, Illinois.“I was expected to be a friend and sounding board for my mother, my aunt and my grandmother,” Walilko told HuffPost. “They tasked me with their emotional regulation, and I learned early that I needed to be perfect to help keep the peace.” While she was never tasked with any household chores, Walilko believes that was by design, as a way to keep her “emotionally enmeshed” in her family members’ needs.So when she began setting boundaries as a young adult, Walilko’s family members took her decisions as a personal slight: All of a sudden, Walilko was “spoiled and ungrateful” for not prioritizing her family’s emotional demands.“I know that all of the things that they did for me were actually them loading me with debt that they expected to be paid back in perpetuity in the form of emotional caretaking,” Walilko said.What is parentification debt?This emotional blackmail wasn’t the only form of debt Walilko was saddled with. Parentified children also experience something called “parentification debt”: “It’s the emotional and developmental cost that accumulates when a child spends years in a caretaking or adult role instead of being allowed to just be a child,” explained Pasini Billingsley.This kind of deficit includes the chance to be a child, to play, to not have significant responsibilities and, most importantly, the opportunity to be tended to and cared for by an adult.Parentification debt can then manifest in adulthood as “being disappointed and resentful in relationships with adults and with your family,” said Harouni Lurie, “as others cannot meet the needs you had as a child and repair the sacrifices that were made.” Or, in other cases, adults who were parentified as children will struggle to receive care, “as it feels unnatural and they may have learned to believe that they don’t need it.”“Being parentified is such a weird form of abuse because part of you feels chosen,” Walilko said. “You’re the person people come to with problems. You’re the one people think will fix everything. But you’re also the person no one looks out for.”What can happen with some parentified children, said Harouni Lurie, is they “manage this [treatment] by overgiving, staying in the position of the one who provides rather than the one who needs, since that’s the role they know how to be in.” And in some cases, even if it’s not conscious, “there can be scorekeeping in relationships, subconsciously tracking what’s been given versus what’s been received.”Other signs of parentification debt can include chronic exhaustion or burnout, difficulty identifying your own needs, guilt around resting, resentment that surfaces unexpectedly or a pattern of over-functioning in relationships, noted Pasini Billingsley. “Some people also notice a delayed sense of who they are outside of the caretaker role or grief that shows up later in life for the childhood they didn’t get to have.”Walilko may have grown into what she called a “hypercompetent adult,” but that doesn’t mean she didn’t need (or want) an adult to care for her as a child. She learned to be “incredibly resilient” because she had no choice: “No one was interested in my needs or emotional life when I was growing up. [But] that doesn’t mean that I don’t need or want someone to check in on me.”The healing journey: What parentified children actually needWalilko credits talk therapy and going low-to-no-contact with her family as essential for her healing process. Connecting with a mental health professional, especially someone who understands parentification trauma, is a good place to start.“[Parentified children] need space to grieve the childhood experiences they missed, and permission to prioritize their own needs without guilt,” Pasini Billingsley observed. “Working with a therapist can help them separate their identity from the caretaker role and rebuild a sense of self that isn’t defined by managing others.”MoMo Productions via Getty ImagesWhat can happen with some parentified children, said Harouni Lurie, is they “manage this [treatment] by overgiving, staying in the position of the one who provides rather than the one who needs, since that’s the role they know how to be in.”Harouni Lurie expanded on this idea by noting that adults who were parentified as children may find it “really difficult to reflect on their childhood and to understand how they came to be parentified, especially if they struggle with being critical of their caregivers.” This is why, she continued, insight, patience, understanding and compassion are key to the healing process.“Learning to have compassion for themselves and to be honest about their experiences, while also holding compassion for their loved ones, can be really imperative,” she said. Beyond that, it will take patience, both their own and their loved ones’, “to change old patterns and create new dynamics in their relationships.”Replenishing your parentification debtMultiple things can be true in these situations: Some parents may not have intentionally parentified their children, but that doesn’t make their children’s experiences any less real or traumatic.“Many parents were doing the best they could with what they had, and may have been parentified themselves, passing down a pattern that they never had the chance to interrupt,” Pasini Billingsley explained.At the same time, she acknowledged the importance of parentified children letting themselves “feel whatever comes up as [they] recognize this pattern, including anger, rage or resentment.” She also said you should never minimize a parentified child’s experience:“Telling someone not to blame their parents can actually feel disavowing to [people] who are working through real trauma.”Parentified children, even in adulthood, need to be handled with care. They’ve experienced a “profound betrayal by [their] parents that leaves lifelong scars,” Walilko told HuffPost. For Walilko, those scars are “existential exhaustion” and a “perpetually ratcheted-up nervous system.”Years of parentification have made it difficult for people like Walilko to seek out help, because, she explained, “the people who were supposed to take care of [us] took FROM [us] during the most formative years of [our] lives.”