Shaylin had lived in a situation of gross parental neglect forcing her to care for her two-year-old brother when she was less than five herself. She changed diapers, prepared food and dressed her brother when her mother could not. It all ended one frigid evening when the police found the two children, clad only in their pajamas, on the street. Thus one formidable struggle ended and another began.

 Those painful early years left Shaylin in a state psychiatrists call “parentified”. Parentification is partially a result of children attempting to assume responsibilities far beyond their years. The struggle to obtain basic human needs against overwhelming odds generates a powerful impulse in a child to attempt to control their environment to avoid the pain caused by neglect. Parentified children also have great difficulty accepting the authority and decisions of adults around them and usually end up butting heads with everyone in a never-ending struggle for control.

These factors had combined to produce a little girl social services could not keep in a home for any meaningful length of time. She was, at the time of her first respite visit with us, on the ropes once again.

2

Next page